When you are in a leadership position the most powerful interpersonal tool available to you, is positive reinforcement.
Regrettably, the whole concept of positive reinforcement has not received the attention it deserves from all the written literature that is published every year on leadership.
People in leadership positions are constantly reminded of the importance of profitability, reduction of waste, customer service and increase productivity.
The link between positive reinforcement and profitability has never been emphasized strongly enough.
The result is that many people in leadership positions are failing to use the most important resource at their fingertips to increase the bottom line.
The five factors are:-

1. Positive reinforcement should be tailor-made to the individual rather than applied as a blanket approach which creates unhappy people.
   There is no "one size fits all" approach that works because leaders are dealing with so many different people.
   
2. As a tool, it should be applied only when it has been earned.
   There is no point providing benefits across the workforce if only some of them deserve it.
   Those that don't deserve it will gradually reduce the effort that they put into their work because they are being reinforced for low performance.
   One of the worst things the business do is to give a percentage by increases regardless of performance.
   This means that poor performance is rewarded and it also fails to reinforce the top performers because they feel that a universal pay rise does not recognize their efforts.
   
3. The application of positive reinforcement is not an event, it is a process.
   People will work at their very best, but they require positive, relevant reinforcement daily.
   To achieve maximum results it must be built into the work relationships and the work processes by the leader.
   
4. The timing is critical.
   The closer you can make the reinforcement to the behavior that you are reinforcing, the more likely the behavior is to be repeated.
   The bigger the time gap, the less chance of this happening.
   The three conditions under which it works best are, it must be positive, it must be immediate and it must be certain.
   
5. Without doubt, personal relationships produce the best reinforcement.
   This means that leadership behavior is the key to influencing the performance of followers.
   Every time there is an interaction between the leader and a follower, the link between their work and the overall objective can be of emphasized so they feel they are contributing to a greater goal.
   This gives them a sense of belonging and a sense of ownership of what they're doing.
   

This is an extremely low-cost strategy but the return on the investment is very high and everybody who holds a leadership position should be aware of the power of positive reinforcement.