Encouragement Vs. Praise: Using Encouragement to Build Better Relationships

We hear a good deal about the importance of building good relationships.  We also hear about the importance of identity development.  What if there were a way to encourage those around you while helping them to build their own esteem without using praise all of the time?  What if you could strengthen your own social and support network by learning to use the skills of encouragement?  Years worth of research into child development, human motivation and human behavior might have some hidden gems for us!  Tune in this week as we look at the ways we can use what we know about identity development and encouragement to strengthen and reinforce the world around us.

In this episode, we'll look at three different sources.  The first piece is an interview with Carol Dweck, a phenomenal author and researcher perhaps best known for her work into the Growth Mindset.  Two are academic articles; both from the Child Development literature.  

Here are the pieces that we're pulling from today:

Anderson, J. (2016, January 12). Interview with Carol Dweck-Stanford Professor Who Pioneered Praising Kids for Effort Says We've Totally Missed The Point.  Retrieved from: https://qz.com/587811/stanford-professor-who-pioneered-praising-effort-sees-false-praise-everywhere/

Bryan, C. J., Master, A., & Walton, G. M. (2014). “Helping” Versus “Being a Helper”: Invoking the Self to Increase Helping in Young Children. Child Development, 85(5), 1836–1842. https://doi-org.pallas2.tcl.sc.edu/10.1111/cdev.12244

Gunderson, E. A., Gripshover, S. J., Romero, C., Dweck, C. S., Goldin, M. S., & Levine, S. C. (2013). Parent Praise to 1- to 3-Year-Olds Predicts Children’s Motivational Frameworks 5 Years Later. Child Development, 84(5), 1526–1541. https://doi-org.pallas2.tcl.sc.edu/10.1111/cdev.12064

