Is Praise Something To Be Afraid Of? Accepting Vulnerability.

At which retro meeting was the last time you heard praise for yourself? I’ve been thinking a little bit about that this weekend; why are we not on that board, why are we afraid to praise? Why don’t we praise ourselves or others?

In meetings or when we give feedback, we say that “I want to be appreciated more and that is very important”. Most of all, we want to be successful in order to be praised, strengthen our self-confidence, and perhaps be shown as an example in the society we live in. After all, we grew up in a society that strives to get “well done” from their teachers, right?

If you ask me, there are two different reasons for avoiding praise: pessimistic and optimistic ways of thinking.

• Don’t want to praise someone when we cannot accept their success;

is the example of a pessimistic thought. For as long as I know, I care a lot about appreciating people and getting the same kind of response. Therefore, I can never understand people who don’t want to appreciate someone else. They say a person’s personality is revealed by the people around them. Thanks to the multitude of successful people around me, I am glad to see how much there is to learn every time -thank God-. How can I have negative emotions in such a situation?

If you feel jealousy-like feelings when you see success, you should know that this is quite unhealthy. If you have this feeling all the time and don’t really appreciate someone for that reason alone, I’d like to remind you of the quote on the cover photo that “supporting another person’s success never ruins yours”.

On the other hand,

• Don’t want to be praised because it will upset someone else and don’t find ourselves and what we do worthy of praise

is the example of an optimistic thought. The vast majority of people with high empathy don’t want to praise their own success in the same field next to those who have experienced a failure. They don’t brag even though they are not the reason for the other person’s failure and have worked hard for their own success. That is about someone else’s vulnerability. In other words, if you are an empathic person like me, you don’t want to brag in such an environment so that person doesn’t think of their own failure. Because you understand the other side and you know they will be upset.

Don’t find what we do worthy of praise is about our vulnerability. Even if there are no failures, we don’t praise ourselves because we fear that we may not get the attention we expect if what we have accomplished is not really that important.

These two subjects have one thing in common: “Vulnerability”. Vulnerability is a phenomenon that everyone should think about and reveal for good communication. I recommend you to watch “The Call To Courage” speech by famous professor Brene Brown, who devoted her career to studying emotions such as courage, vulnerability, and shame. It has rich content that will inspire you on this subject. Brene Brown said;

“Shame loves to hide. The most dangerous thing we can do after the experience that triggers the feeling of shame is to try to hide it. Because when we do that, we only make the shame multiply by metastasizing. I know it may sound counterintuitive, but the best thing we can do to deal with embarrassment is to show courage and communicate. Because shame hates being put into words. Because shame knows that if shared, it will not survive. It is precisely for this reason that in moments like these we need to own our story and share it with someone who has earned the right to hear it and whom we trust will respond with compassion. Urgently.”

Thinking about it this way, if everyone is at peace with their own fragility and shame, our work environments will evolve to be more communicative and honest. In order to praise someone, we must first know how to praise ourselves, and we must know how to offend ourselves in order not to offend someone.

Have you ever written “glad item” at retro meetings lately?

How many times have you praised any of your teammates in front of the whole team? When was the last time you did this? When you want to write an item on the retro board, do you think of “glad” or “sad” or “mad” first?

People generally want to be accepted or appear compatible in their environment by imitating those around them. Behavioral situations can very quickly become “routine behavior” in a community. If you want to be appreciated at the end of a week with a team that doesn’t know how to praise, maybe you’re the one who should start this spiral of praise. Remember, someone has to be vulnerable so that everyone can see that it’s not something to be afraid of. For example, to give an example from basketball; When the player on the field makes a mistake, the Serbian-origin coaches return to the bench and shout at the players there and express their mistake. The player on the side is not offended by this, the others are likewise. On the contrary, they learn more from here.

At this point, instead of complaining about the lack of success, you can start by congratulating any success. You can congratulate a teammate or even another friend you don’t work with. Instead of always waiting for good behavior, you can try to spread good behavior. If you appreciate someone today, you can easily observe that you are appreciated tomorrow, that you do not hesitate to do one-on-one with your teammates, more praise items begin to form in meetings, and how open communication spreads.

It is better to be broken many times than to be broken one day for the first time.

Thank you for reading and feel free to contact me.
Cheers!🤘🏻