Celebrating the Wins—The Importance of Recognizing the Accomplishments of Your Team
Monique Russell
Global Communication Skills Advisor & Coach | Demystifying Emotional Intelligence to increase performance and improve retention by 30% for top tier leaders and teams
Does your team seem unmotivated? Downtrodden? Defeatist? Disengaged?
Step back and think about your workplace culture for a minute. People are craving for recognition, appreciation, and affirmation. When they receive it, morale is often boosted, productivity is increased, and workplace culture is energized. Recognition is the motivational tool to provide the extra boost.
Consider the professional scenarios you’ve been involved with throughout the years—when did you feel most valued, respected, and appreciated? What were the conditions affecting this arrangement? What factors motivated your behavior, and who else was involved? What happened?
Marcus Erb highlights 7 Ways to Boost Employee Morale in an article for Entrepreneur. His suggestions range from “job” definition to celebration of successes to fostering positive attitudes to just plain having fun.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Not so fast...A few words of caution.
Now think about a time when you felt unmotivated, disrespected, and under-valued. What circumstances led to this scenario? How was your behavior affected, and who else was involved? What happened?
Research shows that the following tensions can lead to unmotivated, under-valued employees whose work is stifled and unfulfilling.
If you set up your reward and recognition systems in such a way that promotes excessive competition and manipulation among those vying for the “prize,” you might be contributing to experiences of alienation and discouragement rather than alleviating them. Make sure your system of recognition does not favor particular traits more than others when actually each are equally deserving of acclaim. You want to emphasize a mutually respectful company culture—not a toxic workplace. See What You Must Know About Confidence for additional insights about recognizing unique talents.
Another word of caution: remain authentic in your communications (more on authentic communication next month!). Competition for “attention and appreciation” is one of the contributing factors to low morale affecting workplace politics, according to Susan Heathfield, whose Simple Ideas for Improving Employee Morale in Your Workplace appears in The Balance. She emphasizes the importance of making sure employees share a vision for the company, utilizing clear communication of expectations, and “feedback and coaching” as contributors to morale boosts.
Just remember that what’s “fun” for some employees might just cause additional stress, distraction, or annoyance to others. While many members of your team might be thrilled with a video game room for “game days”—others might prefer to spend that “free time” away from the office working on their own projects or volunteering—so keep your creative options...optional.
Contributing to positive employee morale needn’t be an overwhelming challenge in which employers and team leaders feel like they have to bend over backward to make sure everybody’s happy all the time—but an awareness of the overall environment and what could be done to pick things up a little might go a long way.
The good news is that company culture can be turned around!
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Operations Executive
7 年Hello Monique I’ve worked for great organizations and great leaders during my career; and as a result, have been fortunate to experience wonderful work-related celebrations. I’ve given the topic a good amount of thought over the years as I agree, recognition, appreciation, and affirmation are so important for ALL the obvious reasons. For Celebrations to have the Wow effect that will make them truly memorable, is determined by three key factors: leadership, attention to detail, and personalization. 1) Leadership -- Are company executives attending and relating to the troops, sharing experiences, telling stories, getting involved and part of the fun. In other words, is there an element of authenticity. 2) The attention to detail and planning to create the experience. -- The attention to detail and planning that creates the experience, adds to the magic and creates the qualities of elegance and aesthetics. 3) How personalized it is to the Individuals. -- Celebration is about going the extra mile and showing people you care enough to make the experience either special, or more importantly, personal. It is the extent to which a company de-emphasis business issues and plays to people side of things. When you do that, when you implement from the heart and create a festival of the spirit the organization (specifically, its culture) becomes richer in spirit, stronger in unity and a force to be reckoned with in the marketplace. I’d be very interested in hearing how others have received or implemented an expression of these elements in their workplace and brief story surrounding it. Bill Kay
Coach, Mentor, Trainer ? Championing the Coach Approach to Leadership ? Upleveling Coaching Skills and Mastery ? Supporting Personal and Professional Development
7 年Celebrating wins is so important! Focusing on the positive brings in more motivation for continued "wins". Plus celebrating in and of itself is an often overlooked piece of business. When we celebrate it allows us to recognize milestones that we are achieving and honor them together as a team vs. putting our heads down and continuing to plow ahead. Great reminder here!
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7 年Early in my career I didn't realize the value of recognition. It's amazing but some people will do more for recognition than they will for monetary compensation.