Transcript

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hello and welcome to the next episode of the positive pod. This week we're gonna take a look at something about which I'm really excited often times when we think of how we interact with other people. The truth is that there are ways to do that that are helpful, and there are ways to do that that aren't so helpful. When we think about people, we generally think about relationships. Relationships are between two human beings, so often we get bound up in society in outcome, good or bad, plus or minus. Is this a good person or a bad person? Really, is a fundamentally is a humanist? What I believe is that people are really complex. It's stuff the boil down people too good or bad, people have their own sort of drives. So one of the things we ask ourselves when we're in relationships is how do we maximize those relationships? How do we make sure that the way we interact with people is the best possible way forward for not only the relationship with the person in front of us, and we're gonna start today by taking a look at something that's come up in the educational literature recently, and it's kind of bled into the popular culture as well. The idea of encouragement versus praise. There's an old saw that I like. Teoh reach back to Praise lasts about 10 minutes, and encouragement lasts about 10 years, and I'm going to say more about that as we go along. I first want to introduce you to a name that you probably heard of. Her name is Carol Dweck, a researcher at Stanford University. She's done some work over the years in something called The Growth Mindset and those of you who are familiar with the educational literature, the self help literature will recognize that immediately. A sort of ah yes, growth months. A good What's interesting is she did our interview in 2016 in which she talked a little bit about the growth mindset and how that growth mindset concept has been maybe misinterpreted. In some ways, Teoh give you a sense of the elemental nature of her research way back when she started to do research into kids and what she found was and again what well linked to some of this research. In in the description below what she found was this. She set up classes of kids. Now the class itself was exactly the same, but she set up three different conditions. One condition was the praised kids, the intelligent kids, the kids that were told that they were very, very smart. So you're very, very smart. That's why you're in this class. You're the smartest we have. And we've given you the most difficult math class we've got. And that's why you're here. The next group, we're gonna call those the encouraged kids, they were told. You're the hardest workers we have in this particular school. That's why you're in this class, the hardest class we have. But you're the you're the hardest workers. The third group was just taught the class not being told either. You know. Either way, that was so called the control group. Dweck found that the praised kids did well and you'd expect that kids, kids that were who self esteem was reinforced do Well, that was the genesis that was the push of the self esteem movement that came into education in the seventies in the eighties. But what? What they started to find eventually is that there were limitations to that self esteem approach and what Dweck it? What directed is studied different conditions. And so she looked at the smart kids, the praised kids, and she found that when they were offered the opportunity at midterm, Well, here's the midterm. You can take it again, and we'll keep the highest score. And of the two groups of the praised groups and of the encouraged groups, the numbers were strikingly different among the praise groups or the smart kids. Less than 10% ever wanted to take that midterm again. In fact, I think it was less than 5% among the encouraged kids. The hardest worker kids. Well over 90% of those kids wanted to retake the exam, even at the risk of keeping the highest score. And and so what's the lesson? There will lessen. His kids tended to B'more invested in the learning process if what had been reinforced for them was their own process. So if they were, if they were told they were smart, they tended to be risk averse. And that's been very well established in the literature by now, if we create an environment where we're telling kids they're smart, what they're going to do is get really invested in staying and appearing smart. And really, that's the condition that Dweck observed over and over again. Folks who haven't need to appear smart tend to be very risk averse. They will tend to hesitate to put themselves in situations where they could be proven to be, not as smart as they appear to be. Creates a risk aversion, and risk aversion is a natural human condition. We will act first, Dan Area Lee's work predictably irrational If you've read that we act first not to lose things and only secondarily to gain things, and so that risk aversion is makes a lot of sense. If if you've got a lot of your personal capital invested in in being smart, then you're gonna protect that capital. You're gonna protect that personal and emotional capital, and you're gonna always make sure that you're not in situations where that's at risk. The encourage kids, on the other hand, the capital that they had invested in his were the hard workers here. They, they tended Teoh, invest more effort. Not surprisingly, and here's the payoff from do X work. The encouraged kids were far had far better educational outcomes than the smart, the smart kids, the praise kids. And that's an interesting finding. And you wonder. Okay, well, that is that A one off among, you know, among students in a given subject, here's what's here's what's even more interesting. That same research line has been echoed in different area. Looking at a study now from 2013 by Gunderson grips over Romero, Dweck, Golden and Levin, in which parent prays to 123 year olds, predicts Children's motivational frameworks. Five years later, let me say that again. Parent praised toe 123 year old predicts Children's motivational frameworks five years later. So, the researchers wondered, Could the way that we speak influence Children's motivation? Over time, they have two experiments. 3 to 6 year old Children. They were exposed to this to the idea of being a helper, which is which is what they called a noun condition or helping, which is a verb condition being a helper. And if you think about that for a second being helper, a little more personal investment there helping is sort of something you can do quickly and walk away from, they hypothesized. That noun wording would would help the foster of perception that that's associate ID that behaviors associate with somebody's identity, whereas the verb condition had less to do with identity and just more of Ah, it's a thing you dio And here's what's fascinating. The results demonstrated that Children in the noun conditions were described as being a helper helped significantly more across four tasks than Children in the verb condition up to five years later. That's a powerful statement. It's indicative, I think, of Do X original work, which is was oriented towards a growth mindset. But but it operationalize. Is it a little bit more? It begins to put some framework around. You know what air them, What are the specifics of how we encourage people? How do we how do we really encourage process and are there right ways to do it? And are there ways that that that art is helpful to do it in both of these cases? In both of the these studies, kids were encouraged to help. They helped in both cases, but what was reinforced was the being the helper, that taking on the personal attributes of helper that helped kids to develop helping behaviours out as far as five years. Powerful statement there as powerful as that lesson is that five years later, kids could develop enhanced skills based on the language