People have often wondered how I started off in health care and then somehow made the switch to employee recognition training and consulting.
It all began when I started my master’s degree program at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, to become a speech-language pathologist.
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There are people in our lives, both past and present, who influence us for good and help us grow and develop.
You might never have taken the path that life offered you without their guidance, inspiration, and support.
Now, the only question remaining is whether you said thanks to any of these individuals for what they did for you.
I won’t pretend I have thanked everyone who has made a difference in my life, especially from the past. But I certainly work on thanking everyone today who has affected me.
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Individuals often ask me what I recommend for them to do to become a great recognition giver of the people around them—whether at work, home, or play.
The following is a short list of things I suggest you get into the habit of doing.
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Like all things dealing with nonverbal communication, it is always culturally specific, so we can interpret a smile in different ways around the world.
But for North America, Americans smile wider and more often than any other people, and that’s validated by research. So, be sure to smile when giving recognition to people in the U.S. and Canada.
And apparently, according to writer Olga Khazan from The Atlantic, a Finnish individual posited on Reddit that, “When a stranger on the street smiles at you:
a. You assume he is drunk.
b. He is insane.
c. He’s an American.”
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I often ask attendees in my workshop sessions how many have kept a handwritten note or thank-you card. Most of the participants have kept at least one notecard.
Then I asked them how many reread that notecard. Again, a large majority of people acknowledged they’ve done this. I think it surprised them they weren’t the only ones who did this.
This caused me to research this phenomenon further and see if I could identify the elements that made a handwritten notecard a keeper.
Here’s what I found out.
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One of my most exciting accomplishments has been working with Dr. Charles Scherbaum from Baruch College, SUNY. Together, we examined the various behaviors and attitudes associated with giving meaningful and effective recognition. Then we conducted the content validity research for our Recognition Skills Assessment® and we found out some very interesting results.
We enlisted recognition subject matter experts to score the level of importance for each behavior and attitude on a Likert scale. They did the same action for scoring the level of impact they felt these behaviors and attitudes had on people and performance.
The outcome of our studies showed very different perspectives for giving effective recognition than I had imagined. From what we learned, I can give you the top five essential actions and attitudes needed for giving effective recognition.
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Many social recognition programs available from vendors operate very similar to Meta/Facebook. You have a social newsfeed where you can add status updates. And you can send themed specific ecards or social badges to celebrate achievements, thank people for their help, reward performance goals reached, and acknowledge colleagues’ birthdays and milestone celebrations.
And there is something else that each of us can do. As we go on to our recognition and reward programs, there is the special opportunity to like the various recognition messages sent and to even add our personal comments.
Does liking and commenting make a difference to people? Is one better than the other?
Let’s explore some research and see if we can extrapolate anything that we can apply in our social recognition programs.
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I sat in an employee recognition session at the IMA Summit last week at the Snowbird, Utah resort. A participant I know shared their experience with the group that opened my eyes to a very important point of view.
You can sit down with each of your employees and ask them questions about their recognition preferences. Your online recognition and reward programs may automate the entry of recognition choices and how they prefer to be recognized. You can do this with onboarding or any time during their career.
However, what this individual raised was a critical point. Employees’ recognition preferences are not static.
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Real Recognition™ is all about transferring positive feelings and emotions that you felt about someone’s actions and conveying those feelings to the other person. That way they can feel similarly as you did about their meaningful behaviors.
When expressing recognition to a person, this is not about your aggrandizement. Recognition is not an ego trip for highlighting you as the giver of the praise. Giving sincere and authentic recognition must always focus on the recipient, the person you want to acknowledge.
How can you make sure the recognition you give a person is about them and not about you?
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There is one thing I came into the recognition field to do. That task was to ban saying “good job” as an act of feedback or recognition expression.
Yet they have brainwashed many of us since childhood from home and school, and then into the workplace, to both hear and use those two words.
I am going to explain to you exactly why you must eradicate ever saying the words “good job.” Then I will give a simple way to replace those words. You will feel more confident about being able to give meaningful recognition. And you’ll be perceived as a more genuine recognizer.
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