The Leadership Ratio That Matters Most

The most important ratio for a leader is not debt to equity, supervisor to employee, efficiency to cost, or price to earnings. The ratio that matters most for leadership success is the proportion of praise to criticism. 

Leadership at its core is about making people and situations better. To help a colleague improve, leaders can emphasize what they believe the team member should amplify or do more of, or what they should do differently. Getting a colleague to do more of what they already do is all about positive reinforcement, such as praise, encouragement, compliment, and applause. To encourage others to do things differently, leaders turn to feedback, criticism, advice, and suggestion. 

The ratio of praise to criticism most defines leadership success in making others better. This is true independent of the performance or the quality of the advice or feedback offered. People respond best and make changes when the praise and encouragement are in the correct proportion to the recommendation and feedback they receive. 

Too much criticism and not enough encouragement, and people feel overwhelmed by the expectations and disappointment leaders project. Too much praise and not enough feedback, and people feel self-satisfied and lose their desire to grow. 

Study the best leaders in virtually any arena of leadership and you will find a ratio of praise to criticism of roughly 5-to-1. Even the most demanding coaches, instructors, trainers, tutors, and supervisors, who are those who also wildly succeed at developing people, find their way to this powerful ratio. 

While they may strike a more even balance of positive-to-negative feedback in a given lesson or review, the general composite of their interaction with team members, family members, and colleagues is to pile up more encouragement than suggestion. It is this ratio that gives colleagues the confidence and support they need to improve. As marriage guru John Gottman has shown, this ratio even predicts satisfaction between intimate partners. 

Take a hard look at your ratio of praise to criticism. What do you project as a leader to others? Are you too heavy with criticism or too light with praise? Strive to find this critical ratio in everything you say to others. Whatever you do the most often reflects the ratio of who you are as a leader. Five parts encouragement to one part advice gets the job done best.