Watch Out Before Boosting Your Employees’

Self EsteemPraising your employees and giving them a positive feedback in a bid to extract better performance from them could actually backfire, suggests a new study. Researchers at the American Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the London Business School have found that some types of positive feedback lead employees to develop a false sense of self-worth. Thus, they develop a tendency to justify and recommit to poor decisions, wasting additional time and resources and creating even worse outcomes. They become inept to handle criticism and try to validate a poor decision if their sense of worth revolves around it. The study is set to be published in the journal ‘Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes’ and provides a framework for how organisations might most effectively strengthen their employees' self-esteem.