If you are a leader, Make sure you give props.

I’m going to play devils advocate here…because I’m not one that needs praise. I know when I do we’ll and when I mess up.

So, what’s the psychology behind this?

To that note…have any of you, other than when a cheque is handed to you, thanked your employer or told them they’ve done a good job?

I’m not against praise, or the idea that a pat on the back is needed. But it is typically a very one way street. The designer in me asks, Why?

I have thanked my VPS’ or bosses on various occasions, for their support and or guidance, along with the support they provide to the dept.

I grew up with very little positive reinforcement if any, so as an adult i have come to need very little of it, but i have learned that there are many people out there that do require the positive reinforcement and with it they strive to grow and develop. keeping in mind that it needs to be balanced and not just needles flattery…

Jon, you state that “you” know when you do well… but what happens if you think you do well but someone disagrees… do you simply dismiss their opinion or do you strive to understand were the difference in view point is coming from? I have seen many people take the approach, of I don’t care if you think i do a good job or not because I know what i do. We just went through evaluations and one employee rated themselves as 4’s across the board (highest number / best score) and when his numbers didn’t match up with our VP’s and my assessment his response was "they are just numbers and don’t mean anything, I know the type of job i do… With this attitude he has grown at a very slow rate through his career…

Talk to the human in you not the designer in you. :wink:

Praise is about acceptance, and humans want to be accepted by nature (most of us, not you lone wolfs). In general we are pack animals. Acceptance of praise is about a warm fuzzy. The designer in me thinks it is not necessary, I used to be angry with myself for feeling better after receiving praise. After all the work was the same before and after the compliment right? But people don’t work this way, and to maximize your potential as a designer is to understand how people work.

RE: Have I ever praised my employer for anything other than a paycheck? Absolutely! For may reasons. People in authority rarely get praise. You think they do, but more often than not they are getting the brunt of the problems, and if they are worth their salt, they are taking the hit square on the jaw and not passing the buck down hill. So they are getting beat up from above. From the people below them they rarely get thanks (other than for a paycheck) and often get complaints. So I always made it a point to give praise to my bosses when they did something over and above, like covering for one of my screw ups (which are frequent mind you) or fighting for a design beyond the expected. Also, to GIVE praise is a sign of the alpha. Typically giving praise to someone shows you are in a position to recognize their good and bad deeds. Giving praise to a superior shifts the conversation from one of authority to subordinate to a peer to peer level of recognition.

The key is to only use praise accurately so it has meaning. When employed to its fully, you can use praise as a critique. Praising a specific aspect of a project but nothing else lets people know the rest needs work. Praising one employee for a specific task publicly helps everyone understand the level of expectations. This is why when we give trophies to all the kids, it doesn’t reinforce anything.

Don’t think like a designer, BE a designer but think like a person. Things work out better :wink:

Check out the book “Why We Cooperate”

+1 for Yo! I wanted to write the same thing when I read Jon’s comments.

I’ve found praise to be a very rare commodity for everyone in business. Everyone wants to be tough and be “results oriented”. That turns you into a d***.

Only at my current job, I’ve thanked my boss and told him when he’s done something great. Naturally, I’m like Chevis (I think, although I was praised ALOT as a kid). I don’t require much praise and don’t give it out. The last few years though, I’ve realized how hard everyone else around me is working. That should demand some praise.

The change is something that I’m working on for myself. I think it was something holding my potential back a bit.

Side note, Ray, who said that quote in your signature?

Yo!: That was me. A couple months ago, I listened to an interview with the architect Will Alsop. He mentioned how he was one of the few architects left to use a mathematical basis to the proportion of his buildings (like the golden ratio). He said he thought that if local building codes would enforce proportion it might make better architecture instead of creating maximum heights for buildings or all of those other stupid zoning/building code requirements.

My take is the industrial designers viewpoint. Everyone is blogging about 3D printing making a revolution. I think it will likely lead to a lot of horrible looking things, unless people actually learn about proportion, color, line, surfacing and all of those other difficult things that it takes to actually make a good looking product.

This is Will Alsop’s Ontario School of Art and Design in Toronto. Classic, restrained and well proportioned.

I’m a believer in praise. I don’t need it, but as a business owner, I understand full well what it means to (certain) people.

I had to point out the fact that this isn’t a one way street. To Yo’s comment about trophies to everyone. I don’t dish out praise arbitrarily.

I guess, what I see happening with a thread like this is everyone saying, “Yeah man, my boss is such a jerk because he doesn’t ever say I do a good job”…is it possibly because you’re NOT doing a good job? What ownership do you take for the situation?

A further point…praise is something to be given. Which speaks to my lack of need to receive it. I don’t view it as something that should be expected to be gained from the process.

Agreed. When people come to me and say “I’m not being recognized as X,Y, or Z”. My response is always “Are you performing in a way that someone would recognize you as X,Y, or Z”. Praise is not a given, it is an acknowledgement based on merit. Otherwise it would be like an athlete saying “How come I do’t have any points on the board, I’m on the field aren’t I?” If you scored, you’d have points.

That said, some people see praise (giving or receiving) as a sign of weakness, or frivolousness. Run, you’ll never have fun working for them.

Very cool, and very true quote. People sometimes confuse tools with results. Sorry for the tangent everyone.

Agreed. Full stop.

In general we are pack animals.

