Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

Po Bronson in New York Magazine on The Inverse Power of Praise:

By and large, the literature on praise shows that it can be effective—a positive, motivating force. In one study, University of Notre Dame researchers tested praise’s efficacy on a losing college hockey team. The experiment worked: The team got into the playoffs. But all praise is not equal—and, as Dweck demonstrated, the effects of praise can vary significantly depending on the praise given. To be effective, researchers have found, praise needs to be specific. (The hockey players were specifically complimented on the number of times they checked an opponent.)

Sincerity of praise is also crucial. Just as we can sniff out the true meaning of a backhanded compliment or a disingenuous apology, children, too, scrutinize praise for hidden agendas. Only young children—under the age of 7—take praise at face value: Older children are just as suspicious of it as adults.

Psychologist Wulf-Uwe Meyer, a pioneer in the field, conducted a series of studies where children watched other students receive praise. According to Meyer’s findings, by the age of 12, children believe that earning praise from a teacher is not a sign you did well—it’s actually a sign you lack ability and the teacher thinks you need extra encouragement. And teens, Meyer found, discounted praise to such an extent that they believed it’s a teacher’s criticism—not praise at all—that really conveys a positive belief in a student’s aptitude.

In the opinion of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, a teacher who praises a child may be unwittingly sending the message that the student reached the limit of his innate ability, while a teacher who criticizes a pupil conveys the message that he can improve his performance even further.

Bronson doesn’t make a case for having flaws pointed out, just that praise ought to be specific, not generic. To clarify my point: you should allow your non-critical weaknesses be visible to others, not necessarily draw attention to their existence in another.

Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones in Harvard Business Review on Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? (emphasis mine):

We’ve yet to hear advice that tells the whole truth about leadership. Yes, everyone agrees that leaders need vision, energy, authority, and strategic direction. That goes without saying. But we've discovered that inspirational leaders also share four unexpected qualities: discovered that inspirational leaders also share four unexpected qualities:

• They selectively show their weaknesses. By exposing some vulnerability, they reveal their approachability and humanity.
• They rely heavily on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of their actions. Their ability to collect and interpret soft data helps them know just when and how to act.
• They manage employees with something we call tough empathy. Inspirational leaders empathize passionately—and realistically—with people, and they care intensely about the work employees do.
• They reveal their differences. They capitalize on what’s unique about themselves.

That first one there is a rocker. I remember a couple of years ago when I realised I trusted people better if they didn’t come off as perfect, if they made visible some shortcoming in their personality while neither glorifying nor denying it. I remember being so excited that I mailed people about how I appreciated their flaws (to their discomfiture and my sheepishness). I wrote:

We live in an age where little is taken at face value. Marketeers go all out painting their brand in the best possible light. If you listen to them, you’ll think the brand is the embodiment of perfection. In fact, you can’t help but hear them because their messages are all pervasive. You don’t need another critic singing praises that you’ve already heard.

When I go look for reviews of something, I always read the negative reviews first. They’re sometimes meaningless, like someone complaining that he wanted a smartphone that behaved like his old PDA, but this one didn’t and is therefore crap, but usually the negative reviews bring you the frustrations of real users trying to make real use of products they paid for, and that may affect you too; not of reviewers singing praises to gizmos they’re not going to be using a week later anyway. When you counter hype with criticism, you’re able to form an understanding of whether the brand actually makes sense to you.

Negative reviews bring the brand down from lofty hype to credible reality. And what applies to gizmo brands applies to people brands too.

In the months since, I’ve increasingly become convinced that having one’s weaknesses as public knowledge is good for credibility.