Great Leaders Are Great at Recognizing People

You have probably already seen it in your organization.

There are some leaders—directors of departments or senior leadership team members—who not only stand out for what their employees achieve, but who know are great recognizers of their staff. Employees like and trust them and they produce top results because of how they are treated by their leader.

Why is it that great leaders are also great at recognizing people?

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The Impact Your Voice Can Have on the Recognition You Give

Of all the recognition behaviors or practices I have studied, it amazed me that one’s voice ranked as the most important behavior in conveying authentic and effective recognition.

But we couldn’t argue with the content validation exercise conducted with employee recognition experts.

That’s why I want you to learn to better use your voice to communicate more meaningful recognition.

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Let Your Leaders Know What It’s Like To Be Unrecognized

Sometimes they just don’t get it, do they?

You’ll hear a comment from a leader questioning the import of your wanting to create a recognition strategy. Another leader glosses over the latest engagement survey results and states that 56% percent on the recognition questions is good, isn’t it? These are all real scenarios.

Now I am well aware this does not describe all leaders. But there are enough to cause concern.

A few of them don’t understand why some employees are complaining about a lack of recognition. They think they pay their employees well and they have good jobs. What more can they want?

Sounds like it’s time to let your leaders know what it feels like to be unrecognized.

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Why Being Specific Increases the Value of Recognition

I had just read marketing author, Seth Godin’s blog post, in which he concluded with the line – “Specific can be its own reward”. And I wholeheartedly agree.

Being specific in your expressions of recognition and praise can be a rewarding experience for the recipient. Which is why I want to emphasize the need for this recognition principle to be taught to your managers and employees.

My goal is to encourage you to help those you lead be specific or become more specific with their recognition expressions. (more…)

How You Can Make Recognition Giving a Regular Habit

It’s easy to get distracted by technology, people, and competing priorities in our lives and not recognize the great things people do around us. And then there are our workloads, which are often overwhelming, and stop us from interacting with people.

You might struggle with naturally being good at giving recognition. You were not outstanding in academic or sports at school. Home might not have been an exemplary place to receive praise or accolades.

Knowing how to give recognition is not always easy. You may be asking yourself:

  • How do I give better recognition?
  • How do I give recognition more frequently?
  • How can I recognize more people?

Let’s tackle these questions by learning how you can make recognition giving a regular habit in your life. (more…)

How to Effectively Emote When People Are Remote

In the ever-evolving nature of the modern workplace, you can have far less face-to-face encounters with your staff and peers than you would like to. This makes giving personal and meaningful recognition a little more challenging.

Employee recognition is a felt phenomenon to begin with, so it must be given with feeling.

I was recently asked how could we emote better in our dialogue and written feedback with people?

I will examine these two areas of verbal and written communication and share my recommendations. (more…)

Here’s How To Create Really Meaningful Celebrations

Have you ever received an award or some tangible recognition and felt it was a totally rushed experience? Or maybe you felt the recognition was not even representative of what you accomplished?

When these things happen it doesn’t make you feel very recognized because you were not celebrated in a meaningful way.

In this post I will show you how to ensure the awards and other recognition you give to employees are meaningful and celebratory for each recipient. (more…)

3 Ways to Know How Recognized Your Employees Feel

Many leaders are unaware of how valued or recognized their employees are feeling right now. It’s not always a pretty picture.

The Gallup group suggest only a third of employees they survey through all their client companies actually receive recognition or praise for doing good work on the job in any given week.

I am going to share 3 simple ways you can use to find out how well recognized your employees feel, today!

But first… (more…)

“If I Only Had a Brain”

As Dorothy replied to Scarecrow in the classic “Wizard of Oz” movie, With the thoughts you’d be thinkin’, You could be another Lincoln, If you only had a brain.”

Many of us feel like we are on the yellow brick road wanting to get a brain from the Wizard. We may get locked into thinking “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Well, it seems that old adage is not as scientifically true as we might believe it to be. (more…)