I always enjoy a good double entendre. When I read this it immediately brought to mind the many nights spent over projects trying to make deadlines. Pack animals, as in, beasts of burden bearing the load…

I did not receive much “praise” as a child, and to this day have a hard time accepting any kind of compliment. I guess it’s just a deeply ingrained lack of understanding on my part. That said, there is management philosophy I’ve found productive; praise in public; punish (criticize) in private.

Sort of sad to know people will be criticizing your designs negatively throughout your life. Its bad enough I get negative feedback from my father when I show him my designs and that does put you down. But I never want it to be something I`d have to get used to. You spend hours/days on something to impress someone and they attack you as if you don’t have enough of a headache already from trying to get everything right. We don’t share the same brain so why the hell would we have the same innovative ideas?

We don’t share the same brain so why the hell would we have the same innovative ideas?

No we do not. And no one person “designs” a manufactured product. Critique is part and parcel to the process of industrial design, engineering, and many other fields my friend. Get used to it. It is a constructive process that helps ferret out problems;consider it “feedback” and use it.

A bit of advice. If you take all of this as a personal attack, you’re doomed. And if you can’t “defend” your concepts to the group/management they will not make it through to the final product. As the old saying goes, “If you can’t take the heat, you’d better stay out of the kitchen.”

How do you guys feel about praise in design school? I have always pushed hard to get critique as soon as possible on every new concept for a project I produced on my course and that is often from lecturers who know good design and (being from a good school here in England) have high standards. All my friends have NEVER asked for critique because to be honest, they are often terrified. Do you think praise from lecturers should be so scarce in Design school as if in industry? Do you think it gets to the point where it simply deters students from asking for critique if they receive little praise for the good stuff and only criticism for the bad?

Where I went to school there was a strong critique culture. Students were encouraged to participate heavily in critique, picking apart other students work, or at times siding with the student and arguing with the professors. I remember getting into a 20 minute argument with a professor over a detail. We hashed it out, loudly. At the end of the conversation the professor walked up to me, shook my hand, and said “you believe what you say, I wanted to make sure, you’ll do well.” Another professor would walk around on crit day with a coach’s whistle, try to BS him and the whistle would be blown and you were done for the week. There were professors who were more encouraging, but I don’t remember learning from them. If you want encouragement, call your mom on Sunday morning. In school they shod be separating the wear from the chaff. Every semester a few kids would drop out. My sophomore class was about 65, my graduating class about 40. Of those 40 maybe 10 or 15 made it as industrial designers. A rigorous critique culture teaches you how to defend your ideas, make your point, and to know when you’ve missed something, to know when to shut it and listen.

A couple of years ago I was pitching to a German auto exec who had been 30 years in the industry. We got into a rather loud argument during which my coeavues seemed a bit horrified. At the end of the discussion he walked up to me and said “very good, I trust you, how much do you want to do this project?”

I’m not going to lie, school was hard, emotionally, metally, and physically, but that is what I was paying for. To rip me down and build me back up. The tougher professors I am indebted to. Find the tough ones, get extra time with them. It will be worth it!

I’m not going to lie, school was hard, emotionally, metally, and physically, but that is what I was paying for. To rip me down and build me back up. The tougher professors I am indebted to. Find the tough ones, get extra time with them. It will be worth it!

We lived in parallel universes yo.

I knew it was going to be a tough year when Papanek’s replacement took a look at a rendering that I’d been working on for an hour or so (way too much time for what it was) wadded it up and told me not to get too “in love” with my sketching. I immediately hated his guts, but within a week I was sketching a lot faster, and as a result I got better quicker than I otherwise would have.

I’m so glad you brought this up earlier on in my school career, I have been doing it but no where near as much as I should so I’ll be sure to emphasise this point! ‘To rip me down and build me back up’ - this is my first year and I’m currently in the ‘rip me down’ phase, however I do feel the critique for recent projects has really helped me build up!

Yo, do you guys in the States have specific critique sessions? I’m only in first year and I haven’t come across anything like that, I assume it comes later on?..

Just been presented with the same scenario with my sketching in a current project! Very pleased to have got this feedback!

here’s another one :wink:

It was the first week of the semester and I was “warming up slowly”. For some reason I thought it would be OK to hang out late one night, and then half ass an assignment. My professor reamed me, slowly and mercilessly. It was actually embarrassing. He called me out hard, and somehow worked other students into it saying things like “it would be one thing if you were Scott, he sucks, but your actually good. It is like I gave you both $100 to invest, and Scott, the half talent he is, buried it in the ground, but at least I still have my $100 dollars, not a horrible idea. But YOU, you decided to burn the $100 in a fire last night, and now we have nothing!”

Anyway, after licking my wounds from the tirade, I threw myself into the next assignment. Just really cranked. The next week when it came time to crit, the prof says “who would like to go first?”, and I jumped up. He gave me a suspicious look, moseyed over to my project, studied it in detail, then said “very good, EVERYONE, this project is the bar by which you will be judged today, I hope some of you worked hard.”… now that was encouragement, because it meant something. When I did poorly, he dindt say “now Michael, whats wrong, did you want to go out with your friends last night?”, no, he practically killed me. The next week when I worked hard, he knew it, I knew it, and he let everyone else know it.

I cant imagine making it through education without getting your stuff ripped off the wall, crumpled up, and tossed back at you at least once (happened a few times to me). I think that should be one of the ‘things every designer must do’ list. It hurts, but it apparently seems to be a key component to being a successful designer.