Michael P. Maslanka, assistant professor of law, UNT Dallas College of Law.

Praise: to give or not to give? That's the daily question faced by many of us, isn't it? Whether lawyer to client, manager to employee, or teacher to student. And, much rests on a seemingly minor decision: a cutting remark imparts damage, a thoughtful one inspires hope, and indifferent or non-existent ones impose isolation. To paraphrase a famous Texas football coach, "I do not pass a lot because only three things can happen and two of them are bad." Many take this mindset as an excuse    not to praise (or to say anything, resulting in the default of bland comments and insipid interaction.) They should not.

No.1: When in doubt, praise

While many of us are clueless about football, almost all of us know about humanity.  It's in the job description. But we hold back rather than letting loose. Yes, praise given could not be deserved, in which case you might look foolish. Or if the praise given is public and it is wrong, we might be haunted by the error. We then default to what is easier and safer, which is to be critical, not complimentary. Don't. The potential return on investment (R.O.I.) from a thoughtful, considered and well timed piece of praise far outweigh these trivial concerns. Play the odds.

No. 2: Be authentic, be sincere, be effective

"Good job" or "thanks" or "well done" are conclusions, not praise. Like a glazed doughnut (my ATF) they are tasty treats with zero nutritional value. Michael Gates Gill learned this lesson, along with many others, when he was fired from his high flying advertising job in New York City (think "Madmen") and ended up working behind the counter at a Starbucks. In "How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live like Everyone Else," he writes that he thought these words were words of praise. Wrong. His perspective changed radically when he was on the other side of the counter, making the complicated concoctions instead of ordering them, entertaining the customer instead of being the one entertained. His advice now: appreciate the details and the skills (yes, the art) that go into any job from bagging groceries to making coffee to digging ditches. Ask the admin how he learned to create the chart you pop so easily into a brief or to calm down an upset and angry client (not that I've ever had one). Praise is really about recognition, isn't it? No. 3 turns to that concept.

No 3:  Praise is about recognition

The concept of recognition has been with us since ancient Greece and Rome. The original Latin for the word is "cognoscere" meaning "to know." This word, in turn, is derived from the ancient Greek, "gnosis," meaning "knowledge" or "learning." We learn all this in "Nine Lies about Work," from Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, who write: "Thus, to recognize a person, in essence, means to come to know him anew. Recognition, in its deepest sense, is to spot something valuable in a person and then to ask her about it, in an ongoing effort to learn who she is when she is at her best." Ancient wisdom is gold.

No. 4: The How's of Recognizing

Buckingham and Goodall identify a pioneer in the field of recognizing employees, a far sighted leader who took his organization to a new and luminous level. That leader's name? Coach Tom Landry. Yes, Mr. Taciturn, pacing the sidelines in his sports coat and hat. Landry seldom criticized a player; yes, if something was badly off, he would fix it but as the authors point out "Excellence is not the opposite of failure: we can never create excellent performance by only fixing poor ones. Mistake fixing is just a tool to prevent failure." Instead, Landry would view thousands of hours of game video of each player, isolating the moments of peak performance. He then showed the player and asked: how did you prepare for that moment? What were you thinking? How can we replicate it? He never showed a player's mistakes to him on video. Research bears out this approach: three to five instances of appreciate feedback to every moment of non-appreciative feedback sets an optimal pace to achieve excellence (or no negative feedback at all). In short, real learning (as I have learned as a law professor and understood as a trial lawyer) is generated from within a person, it's never generated from outside a person.

No. 5:  The When's of Recognizing

The when of recognizing matters as well. Time them. I was second chairing a trial. I successfully objected to an opposing counsel's question of our witness. A failed objection would have let in damaging testimony. What, I thought, no praise from the first chair? He did later at a break with a curt "perfect timing on the objection" and then on to other matters. Later, at dinner, we went through a Landry type analysis. Trial is like war, you can't pause to congratulate yourself or others. Fast forward decades, I am second chairing a colleague's first chair trial experience. Her cross of the plaintiff is going really badly. The judge calls a break, my colleague and I have a brisk conversation in a side room. She goes back in and does great. Later, I tell her: "that cross won the trial" and it turns out that it did. A teacher can open the door but it is, as Landry understood, the students who must walk through.

No. 6:  A Trifecta of Recognition Concerns

Three warnings.  Not all managers will give you praise let alone step it up to the level of recognition. You must live with this and know in your heart of heart that the work you do is fulfilling to you and worthwhile to others. At the other end of the continuum, ignore excessive praise given to you because it makes you complacent and refrain from giving excessive praise to others because it makes them into prima donnas. In the latter, the employee comes to expect praise, as an entitlement, seeking it when they do the mere basics. In which case you will end up resorting to the line used by Bill Belichick, coach of the Patriots, to spoiled players "just do your job." And a third scenario: a person (perhaps you or me) is working hard, think recognition is called for, but it is not forthcoming. As a T shirt I saw being worn by the QB for the Baltimore Raven proclaims: "No one cares/Work harder." And sometimes that works and praise/recognition is forthcoming.

Every day, for each and every one of us, the universe performs a miracle: We are given the chance to do right today though we flubbed the chance the day before. For the universe, there is no Super Bowl, no World Series and no Stanley Cup. For the universe, there is never a   season finale. So today: praise, compliment, and recognize. Help change the trajectory of a life. Have a fulfilling holiday.

Michael P. Maslanka is an assistant professor of law at UNT Dallas College of Law. His e-mail is [email protected].