When managing a group of people there are times when you should give praise and times when you must hand out criticism. How and where is balance to be struck?

In course of your life as a manager you must do both. It is most unlikely that you have a team of constant peak performers or on other hand a team of complete duffers. Since chances are that your staff will fall somewhere in between these two extremes you will at times have to criticise and at other times praise.

Your object should always be to get best out of your staff and you need to bear this in mind. You don’t criticise bad work in order to feel better yourself. You do it to ensure a better performance next time. You give praise not only to show appreciation, but also to encourage even greater efforts and achievements in future.

Some people need constant encouragement. They lack confidence in themselves and their abilities. They need constantly boosting and building up. When dealing with them always look for justified praise that you can give and be gentle in your criticism.

Others are too confident. They are so sure of themselves that they don’t listen to instructions properly and often end up doing wrong thing. These need restraining and redirecting onto right path. Criticism may just wash off them like water off a duck’s back, but don’t let that stop you giving it when it is needed.

Then you have careless, lazy, and totally inept. With them you need to apply all your skills to deploy praise and criticism, carrot and stick, as and when needed. By a combination of praise, criticism, encouragement, and training many of these people can be turned around to do a good job.

So modify your own actions according to circumstances. Adjust balance of praise and criticism to suit personality of person at receiving end.

When praising, be careful about praising an individual in front of all his colleagues. At times this can be absolutely correct thing to do. After all in business world it is not enough to be good – you have to be seen to be good. There is always a place for public recognition of excellent performance. But beware of constantly singling out one team member for public praise whilst neglecting all others, even if this is deserved. It can lead to resentment and accusations of favouritism. It can result in team members refusing to cooperate with ‘star performer’, and eventually a drop off in performance of whole team.

Have a favorite charity or non-profit community cause to which you contribute time and resources? Chances are your company will be interested in supporting it, too.

According to Giving USA 2004 study released by Giving USA Foundation in summer of 2004, American individuals, estates, foundations, and corporations gave an estimated $240.72 billion to charitable causes in 2003. In US, during five years spanning 1998-2002, corporations contributed $55 billion, (5%) of total $1135 billion. Corporations also gave through foundations, which contributed an addition $121 billion (11%) of five year total.

People tend to be aware that there are financial benefits to corporations for donating to charities and that corporations want to be good, forward-acting citizens. What people—and many organizations—don’t realize yet is that there are still other motivators and benefits for corporate giving. The fact is, increasing numbers corporations are extending benefits of their corporate giving activities by leveraging them as team building programs and employee support initiatives that increase even further benefits these activities bring to company itself.

For example, according to Marjorie Polycarpe in a December 2003 article Re-Examining Workplace Giving Programs (http://www.onphilanthropy.com/bestpract/bp2003-12-31.html), she quotes manager of employee giving campaign at American Express, Angela Woods, who discussed how her company involved employees early on in their planning process for corporate giving activities to help guide their choices for charities. Getting employee input helped American Express identify causes and charities that were most important to their employees.

This approach helps organizations communicate to their employees that they respect and support their employees’ donations of personal time and resources. It also helps companies demonstrate that support, by forming foundations, by contributing cash, in-kind gifts, and/or matching programs, and by encouraging other employees to get involved in particular causes and facilitating their involvement.

When companies form foundations, they establish organizations focused on giving to a particular cause or which is authorized to contribute to approved organizations.

Companies can also contribute cash gifts directly to charitable organizations.

When companies donate non-cash resources, these are called in-kind gifts. In-kind gifts can be products that company produces, moved out of its inventory, or they can be can be other items that charity can use, such as furniture, computers, food, etc. When companies contribute services for which they normally charge clients, for example, marketing or legal services, these in-kind gifts are called pro bono donations.