Why do I only praise my team as a group, never one by one?
You tell yourself the team did well. This is true and also a kind of hiding. A group cannot feel seen. Only a person can feel seen, and only when you name what they, specifically, did. You are not short on things to notice. You are short on the two minutes it takes to walk over, or the ten seconds it takes to write one sentence, and say it to one face. Public praise is easy because it asks nothing of you but a few kind words tossed at everyone. Private praise asks you to pay attention to one person long enough to know what they actually did. This is not a personality flaw. It is a choice you keep making, meeting after meeting. You can make a different one today.
Because group praise costs you nothing and private praise costs you attention. You must name what one person did, specifically, to their face. That is the whole practice. Stop hiding behind the word 'team' when you mean 'you, on Tuesday, handled that well.'
What changes unlock by starting
- You can name, without checking notes, one specific thing each team member did well this month.
- You give at least one private, specific piece of recognition per week, to a named person, about a named action.
- You stop reaching for group praise as your default and notice when you're using it to avoid the harder, private kind.
- People on your team begin to trust that you actually see their individual work, not just the group's output.