Sometimes senior leaders think all they have to do is tell their leaders to go out there and say, “thank you,” more often, and that’s all you have to do to improve recognition.
The key to learning to give real recognition the right way wherever you work is to not rely on telling people to give more recognition.
Like writing fiction stories, show, don’t tell, is probably the best advice for increasing recognition moments by managers.
How can you educate everyone to do more showing of recognition giving versus telling them?
It’s easy to talk yourself out of recognizing people. Surely someone else will acknowledge them for the great things they do. Why do I have to say something?
Knowing the right things to say is critical for giving authentic, meaningful recognition. Expressions like, “I want you to know how much I appreciate your help today with finalizing ABC’s incentive program launch. You saved the day for us, Kim, by getting everything ready to go,” makesuse of all the right words. Check out the Top 10 Powerful Words below for crafting amazing recognition and tune up how you give recognition.
There are a lot of things the current pandemic has affected with how we use our recognition and reward programs.
Many organizations affected by the pandemic economically have reduced revenue because of shutting down production, a lack of sales, and the impact on clients affording goods and services.
The bottom-line outcome is companies cannot always afford to pay for rewards as they normally would.
People have asked for guidance on how to communicate to their teams the need to prioritize no or low-cost recognition options versus use of rewards in view of the financial reality. They also don’t want to give a negative viewpoint.
Leaders at the top of your organization should show the leadership competency skills that they expect from their direct reports. Leaders should help others to lead.
But that isn’t always the case.
Your goal for each organizational leader is to get them to inspire and value the contributions of one additional person every day.
How do you teach your leaders to be amazing recognizers of your staff?
Holding people accountable for giving effective and meaningful recognition brings together something good—recognition—with something uncomfortable, like, accountability.
It takes courage to deal with the conflict of holding people accountable. And courage is exactly what good management requires.
Follow these accountability steps to move the dial on recognition giving.
People seem to want things smaller these days. We went from desktops to laptops. We moved from tablets to smartphones. Now we want smart wearables.
The same goes for education and learning. People moved from bite-size things you eat to bite-size things you view or read. We now apply this principle of “short and sweet,” to online learning and other resources for teaching people how to give meaningful and effective recognition.
This became clear to me when one of our clients wanted short and sweet content. Their communications team was engaged in providing managerial resources for learning and applying recognition practices and how to effectively use their online recognition programs.
I want to show you some short and sweet factors that were used to support this client’s initiatives along with some additional ideas.
Each of us has varying levels of confidence and proficiency with being able to recognize those you live with and especially those you work with.
For some, they had upbeat and positive parents, teachers, and coaches, who inspired them to grow and be successful. They regularly received words of encouragement, appropriate praise, and recognition for their accomplishments.
Others had life situations where they always needed to overcome negativity, received put downs at school, and a lack of sincere concern for the welfare of others. Even where they worked had toxic bosses and a lack of appreciation for their contributions.
No matter the route you took in life, or the role models you had in your life, they now expect you appropriately praise and recognize your employees.
But we all have different abilities and attitudes around giving meaningful and effective recognition.
One of the four criteria for the different
levels on our Recognition Maturity Model is the variable of consistency.
If there is one thing, I hear all the time
from recognition managers and program administrators; they hope to have more
people consistently recognizing employees. And they also speak of wanting
greater consistency of recognition across all areas of the organization, be
that by departments or geographic locations.
Consistency is so important that is even
one criterion on our Recognition Maturity Model, which you can learn more about
here.
But what do we mean by giving consistent
recognition? How can you make this happen across your organization?
When was the last time you reviewed your recognition and reward program data to see if there is any tendency toward hidden biases?
A hidden—or implicit—bias is defined as a preference for, or
against, a person, thing, or group, which is held at an unconscious level. This
means you and I don’t even know our minds are holding onto this bias. In
contrast, an overt—or explicit—bias is an attitude or prejudice which is very
much endorsed at a conscious level.
For example, what is the proportion of
recognition or reward recipients who are male versus female, with respect
to your employee gender ratio? Are rewards given more often to one gender over
another? Is there any general ratio between white and non-white employees? Do
disabled staff equally merit and receive recognition and rewards for exemplary
work?
Perhaps we all need to ask these kinds of
question when identifying whether hidden biases exist in our recognition and
reward practices and programs.
If there are certain principles that
keep recognition and rewards open it is fairness and equity.
