Make feedback a weekly habit to boost business outcomes and foster a fun & inclusive culture
What do we ask from our leaders today: they need to adapt and mature their operations by establishing solid processes and scalable solutions, and at the same time need to ensure that peoples’ creativity and unique human skills will be lifted and nurtured for future innovations and growth (phew... exactly, quite a lot!). To transform managers into leaders we see a wave of leadership programs that educate managers in leading with trust and empathy, providing feedback, being relatable and removing roadblocks for employees’ professional and personal development.
A leader that can recognize peoples’ behaviour and is vocal about it will make it easy for employees to know what works well and what makes them succeed.
What is the thinking behind this: The more detailed and precise the positive feedback and acknowledgement, the more we will see the same behaviour again. There is a difference between “good job” and “I really appreciate you collaborated with X that helped you find Y solution. Thanks for showing us how it's done.”
It is actually crucial for people and organizational growth to share instant feedback, that support business goals and - as a great positive side effect - lift the good vibe in the office. Sounds simple, but is unfortunately barely practiced.
In real life, leaders get caught up with their work and daily routines, left without the right tools and workhacks to apply the learnings of their leadership trainings. How do we ensure leaders follow up with their teams and providing the feedback needed to grow? Should we ask them for their individual and creative methods sharing feedback and gratitude effectively or can we provide templates, techniques and feasible ways to equip them, recognizing their teams’ effort and achievements?
Now, you think of an App or other software solution, that will not only make feedback user-friendly, but allows for analysis and tracking activities at the same time. Yes, might work or might just be another software tool that gets lost in digital space. How often do we wish to spent time offline and screenless, time for reflection and un-disturbed thinking.
Recognition Cards
sharing appreciation and helping leaders to take a moment for needed reflections
When was the last time you received a personal note? Hand-written words have almost sentimental value and will not be forgotten quickly or get lost in your inbox. Try it out today by thinking of a particular behaviour of someone in your team, and let them know with a "thank you-note".
Leaders will benefit from quickly accessible recognition cards to share a “thank you”- note with their team members. 10 minutes might be all it takes to reflect the past work week, value individual contributions and plan next weeks’ meetings and team tasks best.
And yes, you can make this easily accessible for all leaders and employees, with an appealing design, and even have trainings and processes to ease the way for offline newbies.
What is the challenge to do recognition in a simple way?
Find this blog post interesting? Leave a comment and share, what tools do you use to reflect on your work week and sort your thinking?