Do you keep waiting for your boss to tell you what a good job you’re doing, how well you completed your last project, or how valuable you are to the team? Are you still waiting after having your job for years? If you talk to your co-workers, you’ll probably find that they don’t receive praise from the boss you share either.
Why don’t some bosses give praise? They may not believe in giving praise, their bosses may not have given them praise, they may not know how to give praise, or they may not take time to give praise. Regardless of the reasons, the issue is what do you do about the situation?
Could you and your coworkers talk to your boss and ask for praise? Sure you could. But if the boss agrees to praise you more and doesn’t, you’re back where you started. Make the situation easy for yourself. Give yourself praise. Whenever you want, internally compliment yourself, send yourself an email about your accomplishments, or pat yourself on the back. After tolerating a particularly difficult customer, tell yourself, “I handled that person well.” When you complete a project on time, tell yourself, “I did a good job on this project.” You may even want to have an agreement with your coworkers to give each other praise. The point is to take responsibility for giving yourself the praise you want and deserve.
What are the benefits of praising yourself? You receive as much praise as you want, as often as you want, as glowing as you want, in whatever method you want. Go ahead and try it. You’ve been waiting a long time and you deserve it. Best of all, by taking responsibility for praising yourself, whenever you want praise, you know you’ll always get it.
We hope this is helpful to you! Terry L. Wynne, Ed.S., LPC, BCC, Career Coach at HallieCrawford.com. Need help setting and keeping Career Goals? Watch these helpful videos Hallie has created by clicking here.
