Testing Praise

HoHum:

5 Ways to Praise from Charlotte Business Journal by Bob Nelson:

There are 5 ways that you can praise employees: personal praise, written praise, electronic praise, public praise and indirect praise.

Personal praise- is considered the most important type of praise by employees. It consists of being verbally thanked one on one for doing good work and being specifically sought out for such praise by one’s manager. The best personal praise is timely, sincere, and specific.

Written praise- is considered to be the next most valued type of praise by employees and it, too, comes in several varieties: from a written note of thanks or a thank you card to a more formal letter of commendation being added to one’s personnel file.

Electronic praise- is similar to written praise, but enables you to leverage positive communication as it occurs in your daily work. In my research, 28% of employees report it is “extremely important” to them to have positive e-messages forwarded to them and 65% say it’s “extremely or very important” to be copied on positive e-mail message. And don’t forget the use of voicemail as well to leave a positive work of thanks.

Public praise- in front of management and peers is valued by most employees and there is almost an endless variety of ways to acknowledge employees publicly. Overall share stories about people’s successes and thank your staff for their dedication and hard work.

Indirect praise- is using any of the above techniques to praise someone and his or her performance to others even if they are not present, knowing that word will get back to the person who you singled out in a positive way.

Thesis: Let’s talk about praising ourselves and others.

For instances:

The duty of praising others (Vs. 2)

It is good to give honor to whom honor is due. It is good to rejoice with those who rejoice.

Paul often gave praise to others. Rarely did he praise himself. Most of the time he talked low about himself. The duty of praising those who have done well is a forgotten and neglected virtue

It is the opposite of blame or criticism. We often criticize. How would life be different if we gave as much praise to others as much as we criticized?

Many respond better to a little praise than to much blame or criticism.

To praise others for doing well is to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. He did not toot his own horn but many times was focused on others. Luke 14:11: For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

It is good to do to others as we would have them do to us. The Golden Rule. If we want people to praise us as in vs. 2 we need to give praise to others.

Florence Shinn- The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy.

In his book, The One-Minute Manager, Kenneth Blanchard recommends developing the practice of "one-minute praising," where the manager (or parent, spouse, etc.) tries to "catch someone doing something right" and then spend a full sixty seconds praising that person for the good deed. This is a lot more difficult than it appears. Where we might not find it difficult to criticize someone for even sixty minutes, many times we find it almost impossible to praise someone sincerely for a full minute. And this is true for the church as well. It seems that it can be hard for some people to Praise God. Even in our prayer time, we can sure list off the prayer needs but I think we find it difficult to come up with praises. The more we praise God for everything that He has given to us the less we will criticize others. The more we praise Him in the church the more we will see His hand and Spirit moving through the church.

The wisdom of not praising ourselves (Vs. 2)

This makes sense but many in our society love to praise themselves. “If you don't toot your own horn no one else will”

They talk about their work, their knowledge, their experiences, their thriftiness, their persuasiveness, their generosity.

If they knew how soon they wear people out and how people view them as nauseous, they would stop.

Now to defend oneself against a charge is understandable. Paul gave many defenses of himself in the book of Acts. Jesus Christ didn’t say anything at his trials but Paul gave long speeches mainly about himself. Thankful that he did because of great service to church

Self commendation may be allowable in some instances. When a person goes to a job interview must talk about the things they have done and attained.