I've always been a believer in positive comments being a better motivator than negative feedback. I was on a project for about a year where the sponsor provided almost no feedback unless something bad was happening. Unfortunately, terrible things happened on this project almost weekly. The worst was the architect and the developer not communicating and getting along. They were both passive aggressive, so eventually it resulted in a big blowout. I had to mitigate the issues, facilitate their meetings, report the events to management at all levels and finally kick one of them off the project.
There were other problems with people leaving the project ( approximately 100% turnover on the project twice) and of course not delivering much on schedule. So, needless to say, I was stressed out and felt like I could not get out the hole I had dug our team into. So... I quit the project / got kicked off.... another story.
I'm now on 2 projects where the sponsor actually likes me and looks to me for input and direction. I'm noticing my response to positive feedback is I want to live up to this expectation. This is a much better motivator than the negative feedback. It's great to get good feedback, but I'm actually most excited that my year of hell turned out to be a learning experience. It took me a few months to appreciate this, but I'm glad I'm starting to.
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