Feedback on Ben Williams' talks on Blame Culture - Praise Culture:

OASIS are most grateful to Ben Williams, Corporate Psychologist here in Edinburgh, for serving the business community with this excellent input.

The importance of praise at work? Judging by the interest in the subject - we had to put the seminar on a second time, such was the demand - people perceive praise to be very important at work. Perhaps we are in some cases even missing a degree of praise at work. We certainly thrive on it when we receive it.

So, when was the last time you received praise at work? Within the last week? If yes, and if that is a regular occurrence for you at work, then your company may be said to have met one of the key criteria for being a successful enterprise, according to the Gallup organisation (click here to go to past events 2001 and then click the red link at the top of that page to review the Q12 checklist, in particular, number 4).

And when did you last give praise at work? Is this a daily reality in your office life?… To help us to "catch people" doing praiseworthy things and to acknowledge them for doing so, Ben Williams suggested we get hold of twelve 5p pieces and place them in one of our pockets/a part of our handbag, and whenever we praise someone we can (discreetly!) transfer a coin from that place to another pocket/another part of our handbag. How many coins can we transfer in a day?

As we help change our working environment from a low praise culture to a high praise culture, will we not help others' well-being and morale and indeed our own? And may this actually translate eventually into higher productivity and an improved bottom line?

Ben informed, entertained and challenged us. In the whistle-stop tour of stats, emotional intelligence, optimising performance at work and various recent studies, several gems stand out, for example:

· praise is about supporting people instead of detracting from them
· it is OK to love yourself
· how can you praise others if you don't love yourself?
· you can't force commitment - you can only force compliance
· "you and I are on the team and we can handle this challenge"
· your self-esteem will rise as you write down 15 of your greatest achievements and 15 of your triumphs over adversity
· help people around you remember when they came through in the past
· encourage the heart
· adopt a courtesy system in your everyday office dealings
· appreciate and value.

If you would like to know more about this subject, you may like to get in touch with our speaker at info@benwilliams.co.uk

About 100 people were privileged to hear Ben speak, first at Baillie Gifford and then at Shepherd+Wedderburn. We are most grateful to these two companies for hosting us. And we wish Baillie Gifford all the best as they move to the east end of the new town.

Back to top