Praise Inflation

One of the topics that has made the rounds of The Wharton School where I sometimes sit…and in academia in general…is grade inflation.  This is the situation best defined by Garrison Keillor of A Prairie Home Companion when he regularly mentions how “all the children are above average”.

 Garrison Keillor

Astute readers that you are, you no doubt have immediately noticed the mathematical problem with this comment.  Yet in many places this idea has taken hold.  Many have forgotten the bell curve.  We have debased the concept of excellence and turned normal into superior…thus losing true exceptional.

At Wharton the problem was so bad that they now enforce grading on a curve.  Absent the earth shattering event of all receiving a perfect score on the final exam, the average grade will be…average. 

I notice this excellence inflation quite a bit.  How many “best team ever” can there be? 

Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times is one of my favorite writers.  Yesterday her column reminded me of this issue and how it has reached into the minds of corporate executives.  In “You might be a total genius, but I wouldn’t tell you so” she writes on…praise inflation in the business world.

  Lucy Kellaway

I highly recommend you read her humorous column which is probably the best column ever written on the topic.  But there is a serious side to this issue: if we teach people that average gets praised as excellent we kill the incentive to achieve true superior performance.  We teach complacency.

And then there is the drug effect.  In Kellaway’s own words, “Congratulation inflation not only damages language, it is bad for us psychologically.  Praise is a Class A drug and we crave more and get upset when we don’t get any in sufficiently pure form.”

Are you drugging your people into false exceptionalism?  And killing the drive for high achievement in the process.

Of course, since all my readers are superb leaders of superior intelligence and knowledge, I suppose none of you have to worry about this issue.