Part of this exercise will involve a process that is described in the One Minute Manager books and that is to go out and catch your staff doing something right! Dig for reasons to deliver praise and then deliver it in an appropriate way. Remember you should only praise a staff member when they perform at a level of excellence, so for the next week you have to turn on your excellence seeking radar.
You never give praise for the sake of it, and if you deliver praise for a job that is only performed to a satisfactory level, you are sending out the signals that that is acceptable – so in future that will become the standard that is delivered.
At the end of the week if there are any people who haven’t given you an opportunity to praise them then one of two things happened. Either they did not perform a single task at a level of excellence or they did and you missed it. Before you go home on Friday you have to put this right, you have to sit down with them, and get a full understanding of what they did and how they did it. Perhaps in some extreme cases you have to define exactly what “performing at a level of excellence” requires.
Your staff will be motivated by excellence, your staff will feel good about themselves when they think they are performing at a level of excellence, your staff will respond positively if they believe they are part of a top performing team. Anything less and you are not doing your job as a manager.
The final point in this section is to give you some pointers on what is appropriate praise. Each one of your staff members plays to a different audience. Some want the recognition of their peers, some the recognition of management, some only want the customers to be happy and others measure their own success by the positive interaction with other departments, others still will only focus on you the manager as a source of feedback. As a manager you have to know which audience is most important to each and every staff member that reports to you.
Then there is a third consideration, some people are shy and introverted others are more outgoing and extraverted. This is vital in how you deliver the praise. For one person being singled out at a staff meeting with a public announcement of how great they are and what a great job they performed will be the highlight of their year, another staff member will be so embarrassed it would have a negative effect on their performance. For those a simple private meeting where you sit down with them and let them know you are really happy the way they performed a single task and the result it achieved.
Go back to the type of person and their audience and here are some suggestions based on their audience:
Audience Effective Praise
Customers Letter from a key customer thanking them
Senior Management Note or Email from the MD saying well done
Peers Highlight at next team meeting
You – the manager Private meeting/ note/ email from you
Other Departments Another Department Head to send a note/ email
I am a firm believer of sending a note, you may say that hand written notes are from another era; the fact is that they will be retained and treasured for years to come – so do consider them in your management mix.