that we use. It echoes Carol Dweck surly work. What's interesting is that do X early work has been so well received that in some cases it's been a little bit misinterpreted On the educational front, she'll occasionally hear from teachers that sale. I always encourage my kids. If you just try hard, you can do anything. What Dweck indicates is that's not really enough. Instead of saying to a kid, Well, you tried really hard and that was good. Maybe math is in a strength of yours. This is one of the examples that she uses said It's a much more powerful statement to say, Well, you did try really hard, and maybe math isn't a strength of yours yet, but I'm betting you could get there, see the difference there. One encourages Well, that's just not a strength of yours. Well, you tried the so it really is reinforcing the effort, which is which is good. But it's all concerned with the verb and and the second example where she adds on the very powerful statement of maybe math is in the strength of yours yet, but I bet you could get there. That encourages the growth mindset that encourages the the identification of sort of an identity towards growth. And that's a that's a critical missing piece. When it comes to the noun versus verb condition we can, we can see pretty clearly that the verb condition doesn't do much to help somebody to develop an identity that's that's encouraged. Just reinforcing process alone in an effort alone doesn't reinforce a growth mindset unnecessarily. It doesn't necessarily reinforce and produce encouraged folks when we praise the bottom line. In other words, when we praise just whatever the final grade is or whatever the outcome is, that leads to pretty significant loss aversion because it becomes about just achieving the highest standard. And in in many cases, I think we get kind of lost when we look at the motivational literature and you should strive to be the best. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. We need more people to be doing that. But the difference here is that when we begin to reinforce outcome over process, what we produce is kids with higher anxiety. We produce people with higher anxiety because maybe they don't. They don't achieve that, Um, that that big outcome. Whereas if we reinforce process towards the development of on identity, that's when we really produce people who are striving and will continue to strive. The motivational literature is very clear that internal motivators are far stronger than external motivators. Do X work clearly shows that it tends to be that outcomes grades, job salary, awards, performances, those air external validators. They tend to be great in the short term in terms of motivation, not so not so great for long term motivation. If you're working towards an award or reward, you will work as long as it takes to get there generally and generally. When you get there, you stop or you stop because you get discouraged because you're not there yet. When you're working towards something because of the intrinsic value of working hard is important to you. And as a part of who you are, you're likely to do that far longer. It's far more times stable, so as we think about how do we relate to people in a way that helps them to move forward. That encourages them. What what I believe really firmly is. People do better when they're encouraged, and they tend to struggle when they're discouraged. And so one of the things I like to ask myself is, and my interacting with people in a way that helps them to be encouraged or my interacting in a way with people who that helps them to be discouraged, not perfect here. So I've done both in my life, and what I found is when I can help other people to move forward productively, it works out better for both of us. And when I when I behave in ways that don't do that, it doesn't work out better for either of us. So again, it's pick the one that makes sense. Picks pick the one that's gonna help Mawr people that it's that it's gonna harm. And I think for me it's when I when I walk away from someone, I'd really prefer that they walk away from me either neutral or having gained something that can that can help help them in some way to move forward, because I think the true wealth in the world isn't helping other people. If we can have interactions that helped both people, then I think there's a better interactions. And so one thing I would I would encourage you to think about is how you interact with people and what you choose to reinforce. You know that old saw you get what you fish for your you tend to get back which put out there. So if you're putting encouragement out there, if you're if you're speaking into people in ways that they can grab and move forward with, you tend to get that back. It's a self reinforcing cycle. Not only that, let's say you don't get it back, which is okay to you've helped somebody puts that you've put some positive energy in the world and that ripples in in really unique ways. And that's really what we see in these three pieces that I shared with you here today. What we see is the language that we use is important. I think that's one of the lessons that that I take from these articles when we talk about developing an identity towards something that reinforces the ultimate process of becoming, and I think it's it's a positive message when we just reinforce the outcome. It tends to be a little empty. It tends to be a little shallow. That doesn't mean that when somebody achieves something incredible, we can't say good job. We should. We should also reinforce. That's an amazing accomplishment that you worked hard for. That you really earned that. I could see that you learned that in the process that that seems to be who you are. You work hard towards things. That's an encouraging statement. Great job. Last about 10 minutes. Great job that, you know, it seems to be a fundamental part of who you are. You work hard for things, you know, You kind of when the chips were down, you put your nose down and you've really got to something. And that just seems to be you that that seems to be genuinely a part of who you are. That message that the next time the chips are down, somebody can reach back to and say, Yeah, you know what? That is? A part of who I am. When the chips are down, I do do that. What I find is encouragement. Based interactions are things that people can reach back two years later and benefit from. And so if I'm gonna have an interaction with somebody, what I hope is that they're walking away from it with some sort of encouragement at the end of the day that they can then reach back to at some future point. One thing to think about. Ask yourself in any interaction. What can I do to encourage the individual that I'm with? Am I reinforcing that person's process and identity at the same time? And what can I do to do that? Those are the things that will help you to not only have more positive relationships, but to strengthen those positive relationships in the strength of strength of the people around you. What I like about that is, once you strengthen the relationships that you have with people that tends, Teoh also strengthen your social support network. So the next time that you're feeling down, you've then got a strengthened network that's oriented towards growth that's oriented towards positive and identity development around you that can echo back some of the things that you put out there. So in the event that you do need that back, there's a higher percentage possibility that you might get it. There's a look at praise versus encouragement and how we can use encouragement to not only strengthen the relationships that we have with other people, but we can use it to strengthen the personal identity of the of the folks around us and ultimately to enrich our own lives. Thanks so much for listening to the positive pod. And we look forward to seeing you next week on our next episode. Have a great day. Everybody take care, but by