All mothers belong to the same religion and ethnic group.

I say this because no matter whom I’m kidding with, guilt is a particular specialty of their religion or ethnic group and mothers are the designated delivery system.

“You think your mother made you feel guilty?” they might say. “Let me tell you about my mother. Now there’s a woman who could make you feel guilty!”

Jewish, Lutheran, Irish, African … it doesn’t matter. The light bulb joke punch line works no matter which group you insert (“None … I’ll just sit here in the dark and I’ll be fine!”). And yes, Mom stood up with the best of ’em, and I’d give anything for one more dose of guilt from her.

We’re continuing our discussion of the five great marketing motivators — fear, greed, guilt, need for approval, and exclusivity — and how you can use them to motivate your staff. Fear, we found, can be very useful and effective, but only in a narrow range of circumstances.

Greed also has its uses. Its range is similarly narrow — money is a better communicator than motivator. Putting your money where your mouth is adds credibility to your message. Using it as an incentive is risky (check out last week’s column for the specifics). A final thought about using financial incentives: Employees know you’re basically giving them a bribe to perform. A dangerous message.

Guilt is a favorite maternal motivator, and I don’t want to sell it short. As a way of teaching morality to children, it has few peers.

As an employee motivator, though, it stinks. Adults have a fairly uniform response to induced guilt: They become resentful. Don’t use it.

So how about the need for approval? It’s one of the most powerful tools you have. Here’s how to do it right:

• Praise publicly. Let the team know when someone does something praiseworthy. That magnifies the good feeling and helps build the team.
• Be specific: Focus on the one or two best aspects of the employee’s performance. For example, if the result was merely adequate but the employee overcame significant obstacles, praise the overcoming. Vague generalizations set off BS (bushwah) detectors. Specificity demonstrates sincerity, and insincere praise is poison.
• Grade hard: If you’re an “easy grader” your praise becomes meaningless. If you’re excessively demanding, though, employees will give up. That’s one reason to be specific: You can praise an aspect of the work without praising everything about it.
• Spread it around: For team efforts, take the time to focus on the best part of each team member’s contribution. Don’t turn it into an Oscar acceptance speech: When a big team succeeds, emphasize it being a team effort, and emphasize a few key individuals.
• Critique in private: It’s perfectly valid to praise someone’s performance publicly and hold a private debriefing where you reinforce what was done well and still analyze how he or she can improve further.
• Don’t play favorites: No, not everyone has to get “their turn” … but be very careful. When everyone else gets a pat on the back but me, I’ll start feeling resentful. If you have an employee who never deserves public praise, you should be doing a lot of coaching on how to improve. Silence, in this case, is awful.

An earlier column established leadership as a matter of who looks to whom for approval. (See “Becoming a good leader might mean teaching an old dog new tricks,” InfoWorld, Nov. 11, 1996, page 72). Praising employees has a fringe benefit beyond motivation: It gives employees the mental habit of looking to you for praise — it establishes your leadership.

Praising peers isn’t a bad idea either, and for exactly the same reasons.