Nice Work Is Pleasant and Unusable

Think about the last time somebody told you precisely what you had done well. Not good job on the release. The specific thing: the sentence you wrote that ended an argument, the decision to hold the deploy, the way you handled a difficult customer call. Most people have to think for a long time, and plenty cannot find one at all.

Now notice how easily you can recall the last correction you were given. It is right there, with the date on it.

That asymmetry is not unkindness. It is that problems create a reason to speak and good work does not. A mistake demands a conversation. Something going well produces a small warm feeling in whoever noticed and then nothing at all, because there is no obvious moment to say it and it feels faintly awkward to try.

Which means your team is running on half its information. People know what to stop. Hardly anybody knows what to keep doing, so they guess, and often they quietly drop the exact thing that was working.

Fix it in your own habits, and be specific, because praise without detail evaporates on contact. Nice work is pleasant and unusable. Name three things: what they did, when, and what it caused. The way you rewrote the error message in the payment flow last week means support has stopped getting that ticket. That lands, it is remembered for years, and it tells them exactly which behaviour to repeat.

Put it where it belongs. The work goes in public, in the channel, where other people can see what the team actually values. The personal part, that they handled a hard week with grace, goes to them privately, because being praised for character in front of an audience makes most people squirm.

And send it upward too. Your lead, your manager, the person in another team who unblocked you. They receive even less of this than you do, and one specific line from somebody with nothing to gain outweighs any survey.

It takes half a minute. Almost nobody spends it, which is precisely why the ones who do are remembered.

– Asael Shinder