All roads lead to world summit as climate, man’s folly shrink sources of life

ROME—It was once true that all roads led to this ancient capital. Today it is the furrows of maize, wheat and rice fields that take you to Rome, where the biggest global food organizations are headquartered, and the World Summit on Food Security (November 16 to 18) is being organized.

I’ve spent most of my professional life in organizations staffed with and run by talented people who do great work. Similarly, as a teacher, I can’t help but be impressed by what students achieve. In both settings, I’ve learned a lot about how to give praise so that it reinforces the behavior that yielded excellent work and encourages the recipient to get even better. Here are a few of my basic principles:

1. Be truly specific. General compliments like “Great job!” or “Excellent presentation!” surely have their place. But precise feedback does much more, both for the ego of the recipient and for the quality of her future work. Tell Carmen that her well-organized tables helped you realize that the team’s new project is actually an extension of the previous one and that key components can be imported to save time. She might be able to build on that point at the next team meeting. At the very least, the takeaway is that she delivered successfully.

2. Don’t confuse politeness with praise. In many settings, the social norm is to pepper people with pleasantries in the course of routine interactions (“Thanks so much for your help” or “You’ll send it tomorrow? Wonderful!”). Such verbal gestures often play an important role in maintaining the cooperative tone of a workplace. But if your quotidian tone sounds too much like the one you use to praise someone’s work, the line between daily politeness and substantive appreciation can blur. People begin to be inattentive to feedback because it sounds routine.

It sounds like the opening to some kind of Dadaist joke: What does Highlander, a 1986 film about immortal warriors, have to do with innovation? The movie’s most famous line, “There can be only one,” also applies to the number of true innovations any single product can have.