When “Good Job” Comes With a Warning

Several years ago, I coached a commercial director whose team had been getting excellent results.

He was demanding, very focused on performance, and always looking ahead to the next target. These qualities that had served him well, but his team started to stall.

As we dug into what was happening, one comment kept coming up: Nothing ever seemed to be good enough.

It wasn’t that he never recognized people. He did. He’d say, “Good job.”

And then came the rest of the sentence.

“Good job, but don’t get cocky. We still have a lot of work to do.”

There was always another mountain waiting before anyone had a chance to enjoy reaching the top of the one they had just climbed.

He thought he was keeping his team hungry, but they were getting tired.

The Leadership Lens

I’ve worked with plenty of leaders who are a little stingy with recognition.

Sometimes it comes from their own high standards. Sometimes they simply don’t think people should need to be recognized for doing the job they’re being paid to do. And sometimes they’re so focused on what still needs attention that they barely register what has already gone right.

But recognition isn’t fluff, and it isn’t about handing out gold stars for showing up.

It’s feedback that tells people what’s working, what they should keep doing, and that someone actually noticed the effort behind the result. That matters more than most leaders give it credit for.

Research from Gallup and Workhuman found that among employees who receive feedback from their manager at least weekly, 61% are engaged when they also receive recognition at least weekly. When recognition is less frequent, engagement drops to 38%.

You can give people plenty of feedback. You can coach them, challenge them, point out what needs to improve and keep raising the bar. But if all they hear is what comes next, eventually the message becomes: Nothing I do is ever enough.

My client hadn’t realized that recognition was sitting right there in his leadership toolbox. It could reinforce the behaviors that were producing the results he wanted while making the people producing them feel that their work actually mattered.

Once he saw what was happening, he worked on it. And to his credit, he got much better at it.

But knowing that recognition matters is only half the equation. We also need to know how to give it.

Untangling Tips

Go beyond “Great job”

Start by going beyond "great job." Phrases like "great presentation" or "nice work with that client" are positive, and much better than silence, but they don't tell someone what exactly they did well.

If you want a behavior repeated, give people enough information to know what to repeat, and then show them the impact — what happened because of what they did. "You did a great job with that difficult client" lands very differently from something like: "When the client got frustrated, you slowed the conversation down, listened to what was really bothering them, and walked them through the options. That kept things from escalating and helped the client feel we were genuinely trying to solve the problem." Now they know what they did and why it mattered.

Try CARE

In my book, I use a simple framework for recognition feedback:

Context & Action: What specifically did the person do?

Result: What happened because of it?

Effect: What difference did it ultimately make?

That last piece is where recognition gets its weight. It connects someone’s effort to something larger than the task itself.

There will always be another target, another deadline, another quarter. Good leaders keep people moving toward those things. But if we're always pointing to what's next, we can miss the people who got us this far.

A Closing Reflection

My client learned he didn't have to lower his standards or stop pushing for results — he just needed to give his team a chance to feel the win before moving the goalpost again.

Good leaders keep people moving toward those things.

Who on your team has done something lately that deserves more than a “good job”? Tell them. Better yet, tell them why it mattered. 

From the Untangling Communication series — reflections drawn from my work with leaders and the ideas explored in my book, Untangling Communication: How Leaders Can Strengthen Communication, Resolve Conflict, and Build High-Performing Teams.