Naughty or Nice?

Here’s an interesting capture from a recent USA Today article (December 15, 2009) about cyberbullying being regarded as the right to free speech.

“Some parents and free-speech advocates are challenging cyberbullying cases, saying kids have a First Amendment right to be mean in cyberspace, the Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) reported.”

Even the courts agreed that free-speech rights had been violated and stated, “The court cannot uphold school discipline of student speech because...teenagers are emotionally fragile and may fight over hurtful comments,” wrote Judge Stephen Wilson.

And a UCLA law professor told the newspaper, “If all teasing led to suicide, the human race would be extinct.”

Contrast this reaction and support for being disrespectful with some more adult and scientific perspective that counters the supposed non-effect of cyberbullying.

Highlighted in the Harvard Business Review (March 2008) on “Rudeness and its Noxious Effects”, research by Christine Porath of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Amir Erez of the Warrington College of Business Administration at the University of Florida shows even the thought of receiving verbal abuse affects people’s ability to perform complex tasks that require creativity, flexibility and memory recall.

They referred to these negative and abusive words simply as “rudeness”. Whether the source was direct, professor giving harsh words to a university student participant; indirect, a professor not a part of the study but who gave cutting remarks when interrupted; or imagined, where students were told of the previous experiences and told to imagine if they had been the recipients of the abuse.

When students then performed problem solving tasks such as anagrams and suggesting uses for a brick no matter what type of rudeness they received – direct, indirect, or imagined – all three forms of exposure generated impaired performance.

Why is their performance affected? Findings suggest that after any degree of exposure to rudeness, people think hard about the incident—whether just ruminating or formulating a response—and those thought processes take cognitive resources away from other tasks. From their study Porath and Emirez show abuse or rudeness can affect innocent bystanders as well.

So to the law professor – not all teasing will lead to suicide, agreed. But all teasing, abuse and rudeness will lead to impaired thinking and performance.

Now imagine what praise, respect and appreciation can do!! Let’s all plan to be nice today and everyday.

Learn from your Grandchildren

As told by my married daughter of 4 children:

You know how you spend day after day, moment after moment teaching, pleading, and praying that your children will grow into wonderful, kind and serving individuals? Oftentimes the fighting, the teasing and the whining drown out those wonderful moments and often make that lofty mothering goal seem obsolete and impossible. And then, there are the moments. You've all had them. When your child, without prompting, shares with a sibling, when your own offspring is undeniably kind to another child, or perhaps you have watched them love and serve an elderly neighbor. These moments are worth noticing, they are worth recording. But often, they are unnoticed and unreported, and we, the mothers, don't know how wonderful our children really are.

We had one such moment. Miss J brought home a thank you note the other day, it reads:

"Katie told us that you came to her aid when she was being teased at school. What you did to help her took courage and strength and was the right thing to do. We THANK YOU very much for helping her! What you did was very sweet and really cool ~ so we wanted you to have something sweet and cool too! Your parents should be very PROUD of YOU! Please tell them we said THANK YOU too! -Katie's Mom and Dad"

Enclosed was a gift card to Cold Stone Creamery. I was near tears when I read this. Mostly because Miss J, who tells me incessant details about her days at school, had never mentioned the event for which she was being thanked. To her, it was no big deal. It was just who she is. After reading the note, I asked for the details and received them. She said that Katie is someone who has a much harder time doing even the simplest things, and that she needs a lot of help. She said a bunch of kids were calling her horrible names and Miss J saw how hurt she was and automatically went to her side and defended and comforted her. She said she wishes she sat next to her in class because she could really help her to learn and be loved.

We do not have to seek recognition. We will simply feel good inside for what we have done or a grateful person will express it in the best way they can.

Well done Miss J.! Love from your Granddad

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

My colleague and friend, Max Brown, gave a great presentation to members of the Human Capital Institute last week called, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” When he first shared the idea with me I told him he had been listening to too much Tina Turner.

While he did play on that association in his presentation, his points were sound and solid on the need for love being a powerful principle in leadership and caring for people.

Max clearly stated you can’t just introduce recognition programs to counteract negative, fear driven leadership and management practices.

He outlined principles for putting “love” into recognition through the following steps:

1. Define your Purpose.
2. Articulate the Strategy
3. Consider their Perspective

Now I don’t want to give the farm away, but I highly recommend you investing an hour of your time to both listen and view this reflective webinar. Just click here to view.

My take is that love has a LOT to do with it. Well done, Max.

Enjoy.

Face Off on Recognition

Intuitively, I have observed and known, you have to be able to appreciate your own worth and abilities first in order to recognize and appreciate someone else. So this means what motivates you will affect how you motivate others.

Recent research in the Human Motivation & Affective Neuroscience (HuMAN) Lab indicates that implicit motives enhance individual’s ability to recognize facial expressions of emotions in others. This skill is viewed as a critical component of emotional intelligence.

So how good are you at recognizing emotions in others? If you’re good at it you will likely be a great giver of recognition to others.

The psychologists and researchers at the HuMAN Lab out of Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany took a scientific angle on facial expressions and examined whether a person’s implicit motivational needs or style (what motivates them internally) actually influences their perceptions of the reward or punishment value of facial expressions of emotion, known by the acronym of FEEs (e.g., joy, anger, or surprise)?

How you feel about yourself affects how you view the non-verbal communications shown towards you.

