Why You Should Reach Out To People To Build Positive Relationships

My purpose for this post is to convince you to make some changes. Strive to build positive relationships on a regular basis with your employees. This is an essential practice to develop in order to improve the value of nonmonetary recognition. 

When you have a positive relationship with your staff, you are creating a foundation on which to build employee recognition, employee engagement, and a complete employee experience. This positive relationship strength between a giver of recognition and the recipient helps to enhance the value of the recognition and show the authenticity of the recognition expressed. 

I’m going to share with you some principles to apply in fostering a more positive relationship with your employees and those you work with. 

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Top 5 Essential Recognition Skills for Leaders

You’ll find plenty of positive recognition practices to become a great recognizer in the many posts in this blog, or within chapters in my book Practicing Recognition, that will help you and the leaders in your organization.

Yet those of you who lead your recognition programs and strive to encourage your leaders to be exemplary recognition givers, influencing leaders to do this important skill can be tough. 

I wanted to dig deeper and draw upon the essential skills that leaders need to develop. What might you coach your leaders on that would help them catch the vision? 

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Top 10 Powerful Words for Giving Amazing Recognition

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.

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Here’s How To Evolve Your Recognition Programs

Recognition is a relatively new experience in the workplace and especially using technology driven recognition programs. Rewards were always recognition’s historical predecessor.

The question then is how do you evolve your current recognition programs to be ready for the ongoing future developments of the future?

As you look at the past, awards and rewards, especially using money to reward employees—were viewed as the only potential motivator to increase performance results.

The attitude was if you want employees to work more and better, then you had to pay them with monetary rewards when they performed at the desired level. Rewards were totally a top-down approach from managers to employees because the whole purpose was business focused. Manager’s focus was on paying or rewarding employees for higher performance and then the company will get better business results and improved profits.

In some organizations today, there is still a perception that rewards are so much easier to give than to be bothered with the extra care and effort required to recognize someone.

A reward in isolation of employee recognition, especially monetary rewards, only serves to create an entitlement mentality that relies solely on extrinsic motivation.

Is your organization fixated by rewards and just transacting with employees?

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How To Lead Recognition To Greater Success In Your Company

Leaders and managers of recognition practices and programs rarely get a chance to hone their leadership skills.

And, yet, effective leadership skills are essential for raising the profile and strategic possibilities behind employee recognition.

This post will examine some specific ways you can enhance your leadership skills to maximize employee recognition in your company. (more…)

Show Caring For The Good Things and Bad Things

It is an interesting situation around showing people you have concern and care for them.

How and when do you typically show caring towards fellow employees?

I think there is a human tendency to want to provide for people and protect them whenever they’re going through a hard time.

But what about the good things that happen to employees? Do you say anything? (more…)

Top 10 Ways to Create Thanksgiving at Work

As far as work and Thanksgiving is concerned, everyone will be more excited to leave work to be with family and friends than be thankful for work. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be more grateful for the jobs and careers we have. Our challenge is knowing what each of us can do to create a more Thanksgiving attitude at work. This set of Top 10 should shed some light on this idea.

1. Create meaningful work opportunities. In an American Management Association (AMA)  survey they asked what people are thankful for at work and the highest ranked item is “the professional satisfaction it provides me.” Check in regularly with employees to learn what could make their work more energizing.

2. Encourage positive work relationships. Next on the AMA list was, understandably, one’s coworkers. Often we stop people from communicating and forming friendships at work. Even the Gallup Q12 measures having a best friend at work. Orchestrate opportunities to have fun, break bread, exercise, play and celebrate together.

3. Make sure each “Boss” is a good one. Never take this for granted because a great boss appreciates and values employees. A bad boss can kill them. Working for an uncivil, toxic boss increases the risk of a heart attack by 17% and increases the likelihood of a stroke by 33%. Stop bad boss behavior immediately.

4. Gratitude is even good for you. Well-deserved thanks and expressions of appreciation make an impact on people’s health. The Institute of Heart Math found Individuals who received appreciation and gratitude had greater harmony in their heart rhythms. Don’t think they are just doing their jobs – THANK THEM!

5. Cut out saying negative things to people – period. In high performing teams researchers found the ratio of positive to negative statements directed from manager to team members was 5.6 to 1.These managers gave 5 times more positive statements than negative. Watch your mouth and be more positive!

6. Develop relationships versus “engaging” employees. When we get romantically involved with someone we build a relationship first before popping the engagement question. Same thing at work – focus on the relationships between people. Look at building a person up and connecting with them.

7. Use emails and social media to be social. We are becoming a cryptic, impersonal society in how we communicate in any form of written text. Use the polite social graces of writing “please” and “Thank you so much! I am really grateful.” Not only will you make people feel good they will more likely help you.

8. When you have a good boss, thank them. Here’s an interesting thought from the John Templeton Foundation Study on Gratitude. They found 74% of people never or rarely express gratitude to their boss. Yet they want their boss to express gratitude to them. Start emulating the actions you want given to you.

9. Never give a gift or an award alone. No matter what tangible form of appreciation you might give someone, always add a card or note to share your feelings and thoughts for the person. Specifically acknowledge the employee for what they have done and share your heartfelt appreciation for their contributions.

10. Start things right with giving thanks. Begin each day with sending out an email of gratitude to someone who has made a difference to you. Put praise and acknowledgments at the beginning of each meeting agenda and have people share the great things happening. If you start right, you will end right.

Question: In what ways do you bring Thanksgiving into the workplace?

Roy is no longer writing new content for this site (he has retired!), but you can subscribe to Engage2Excel’s blog as Engage2Excel will be taking Roy’s place writing about similar topics on employee recognition and retention, leadership and strategy.

Did You Just Transact or Relate With Someone?

One of the interesting differences between rewards and recognition is the fact that rewards are always transactional in nature whereas recognition is strictly a relational experience.

Negotiating Away With Rewards

Whenever you use rewards you will clearly see that each time you do you are creating a negotiated agreement between yourself and the intended recipient. This is never the case with giving recognition to someone. (more…)

How to Develop Trust for Authentic Recognition

How do you really create authentic, or “real”, recognition?

Managers and employees alike are always concerned with what “others” are thinking when they attempt to give positive feedback to a fellow worker.

The secret behind giving Authentic Recognition is building trust first. That way the giving of recognition is always perceived and received correctly as it was intended. (more…)