Let’s stop pretending: the way we praise people — kids, employees, even ourselves — is broken. We hand out empty compliments, plastic trophies, “good job” stickers for just showing up, and then wonder why adults crumble under pressure, avoid real challenge, and drown in impostor syndrome.
It’s not just about kids and their little soccer medals. It’s about how a whole damn culture has been trained to value comfort over growth, applause over authenticity, and image over substance. And it starts with how we talk about effort vs ability.
The Research: What We Reward Matters
Carol Dweck’s work on growth vs fixed mindset has been around for decades, but the nuance often gets ignored. Research is clear:
Praising ability (“you’re smart / talented”) → breeds fragility. When people fail, they see it as proof they’re not good enough. Kids praised for being “smart” often avoid challenges to protect that identity. Adults do the same.
Praising effort — when done right — builds resilience. Studies show that process-focused effort praise (“you worked hard, you tried new strategies”) helps kids and adults persist after failure (Xing et al., 2018).
But here’s the kicker: not all effort praise works. When you make effort an identity — “you’re a hard worker” — it can backfire. In adults, person-focused effort praise actually led to lower enjoyment and stronger fixed-ability beliefs after failure (Reavis et al., 2018).
Translation? Praise the process, not the person. Don’t hand out meaningless gold stars. Recognize how people tackled the problem, not just that they showed up or “tried.”
The Participation Trophy Problem
Let’s get savage here. Participation awards are poison. They’re not harmless trinkets. They set expectations that praise = existence.
- Inflated entitlement: Kids raised on “everyone’s a winner” grow into adults who expect raises for attendance, applause for mediocrity, and likes for selfies.
- Fragile confidence: When real failure hits — a lost job, a rough divorce, a failed exam — these adults fall apart. Why? Because they’ve never had to metabolize failure before.
- Hollow growth mindset: Companies and schools brag about “encouraging effort,” but what they really do is avoid hard feedback. They pat people on the back for minimal grind while ignoring whether they improved. That’s counterfeit growth mindset — words without steel.
Parents hand their kids trophies for showing up. Bosses throw pizza parties for doing the bare minimum. Teachers say “good effort” when the work is trash. What we’re building is not resilience — it’s fragility wrapped in bubble wrap.
Adults Are Still Stuck in False Praise
Think about the last time you got feedback at work. Was it real? Or was it some watered-down garbage like, “Great effort, team” after a failed project? That’s participation praise in adult clothes. It doesn’t build skill. It doesn’t build trust. It makes people distrust feedback altogether.
The result? Adults who can’t handle criticism. Adults who run from challenge. Adults who break under the weight of impostor syndrome because they were told all their lives they were “special” but never taught how to take a punch and get back up.
As psychologist Amemiya & Wang (2018) put it: in adolescence, even effort praise can backfire when it’s vague or patronizing. Kids hear “you tried hard” as code for “you’re not good at this.” Adults hear the same damn thing at work. Empty praise breeds cynicism, not growth.
The Way Out: Recalibrate Your Mindset
Here’s the brutal truth: life doesn’t hand out medals for participation. It hands out bruises, bills, betrayals, and setbacks. And the only way to thrive is to rebuild a mindset that prizes honest effort, strategic growth, and real results.
For Parents
Stop telling your kids they’re geniuses. Stop giving them trophies for just showing up. Praise their grind, their creativity, their willingness to fail and try again. Let them lose. Let them cry. Teach them to rise.
For Professionals
Quit being the boss who hands out fluff feedback. Your team doesn’t need another “great job.” They need clarity: “Here’s where you adapted well, here’s where you need to improve, here’s the next step.” Praise process and improvement, not just effort for effort’s sake.
For Yourself
Catch your own self-talk. When you fail, do you say, “I’m just not good at this”? Or do you say, “What did I learn, what will I try differently?” Growth mindset is not about being positive — it’s about being ruthless in your honesty, and committed to adaptation.
Reflection & Challenge
Reflection Questions:
- What kind of praise shaped you growing up — ability, effort, or participation? How has that affected the way you handle failure today?
- Where in your life right now are you still chasing participation praise — showing up, posting, seeking validation without true growth?
- If you’re a parent, leader, or coach — what kind of praise do you hand out? Does it actually build resilience, or just keep people comfortable?
Challenge:
- This week, strip out all hollow praise. No “good jobs” without specifics. No “great effort” unless you can name exactly what effort mattered.
- Let failure stand. Let your kids, your team, yourself actually taste it — and then dissect it for lessons.
- Pick one area you’ve been avoiding because you’re afraid to “look bad.” Enter it. Fail. Then rebuild with process-focused feedback.
The world doesn’t need more adults chasing validation and medals for mediocrity. It needs men and women who can bleed, fail, adapt, and rise. Ability is not destiny. Effort is not enough. The process — the grind, the strategy, the willingness to fail forward — that’s where greatness is forged.
So stop clapping for participation. Start clapping for growth.
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Ben Dodge, J.D.
Adventurer, Author, Entrepreneur, Extreme Endurance Athlete, Lawyer