You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if praise is a good thing, lots of praise must be an even better thing. Strangely, though, that really isn’t the case. It’s unexpectedly damaging to give people disproportionate praise. This is at its worst with children whose parents are always telling them how clever they are and how fantastic everything they do is. That’s because parents are a huge influence and the child is still developing. But it’s still true when it comes to praising your friends or your team or your family.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t give praise often. Give it as often as it’s due. Just don’t give too much of it. For a start, praising someone beyond what’s due can be patronising, and can also make it sound insincere. Saying ‘That’s brilliant, well done! You’re amazing!’ to someone just because they picked up some milk on the way home simply isn’t convincing. I know that some of us are more given to this kind of language than others, and it might be that your friends and colleagues all know that a ‘Thank you so much! You’re fabulous!’ from you is the equivalent of a ‘Cool, cheers’ from someone else. Up to a point this is fine, we’re all different. Although it does make me think of one person I know whose effusiveness dial is permanently set to full, and other people do find him extremely patronising.

The bigger problem with over-praising (and this is where parents can unwittingly create huge problems) is that it sets people up to fail, and that makes them anxious. Deep down, they know perfectly well that they’re not that good or special, so they have to put themselves under increasing pressure to live up to your praise. Besides, if you give someone glowing praise for every little achievement, you’ve devalued the currency. You’ve left yourself nowhere to go when they do something that really is exceptional.

My wife once organised a big family event. She’s good at that sort of thing. Very good. Lots of people told her afterwards how amazingly she’d done and how fantastically smoothly everything went and well done for pulling it all together. She felt slightly frustrated by this, although everyone’s intention was to make her feel good about herself. We talked about it and she told me, ‘It’s as though they thought it was a real achievement, but I thought it was easy. If they think that’s a stretch for me, I’m disappointed by their low opinion of me.’ What she wanted to hear was: ‘That was superbly organised, which is no more than I’d expect from you.’ Now that would have felt like real praise.

Another option is to thank people instead of praising them. My wife was completely happy with the people who thanked her for doing such a good job. After all, she wanted recognition, and this gave it to her without being patronising.

Once you think all this through, you should be able to keep your praise in proportion. If in doubt, however – or even if not in doubt – the trick is to spend less time making general statements such as ‘Well done!’ and more time picking out specific details and discussing them, as per the last Rule. That will be really rewarding for them without you having to make a decision about how high to set the praise-o-meter.