What are some creative ways to celebrate your team's achievements and successes?

The SMART goals framework is a helpful way to ensure that your goals are clear, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Recognition can take many different forms, but here are some great examples: - Verbally highlight team success/good behaviour in regular occurring meetings. - Plan a dinner or staff event to reward & recognize good behaviour/team goal achievement. - Offer to pay (or contribute) towards a skill or educational upgrade for team members that are hungry for improvement/advancement. - Treat the team to coffee or lunch after a successful launch, or stressful day of internal meetings. Many managers forget that their team members can be the difference in success and failure. Humble yourself by recognizing your teams ability, dedication, and output!

How you treat your employees dictates your morale. A lot of managers think they can rate you average and that will make you work harder. Statistics show an average rating leads to below average work!

Showing recognition to your team, and also individually, will certainly contribute to keep the team morale on high level. Besides that the leader should use the proper feedback technique. First telling what was good and done right in the process, them second advise what could have been done better for a next time, and finally closing with a wrap up that doing this way, he/she will notice the improvement. So, using the right feedback approach is also important.

I find that some projects I ask my team members to tell me their goals for the project. Then I add 1-2 of my goals. And I reward them with coffee or a lunch gift card when they achieve their goals.

I agree, but there are also other reasons to celebrate small wins, specifically in Client/Customer Service where the day to day work can weigh heavy when the team is under pressure due to an outage or some other major issue. It's important to recognize the small wins in tough times. The call where you hear laughter at the end. The email that's returned with a grateful response to a difficult problem. Small wins being celebrated can turn a bad day into a good one just by knowing someone around you noticed the hard work you are putting in even when facing adversity. As leaders, team members and even someone from a different department, we should all be on the lookout of that small great moment.

Provide specific, immediate feedback focusing on behavior. Start positively, offer constructive solutions, listen actively, and ensure your intent is to help. Be consistent, use "I" statements, and seek feedback on your approach. Aim for growth.

While it’s wonderful (and necessary) to receive constructive criticism from a boss or manager. It’s great to also receive it from peers and co-workers. Especially from co-workers from other departments. Ask each other what you can do better to best assist each other in your current roles. In that way you will be constantly streamlining your company procedures to achieve the best environment possible. Have a meeting to determine which changes to implement. This will also welcome employees to be open to constructive criticism in the most positive way & fosters relationships within the company. Which in turn, drives your teams ability to function at its highest caliber. Teamwork makes the dream work!

Identify skill gaps, offer mentorship, organize workshops, provide online course access, encourage conference attendance, rotate projects, establish feedback sessions, maintain a resource library, promote internal knowledge sharing, and support further education. Foster a culture of continuous learning.

1. Assess skills regularly. 2. Establish mentorship programs. 3. Host training workshops. 4. Offer online course subscriptions. 5. Sponsor conference attendance. 6. Rotate projects for diverse experience. 7. Implement regular feedback sessions. 8. Create a resource library. 9. Organize internal knowledge shares. 10. Support further education pursuits.

A great way for continuous Learning and Development are Mentorship Programs: Establishing mentorship programs can provide highly beneficial learning opportunities for employees to interact with experienced professionals and get advice on how to improve their performance in current roles and develop for future career prospects. Mentors can provide invaluable personalized guidance and serve as vital sources of motivation and feedback.

With all of these wonderful and insightful tips to create a positive, productive customer service team, it is incredibly important to remain genuine and real with your team. Spend some time in the trenches to truly understand their perspective. Know how to do their job, and step in when needed. Empathy over sympathy. But also remember, you're their leader, not their friend. This will allow you to respect them, and them to respect you. Your customer will notice this.