short on time: long on impact | Corporate Team Building and ...

As the leading recognition company,?we?ve?done a lot of research over the years and one thing?we?ve?found is when you ask managers if recognizing their employees for their achievements is important, almost all of them will say it is. Now you do still have some Neanderthal managers out there who think all the recognition their people need is a paycheck, but by and large most managers will agree recognizing their employees is critical to getting great work. Given that, why is it that 79% of people leaving their jobs, say lack of appreciation is the number one reason?

There are three things that make recognition effective: Frequent, timely, and specific. Gallup reports that recognition every seven days is the ideal frequency, and that ?catching your people doing great work? in a timely manner is also important. Finally, being specific about what is being recognized helps the employee, and those observing, identify what is important to the company. However, the one thing that can make your recognition more powerful and generate more great work is making it personal.

Through our research,?we?ve?found managers who are really good at recognizing, put in just a little extra effort to make the recognition personal. For example, a shop floor supervisor, (we?ll call him Joe), knew one of his people, Larry, who had a service anniversary coming up, was refurbishing a classic car. He also knew Larry was having a particularly difficult time finding a matching hub cap for the car. Joe spent a little extra time looking for, finding and purchasing the specific hub cap his employee needed and presented it at his service anniversary. The cost of the hub cap was minimal, and the extra amount of time required probably added up to an hour. But imagine the impact on Larry. Do you think Larry will run through walls for Joe? You bet.

Another example is Karen. She carried around a list of her team members and after any conversation she had with one of them, she would write down information that was significant about that person. Were they married? Did they have kids? Did they gush about the new line from Giorgio Armani? Or did they enjoy fishing? Over time, she had a ?crib sheet? with key information for every one of her team members. And when it came time to recognize any of them, she could add a personal anecdote or story that made her presentations particularly powerful. Again, this added up to an extra few seconds per encounter but had a significant impact on the way her employees felt about work.

Ironically, when you ask managers why they don?t recognize more, invariably the answer you get is, ?I?m too busy? or ?I don?t have time to do it?. So what makes our super recognizers, Karen and Joe, different from those who are ?too busy? to recognize their people? It isn?t that Joe and Karen are any less busy than every other manager out there; it?s that they understand if they want great work from their people, their people expect a level of appreciation for the great work that they bring.

The answer can be found in a clich? that one often hears but is nonetheless true more often than not: You make time for things that are important to you. If you know recognition will make your team more effective, and you a better manager, make it an important part of your day. Get to know your people, write it down so you don?t forget, use it when you catch them doing great work, and recognize them for it. It really doesn?t take much extra time, it just takes priority. If you prioritize it, be prepared for greater engagement, and greater work!

Source: http://www.octanner.com/blog/2012/11/short-on-time-long-on-impact/

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