The Workplace Coach

The Gallup Organization, a global analytics and advisory company, conducts extensive research on employee engagement and organizational performance. Their findings, based on over 10 million interviews with managers and employees, highlight
12 Elements of Great Managing for engagement and high performance. Consistently, employees worldwide have conveyed a clear message:

“If you do these things for us, we will do what the company needs of us”.

This week we look at the fourth element of being a great manager, “Recognition and Praise”. According to Gallup’s analysis only one in three workers ‘strongly agree that they received recognition or praise for doing good work in the past seven days’. It is not uncommon for employees to feel that their best efforts are routinely ignored, and employees who do not feel adequately recognized for their efforts are twice as likely to say they’ll quit in the next year.

It can be easy for us to critique someone’s work or provide what we like to call ‘constructive feedback’. However just because it is easy doesn’t mean that we do it well. Often, that constructive feedback will not be received as the motivational, inspirational and educative message that it was intended to be. Well intentioned feedback delivered poorly will hurt the relationship rather than build it. Essentially, the opposite of what you were trying to do.

Have you ever noticed how people light up when you say something nice to them? 

Take for example these two ways to end a call with someone that you have just met for the first time.  You might say something like “Okay well thank you, I appreciate your time today and I look forward to our next meeting”.  This would have been perfectly acceptable way to end the call, right?  A nice polite, appreciative and positive closing statement.   

Here is another way you could do it… “So I’m conscious of the time and I appreciate that you are very busy… can I just say that it was an absolute pleasure meeting you today?  I really enjoyed our discussion and I’m looking forward to our next one”.

Which one is going to really land with the other person?  

In the words of Maya Angelou “people may soon forget the words you say… but they never forget how your words make them feel.”  So how can we use this same principle when giving recognition and praise to our people?

The research clearly shows that informal recognition has the greatest impact, and that the most meaningful and memorable recognition comes from the immediate manager. Also, employees place regular recognition and acknowledgement above any kind of monetary reward.  So as managers, instead of only looking for reasons to correct our people, we would be better off actively looking for any opportunity to praise them for what they are doing well.

Here are 5 principles to remember when giving recognition and praise:

1. Recognise and praise the behaviours, results and attitudes that you want to see more of.
2. Praise in public, correct/coach in private.
3. It has to be 100% genuine and authentic.
4. It needs to be in the moment, not day, weeks or months after the event.
5. Share the love across the whole team, not just your start performer.

Praising people might not be your natural style.  It may feel awkward or uncomfortable at first, but you should stay with it and practice every day.  It doesn’t have to be a big grand gesture, in fact it’s the small off-the-cuff comments that often have the biggest impact.  The more often you get in the habit of finding reasons to praise, compliment or recognise your people, the fewer reasons they will give you to correct them.  It’s funny how that works.

For further information on this topic, or any other related to people management, feel free to reach out.  We’re here to help. 

The Workplace Coach.