“Now the Whole Company Knows” — When Public Praise Does Not Feel Good

A company all-hands. Samuel enthusiastically singles Tomasz out in front of everyone.

— Big round of applause for Tomasz! He saved this project yesterday!

Tomasz, sitting next to Amira and Maja, visibly tenses up. After the meeting he speaks to Samuel.

— Next time, could you not put me in the spotlight like that? We did it together.

Samuel wanted to give Tomasz public recognition. Tomasz also received the public burden of looking like the sole author of a shared success.

What really happened

Samuel praises Tomasz publicly because he wants to help him. He believes visible success creates recognition, builds standing, and may support Tomasz’s career. Tomasz is not rejecting the praise itself. The problem is the form. The project was a team effort, yet the spotlight falls on him alone, so he gains status while also risking that colleagues feel overlooked or that he appears to have taken ownership of a shared success. Praise can therefore create a benefit and a relational cost at the same time. Samuel’s warm, public style of recognition fits him; a quieter, more matter-of-fact Tomasz may prefer private appreciation and more precise public credit. These are character preferences, not universal rules.

What the research says

Public recognition affects more than the person being recognized because it activates social comparison. Research has shown that successful people can worry about the social costs of standing out and may sometimes prefer recognition that is less public — social comparison costs (Exline et al., 2004). That does not mean public awards are bad. Other work, including a field experiment in production teams, found that formal recognition of one individual could also improve performance among other team members (Li et al., 2016). More recent research on public peer-recognition systems suggests that rankings and public streams of praise can increase comparison and, under some conditions, make people feel less appreciated (Black, Cecchini, & Newman, 2024). The conclusion is not “praise privately.” It is that the impact of praise depends on content, audience, setting, and how credit is allocated.

How to handle it

For team work, separate three things: private appreciation of an individual, public visibility of a contribution, and recognition of the team result. Samuel might tell Tomasz privately, “Your analysis made a real difference,” and say publicly, “The team delivered this — Tomasz built the analysis, Amira handled the design, and Maja shaped the content.” If he does not know whether someone likes public recognition, he can simply ask. The general rule is: good praise should be true about the result, accurate about who deserves the credit, and delivered in a form that does not create an unnecessary relational cost.

How Empatyzer and Em can help

Empatyzer can help Samuel stop assuming that the best reward looks the same for everyone. Personality and motivator diagnostics may show that one person values status and visibility more strongly, while another prefers private appreciation, calm recognition, or explicit emphasis on the whole team’s contribution. Before an all-hands, Em can suggest: “Tomasz may receive brief recognition better if you do not cast him as the sole hero — if you’re not sure, ask.” That is not an argument against praise; it is a way to fit the form better. The team view can also show leaders that a culture of “everyone on stage” can motivate some people and exhaust others. Micro-lessons reinforce the idea that recognition works when the recipient actually experiences it as recognition.