The Power of Praise
Do you begin your new year with a resolution?
There’s a lot of evidence (in my own life too) that New Year’s resolutions are chosen from a “should” in your life. Whether it’s, “I should do regular workouts,” or, “I should spend more time with my family,” or, “I should manage my budget better,” resolutions that are motivated by wanting to get better seldom last.
But this year, I’m resolving to get better at giving praise.
To do that, I’ll need to constantly reactivate my gratitude muscles, look for the gifts in unexpected challenges, and actually voice my appreciation to those around me.
“Why?” you wonder?
I was motivated by an experiment that I recently read about. The researcher invited men and women who wanted to learn how to bowl and had never bowled before. They divided them into three groups.
Group #1 would just learn strategies and think about bowling, but not actually bowl.
Group #2 would bowl every day for three weeks, and their games would be filmed.
At the end of each day, a bowling coach would review the tape with each bowler and show them what they did WRONG and coach them how to improve. This is often what Olympic and professional athletes do during training - figure out what they’re doing wrong so they can learn to do it right.
Group #3 would also bowl every day for three weeks and have their games filmed.
At the end of each day, a bowling coach would review the tape with each bowler. However, the coach for Group #3 would only point out what the bowlers did RIGHT, so they could see what they’re doing correctly and keep doing it.
At the end of three weeks of learning and practicing, each group was tested.
Group #1 who simply thought about how to bowl - improved their game scores by three to four pins.
Group # 2 - who were coached on how to improve their mistakes - improved their their game scores by 20 to 30 pins!
What an improvement!
And Group #3?
Group # 3, who were coached to focus only on what they did right, improved their game scores by 90 to 100 pins!
You see, Group #2 used a “deficit perspective” to figure out what was wrong and correct it to do better.
But Group #3 used a “strength perspective” to focus on what’s right and do more of it.
What implications do you see from this experiment? Where could you apply it?
I immediately think of four scenarios:
Teachers giving feedback to students.
Parents supporting their child’s development.
Administrators giving observation feedback to teachers.
Coaches giving feedback to everyone.
What if we all got better at giving praise? But there are different kinds of praise — some have high impact and some have low impact. Download my Power of Praise handout to learn the difference.
Then think — who and what can you find today to praise so that it will make a difference? I hope you’ll comment below what you’re learning about praise. What’s working for you??
If this blog resonates with you, check out our other blogs!
And - if you’re a special education leader - we go deeper into “amplifying feedback” in our Champions Mastermind. Deadline to register is January 16th, 2026.
