How to praise your devs

There was a quite controversial but very fruitful and inspiring conversation about "How to praise your devs" from the viewpoint of a Scrum Master. Here are the few notes I took for myself:

• Sentences like "Thank you that you brought up that topic, it really helped the team move forward" basically are another way of saying "You did well"
• "You did well" sentences are a judgement of the work the developer does and are almost always seen violent. Least of all is a Scrum Master the one who is to judge the work of the developer
• When appreciating someone tell them how you feel (NVC) instead of judging the work they did
• Try to use appreciation instead of praise
• Base your feedback on your relationship with the other person
• Align your appreciation with the purpose of the team. If the team does not have a purpose or doesn't know its purpose give the team exactly that
• Developers do communicate and they communicate a lot. But they do it in their own ways and other people are sometimes seen as intruders

Selective Attention

This test for selective attention is quite famous. If you haven't seen it yet, watch it in fullscreen:

I'll get back to this in a few days.