Recognition: Not Just Coddling the "Snowflakes"

Source: Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

What if I told you that recognition is not just about making someone feel better or to "coddle the snowflakes" but it can actually help you achieve your business strategy?

Investing time and money in ongoing recognition, coaching, and feedback has been found to increase revenues by 26%, decrease turnover by 31%, improve customer satisfaction by 54%, and increase shareholder return by 22%. Yet, only a quarter of the workforce feel they receive adequate recognition and coaching and half feel they receive very little.

To understand how recognition connects to strategy achievement, we need to back up and talk about how the brain works. Our brains first developed to support conditioned behaviours or instincts before we became symbolic and philosophical beings. Because of this evolution, the majority of our brain is still devoted to the earlier systems and processes. For safety reasons, our brains are also wired to prioritize focusing on risks or danger.

So why does this matter with recognition?

Humans will naturally look for the critical aspects or the inconsistencies given in the feedback first. To fully engage the brain, feedback and recognition should be both logical and emotional.

As leaders or peers, we need to ensure recognition is given with the positive emotion we intended for the individual to receive. For example, we could tap into values or why it helped you emotionally: "I really appreciated the work you did; it helped take a lot of stress off my plate." Or "I know this project wasn't successful, but you did your due diligence, and we needed to do that work in order to eliminate alternatives to get to our eventual vision. Thank you for the extra hours you put in doing that."

It's important how we deliver the message. Words are not enough. We are visual and auditory beings. Your body language and tone need to match the message you want to send. This not only helps the message get translated more accurately, but it also helps build genuineness and trust.

Also, "one-off" or one-time recognition isn't enough. If the person reverts to seeing the critical but they are continuously doing good work, you need to help build their understanding that they are, in fact, doing a good job.

Another way to think of this is to help switch people into a "growth mindset." That is, people with "fixed mindsets" feel that they either have "it" or they don't. Feedback feels scary if critical feedback means you don't have "it" or you aren't able to do something. However, in a growth mindset, it's less about having the ability and more about rewarding the process, the attempt, or the learning. For example, instead of saying "good job, you are a natural at this," you say "good job, you really applied yourself there." A growth mentality is less about ego and it's more about experimenting and continuous improvement.

I thought this article was about recognition helping achieve the business strategy?

Right. If we don't recognize people for their achievements, we run the risk that, come performance evaluation time, defensive stances get taken because individuals may have a fixed mindset and will see more of the negative.

Consistent and frequent recognition aimed at promoting a growth mindset will actually allow people to pay more attention to the mistakes because mistakes are less scary and are now positive learning points. It can also encourage people to take more risks, get out of their comfort zones, and achieve bigger stretch goals.

Okay, but how, specifically, do I do this?

Here are some tips when providing feedback:

• Give positive feedback often and consistently. Another way you can remember is RISE: Regular. Immediate. Specific. Encouraging.
• Focus on the process or the attempt rather than the outcome or innate ability.
• Focus on a few things at a time.
• Determine how the person likes to be recognized: publicly, privately, written, verbal, etc.
• Match your non-verbals (body language, tone, etc.) to the verbal feedback.
• Ensure that the interpersonal dynamic doesn't have a power imbalance and there is a sense of fairness and support.

Overall, recognition is not just a "pat on the back," it needs to be genuine and purposeful to help the individual, and thereby, the team and the organization grow.