Individuals want to be seen and heard and know that the effort they put in – and the results they generate – are appreciated.
In this Leader Lesson, Jennie and Craig define Recognition, discuss the forms it can take, why not one size fits all when it comes to recognition, what good recognition looks like, and share the superpower of a “Power Thank You” (from Mark Goulston).
This conversation follows an earlier, longer, and more in-depth conversation that Jennie and Craig had on Recognition and Rewards. You can access the resources from that conversation here: https://www.linkedin.com/smart-links/AQGW5C0XNPTfuw
You can listen to their earlier conversation about Recognition & Rewards here:
Individuals want to be seen and heard and know that the effort they put in – and the results they generate – are appreciated.
In this Leader Lesson, Jennie and Craig define Recognition, discuss the forms it can take, why not one size fits all when it comes to recognition, what good recognition looks like, and share the superpower of a “Power Thank You” (from Mark Goulston).
This conversation follows an earlier, longer, and more in-depth conversation that Jennie and Craig had on Recognition and Rewards. You can access the resources from that conversation here: https://www.linkedin.com/smart-links/AQGW5C0XNPTfuw
You can listen to their earlier conversation about Recognition & Rewards here:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
Craig:
Hi everyone, welcome to a short Leader Lesson episode of the Leading Beyond Any Title podcast, where myself and Jennie Gilbert provide a short version of one of our longer conversations. It's a chance for you to get some quick insights to an important leadership topic, and we know you don't always have time to listen to us for 45 to 60 minutes. We hope you enjoy this short episode, and if it encourages you to want to hear more about the topic, be sure to link to the full episode in the show notes. Now for a quick leader lesson. Jennie we try very hard in these short leader lessons to provide just that, a short lesson on leadership. And what we wanted to chat about today was part of a longer conversation we had a couple of years ago around recognition and rewards. Really important part of being a leader in terms of. Bringing your team along. So why don't we try starting once again, just around this whole definition of recognition. What is it? Why is it important? Etc.
Jennie:
Yes, this was good to go back to and to revisit. Recognition, simplest form is seeing. Your people. And every day your people want to be seen, heard, and understood. And recognition really is a vehicle that lets you get there. The part that gets forgotten is that recognition is not reward. So there's really very little budget line involved in this. There's a bit of work though, from the leader. And recognition is a lot about building discretionary effort. In a productive means, it's also tied really closely to reinforcement. And so we often hear of it coming in three different forms, positive, constructive, often referred to as negative. And none is that really
Craig:
dangerous. I remember the phrase we worked hard at a prior company to eliminate the phrase constructive feedback, which you don't hear much anymore, but your point around none, I think is just vital, right? Folks need to know, to your point, that they have been seen, that the work that they have done is noticed. How, what shape though, when we think about recognition, what shape can this take? That's
a
Jennie:
good question. Yes. So it can take different forms. And actually where we find recognition really tough is often with our best workers because they just get it and they just get on with it. And in most cases too, they don't want to be thanked for doing their day job. And so what are the different ways that we can provide recognition? And we had examples of, here's different things that you can do, but it's important to remember the shape as you talk about with informational, that's a lot to do with reinforcement. If there is a behavior that I have done that you really like. Your reinforcement, your recognition will be informational, and I am very likely to repeat that behavior when I get that from you. But the more exciting ones are the motivational and the developmental as well. If you constantly give informational reinforcement or recognition, your people aren't going to recognize you as somebody that recognizes them. It's a lot of recognitions, but. Should make sense.
Craig:
It does. Mostly because I was part of the first conversation. I'm with you. And if you want to listen to that first conversation, there will be a link in the show notes to this. So please keep that in mind. I think we also talked about the fact that depending on the size of your team as a leader, It may feel awkward or it may feel weird, but you might want to track how you're doing this. You might want to track how often you are recognizing your people, right? And don't be surprised if you figure it, find out that you haven't recognized Jimmy or Sally in the last three, four weeks. And then try to think about how do you increase your frequency around that? But when we're doing that, I think the other key thing that we touched on, Jennie, is what is the right and wrong way to deliver? Recognition.
Jennie:
And there's some hard and fast rules and there's some ambiguous parts to it as well. And I think one of the key ones that came out that I really enjoyed and is so relevant is know your people. And that involves a conversation, like, how do they like to receive recognition? Some. And let's lean on the positive because it's more fun. But some will prefer that they don't mind it publicly. In fact, they feel good. You can see them grow an inch at the table when you recognize them publicly. You'll find other people on your team who would much rather that the ground swallowed them up than receive public recognition. So as a leader, your job is to know that. Know that and understand that. of the people around you. The other part that we talked about a lot is the context and how specific we want to be with that recognition. So it's never too late to say thank you, but the closer that we can get to the action happening, the better received and the greater impact that recognition will have.
Craig:
You touched on something earlier too, you just mentioned this phrase, you set it around the high performers who just don't, who don't want to be recognized for doing their day job. And I think there's perhaps some leaders who struggle with this concept of, I just can't recognize people every day for doing what they do. Can I?
Jennie:
Probably not. It's probably not the most effective way. And so the ask isn't to recognize people for doing their day job. That is our regular execution. But the ask is do validate people, do see people. And two of the ways that this often gets forgotten and our highest performers are. Really impactful in this area. What is the unseen work? You received the finished product or you see the result, but what is the unseen work that went on behind the scenes? And the other thing that we can recognize, see, validate is progress. And there's some studies out there. We talked about this actually in a longer version of this conversation is one of those studies that. People differentiate between an okay day and a great day simply on the amount of progress that they've made in a day as a leader, help them see that progress. That's a good fix for them, and it's an easy way for you to provide recognition.
Craig:
Absolutely, and it's also a really good way to challenge yourself as a leader to make sure you know what your team is doing, right? We like to close off our bigger conversations. With a big idea and a couple strategies, but when we were in this conversation and we'll change it up here just because just for this one, there was a concept that came out that I think in the interest of time that we really need to work into this conversation and that was the whole idea of a power thank you as a means of recognition. Can you elaborate on
Jennie:
that? This is genius and it comes from Mark Gulston. And there is a Power Apology as well, but the one that we focused on for recognition was the Power Thank You. So a Power Thank You has three parts to it. The beauty of the Power Thank You is that you can text it, email it, Teams it, speak it, phone it, whichever way that you want to. And it really does just shift the ground. Slightly more. It's far more impactful than just a regular thank you. So the three parts that a power thank you is made up from, part one, what are you actually thanking them for? Be specific to that part. What are you appreciative of? The second part, What was the effort and energy that they took? This has got nothing to do with you. It's all about them. So what extra effort did they put in? What energy did they give to it? What did they give up in order to do that? Maybe what was the unseen work that you're now aware of? And then the third part is, what was the impact of their actions for you, for the team? All for the organization. Pop all three of those together and you have a power. Thank you.
Craig:
That is so good. And I do recall like getting just tremendous response from the folks that have joined us. And again, if you want to listen to that original conversation, it will be in the show notes. And we hope that today's short leader lesson provided you with something to think about and consider in terms of how you are recognizing your team. And with that, thank you for joining us. Have a good day. Thank you once again for joining us on the Leading Beyond Any Title podcast. If you'd like to stay connected and receive more updates from us, please follow SAIT corporate training on LinkedIn. Stay in the loop with the latest insights and valuable content through the link in the show notes. Additionally,
Jennie:
don't miss out on the opportunity to Experience leading beyond any title live. Sign up for our webinars and experience the podcast before anyone else. Finally, make sure to rate, review and subscribe wherever it is that you listen to your podcast. Thank you again for listening.