I’m 53, and I’m actually embarrassed to say how much recognition and appreciation still mean to me. When I finish a day with a client and someone approaches me with genuine thanks, I go home beaming. How stupid is this? The client was helped whether or not they said so.
When someone tells me that something I said or did really helped them out, I sometimes find it hard to sleep after. Apparently, I’m still 12? And yet, and yet… am I so different from you?
A study in 2010 by Harvard Business Review found that at Best Buy, a 0.1% increase in employee engagement drove $100,000 in profit to the bottom line. While many factors drove employee engagement, the single most important one at Best Buy (and many other companies in the study) was recognition and appreciation.
This is something we all know, and something few of us do.
The simple thanks for someone who helped move a project along. The encouragement to the person who normally sits quietly in the meeting, but this time, spoke up.
A sincere word of appreciation to the person who does the unnoticed job, and does it reliably and faithfully.
We know this makes a huge difference, so why don’t we do it? It costs nothing. It’s one of the biggest, most powerful motivators of humans yet discovered. It’s the right thing to do. It even makes us feel good, and yet we resist. Are we just CRAZY??
Your assignment this week is to find someone doing something right, pull them aside and thank them for it. Affirm that they are good at their job (if they really are of course!)
You’ll make their day. Maybe their week. Maybe their month.
