Monday Morning Minute Episode #006 – How Often Should I Positively Reinforce

Do I Have To Positively Reinforce My Team All The Time?

This is a great question that I get asked all the time.

Last week I encouraged you to begin positively reinforcing people around you by extending a simple “thank you” to be more meaningful.

So how often should you do that?

Well in this week’s episode of the Monday Morning Minute I share with you the 5 guiding principles of how and when to positively reinforce to make the best impact.

I like them all, and they’re all important, however principle number 4 is where the juice really is.

Check out the video and I’d be interested to find out if you feel I’ve missed anything.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this question (just drop your answer in the comments below):

So How Often Should You Positively Reinforce Your Team?

Episode Transcript
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Welcome to the Monday Morning Minute.

In last week’s episode I encouraged you to experiment with a slightly more elaborate thank you as a way of positively reinforcing your team members.

Now A question I am often asked at this point is - How often should I positively reinforce?

That’s a great question and the start of my answer would always be “…it depends” - because it is situationally and contextually dependent. So there’s no simple answer.

However there are some guiding principles:

You don’t have to positively reinforce every incidence of a great behaviour.

Just do it randomly. Often enough to keep them feeling good about the behaviour but not too often that they become immune to the reinforcement.

Make sure you use positive reinforcement as close to the behaviour occurring as possible

The more specific you are about exactly what it is you are appreciating, the more powerful the impact of the positive reinforcement.

When working with a remote team live positive reinforcement over the phone or video conference is better than written in an email.

Experiment with these principles this week and let me know what you learnt.

Until next week.