Managing Up
Praise is feedback too, and most of it arrives unusable
Positive comments are pleasant and rarely actionable, which means the most valuable thing you can do with one is ask a follow-up question almost nobody asks.
By Devika Menon3 min read
Vague praise tells you nothing you can repeat
Being told that a piece of work was great is enjoyable and, taken alone, close to useless. You do not know which part was great, whether the judgement was about the content or the timing, or what would have made it merely adequate. Without that, the compliment cannot be converted into a repeatable behaviour, which is what feedback is for.
The consequence is that people accumulate a great deal of goodwill they cannot act on, and then find at review time that their manager’s specific reasons for rating them well are different from the ones they assumed. That mismatch is common, and it is entirely avoidable with one additional question at the moment the praise is given.
The question to ask, and why it is rarely asked
The question is some version of: which part of that was most useful? Or, more pointedly, if I only had time to do one of those things again next time, which should it be? It takes a few seconds and the answer is almost always specific, because the person has just been thinking about your work.
People do not ask because it feels like fishing for more compliments, and because there is a strong social instinct to accept praise quickly and move on. That instinct is worth overriding. Asking a follow-up signals that you treat positive feedback as information rather than as reward, which is itself a good impression, and it produces something you can use.
Do it in the moment if you can. A week later the specifics have faded and you will get a general answer, which puts you back where you started.
Praise is also a map of what the organisation values
Pay attention to the pattern across several instances rather than to any single one. If you are consistently thanked for turning things round quickly and never for the depth of the analysis, that tells you what this team is actually optimising for, which may not match what its stated objectives say.
That information is genuinely useful and slightly uncomfortable. It might mean the thing you consider your best work is not the thing being valued, and you then have a real choice to make: adjust what you emphasise, argue for a different valuation, or accept the mismatch and know that it will show up at review time. Any of the three is defensible. Not noticing is the poor option.
Where the praise comes from matters as much as its content
Praise from your manager is one signal. Praise that reaches your manager from somebody else is a considerably stronger one, because it survived a transmission step and cost the sender something to send. Most of what shapes your reputation arrives this way, which is why work done for colleagues in other teams tends to be undervalued by the person doing it.
This has a practical implication for how you handle a compliment from outside your team. Thanking someone and letting the matter drop is the default; asking whether they would mind mentioning it to your manager feels awkward but is entirely normal and is frequently agreed to without a second thought. In some organisations there is a written mechanism for exactly this, and it exists because the alternative is that good work stays invisible.
The limits, including the manipulative version
Not all praise is informative. Some managers praise reflexively as a management style, which devalues the currency and makes the pattern-reading above unreliable. Some use it as a substitute for things that cost money, and a run of warm words in place of a pay conversation is a signal in itself, though not a proof of bad faith — the budget may genuinely not exist.
And there is a version worth watching for, where enthusiastic recognition consistently attaches to work that nobody else will take on, particularly unpaid extra hours or the tasks that carry no career value. Praise is cheap to give. When it is the only thing being offered for something that costs you a great deal, it is reasonable to notice the exchange rate and to raise the question of what else is available. That conversation is easier if you have been collecting specifics all along, which is the other reason to ask the follow-up question every time.
Common questions
Does asking what was good about my work sound insecure?
Not if it is framed forward rather than backward. “Which part should I make sure I do again?” reads as someone trying to be consistent. “Did you really like it?” reads as reassurance-seeking, and the difference is entirely in the wording.
Should I keep a record of positive comments?
Yes, briefly and with dates, including who said it and about what. Reviews are written from memory under time pressure, and being able to supply three specific examples is a considerable advantage over trying to recall a year in a single sitting.
My manager never gives praise at all. Is that a problem?
It is a common management style rather than necessarily a verdict, particularly among people who were themselves managed that way. You can ask directly whether the work is meeting expectations, which most such managers will answer plainly. If even that produces nothing, the absence of signal is itself worth factoring into your plans.
Staff writer, After the First Job
Devika writes the explanatory pieces on first months, managing up, money at work and reads the small print so you do not have to.
