In Praise of Specific Praise

How Home Depot's CEO reinforced a culture

I wrote several months ago about a particularly strong leader I worked for who told me she loved how quickly I worked. I noticed how much this compliment from a person I respected impacted my work: I wanted to live up to it, and I began to view working quickly as part of my identity.

I especially enjoyed hearing this same idea in action in this Invest like the Best episode with Frank Blake, the former CEO of Home Depot. He became CEO during the housing crisis in 2007 and needed to learn very quickly how to maintain and grow the company’s customer-centric culture. He did this by praising customer service very specifically. He’d spend several hours each Sunday handwriting notes to store associates who had exemplified the principle of putting the customer’s needs first, and when he visited stores he would meet with employees and thank them.

Each company I’ve worked for has had explicit core values. Mostly they have not been very effective in driving culture or decision-making. They tend to be communicated at company-wide meetings and posted around the office, but they are not directly connected to the actions people take when doing their job. It seems like this method that Blake and my old boss use of specifically praising actions that align with your values, and doing it in a genuine way, is one of the most effective ways of actually getting a group to internalize values and build an intentional culture.

This feels so simple that I would assume everyone would do it but it is really quite rare. It takes time and energy to thoughtfully praise people in specific ways. But it seems well worth it as a leader in an organization or simply a human being with relationships.

In that spirit, I’ve noticed a few new subscribers recently come in through reader referrals. Thank you so much for sharing this newsletter! It means a lot that you take the time to read it and it aligns with our principle of Joe-centricity which is so important to our culture here.