Dave DeRoos of CityGate Associates is a mentor of mine that has graciously offered advice on character development in addition to providing me with a sounding board for questions about raising a responsible daughter. He introduced me to an organization called Character Training Institute, Character First!® that provides Character training. Dave is great at giving praise and rewards employees and associates for quality character behavior using the Three Steps of Praise as Character First suggests:
- Give the definition of the character quality (there are 49 qualities according to Character First!).
- Offer a specific illustration of how it was demonstrated.
- Explain the benefit to you and/or others.
Here’s an example using the character quality of dependability:
Dependability is sacrifice and consistent performance. These past weeks you’ve met every milestone. Thanks to your dependability our client feels that we’re reliable and will give us more work and I trust you to deliver as promised.
It takes practice and I always work on integrating this high level, high character praise into my interactions with others.
