The Power of Praise…

So today I realized the power of praise, or lack of it.

Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve always been loved at my jobs. No matter what I did, I always did it well and my bosses gave credit for that.

So I had no reason to suspect that it would be any different with the organization I did my practicum at. However things did not go nearly how I expected.

To say my boss was absent would be the most accurate description. Even the first week I started, she was on vacation. She was too busy to give me any feedback, which I so desperately needed in my first post-college job. Every time I did something, I got no positive feedback. When I got them, reactions to my work were basically “well this is what I expected of you but you need to do better”. I never felt appreciated, and was given no guidelines for improvement. At the point when my practicum was finished and we were deciding my future, the best thing she could say was that I was professional. Gee, don’t hold yourself back. I wanted to hear her say “we’d love to keep you here” and what she actually said was “what do you want to do”. So when I finally quit in August, I had reached the point where I hated coming to work and felt totally incompetent.

Today, at my wonderful EPS job, I was given the task of designing a one page flyer on Halloween Safety. I was told to include the address, EPS crest, and safety tips. From there, I built a totally awesome page that everyone in the office was oooing and awing over. I was told by a senior PR person that I had “great design skills” and my boss said it looked “terrific”. And then it occurred to me that it had seriously been over a year since I felt complimented in my work. My teachers at school never really gave me high praise. And my boss at my practicum only gave negative feedback.

I didn’t write this to be a show off; merely to illustrate how I went from having confidence in my abilities to being completely full of self doubts. I am glad every day that I left the organization.