Apparently, these FEEs tend to parallel a person’s implicit motives. We are born with the ability and can also learn to recognize these facial expressions. These non-verbal signals can communicate a sender's superiority (e.g., anger, smiling) or powerlessness (e.g., fear, surprise) in relation to a perceiver or another person.

It seems the type of facial expression displayed triggers a more prominent reaction depending on your internal motivation – power-motivated or affiliation-motivated.

This might explain why some senior leaders (possibly who are power-motivated) have a harder time in expressing positive feedback to employees (some of whom will be affiliation-motivated).

It’s all in the face and how you look at people!

Solving the Pain

I had a headache yesterday.

It didn’t help that I had a client with a problem too. My Rideau colleague, Gord Green, asked if we were addressing their “pain”.

I knew what mine was. What was theirs?

Recognition has to be strategically aligned with key business objectives to work. Goals can be financial, performance or people related actions that are a pain right now. Some metric isn’t being met.

Meanwhile I took a couple of Advil®. But how does Advil® work?

It seems the active ingredient, ibuprofin, is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug which reduces inflammation and relieves pain. It is best taken with milk or food to prevent an upset stomach. Amazing! This nifty little pain reliever has been around since the 1960s.

Finding out the business pain can be a harder task. Business leaders must stop denying there is a pain problem until it’s too late and amputation is required! Diagnosing the problem assists with knowing what recognition pill to take and then zero in and relieves the pain.

So, where does it hurt? = Determine the pain problem. Define the actions and behaviors which could solve the business problem for you. If innovative problem solving would help get your lead product out the door quicker, then reward people who produce successful solutions and guarantee measureable results.

How much does it hurt? = Measure the frequency, occurrence, and quality of target behaviors. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being low and 10 being high, how painful is this problem? Once you know the behaviors and actions required for solving a problem determine the best way to measure them. Don’t use a yardstick when you need a thermometer.

Take two Advil on a full stomach = Determine the right rewards and/or recognition. Put strategic, tactical recognition actions in place that best fits reinforcing and recognizing target behaviors. A points-based incentive program could reward incremental behaviors towards a major business goal; a nominated awards program could help improve living of corporate values; or simply managers having more one-on-one positive feedback opportunities to improve engagement levels.

By the end of the afternoon my headache was gone. The Advil® had worked. My pain was gone.

The client? Well they’re not sure where it hurts. They just know they have a pain in their business. So I am not sure whether to prescribe Advil®, Tylenol®... or a shotgun!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

How do we get managers and employees to be exemplary recognition giving people?

Let’s examine some research carried out on how to instil ethical behaviours in a corporation, which are obviously way harder than trying to practice recognition giving behaviours, and see what we can learn.

According to Drs. Avshalom M. Adam and Dalia Rachman-Moore in the 2004 Journal of Business Ethics their study concluded the example managers set has the greatest influence on employees’ behavior, even more so than what managers say and what is written in the company code of ethics. Hence my play on the title with “monkey see, monkey do”.

In trying to implement an ethical code of conduct many business utilize formal methods such as training, courses, and various rules and procedures that provide enforcement through self-regulation. The formal stuff.

The authors measured the perceived effectiveness of the process deemed most influential by analyzing impact on employee attitudes (namely, personal ethical commitment and employees'' commitment to organizational values ). Their results indicated informal methods such as manager sets an example or social norms of the organization , are likely to yield greater commitment with respect to both employee attitudes than the formal methods of training and courses on the subject of ethics .

From the learning field, it is also management involvement before going to training programs that has the greatest impact on transfer of learning back to the workplace

So from this research one can imply that senior leader example could impact middle managers and middle managers could influence employees. Imagine the difference this could make on employee recognition practices and programs.

Turning Soft Stuff into Hard Results

Employee recognition is often called “soft stuff”. Recognition rarely stacks up against the more financial performance metrics regularly at the forefront of business meetings.

What can we do to give employee recognition the justice it deserves?

Make the “Soft Stuff” much more tangible
The first key in making recognition have more tangible value is to determine the organizational impact recognition has. Do employees feel more connected and thus become more engaged? Are certain performance outcomes driven higher by an effective incentive program? Has one department or business division exceeded target results and attributed it to a recognition program they have established?

Whatever it is you find that you know has recognition as a strong contributing tool then you must highlight the level of importance of recognition to leaders. They must learn the strategic importance and driver of performance that recognition can play.

You also have to determine how trackable the criteria are so you can create solid metrics that correlate the value of recognition in producing results.

Monetize what is easy to put a dollar sign to
Determine what the critical elements are that need to be measured – is it turnover rates; productivity levels; quality control percentages; safety levels, etc. Some of these numbers are far easier to turn into corollary currency figures.

Be aware of objectives continually on the radar screen from your senior executives. When bottom-line figures are the issue how can you make recognition an ally in the cause. If retention is a problem, how can recognition assist HR in helping managers better retain the real assets – our employees. These numbers need to be simply turned into dollar signs so conditions without recognition and those with can be compared and shown to make a difference.

We all have to become better business analysts. Ask questions of those who do perform business analysis to understand the financial implications of measures that impact business strategy. Find out how the objectives with more people strategy initiatives are being achieved and how they are viewed from a financial return perspective.

Allow some non-monetary elements to stay that way
I have gained a great deal from Jack Philips from the ROI Institute on how to turn intangibles into tangible measures. In his book Show Me the Money, I learned it is important to question the best use of our financial and human resources and ease of conversion, as to whether it is worth turning certain soft numbers into dollar signs.

Some numbers speak volumes just as they are. One organization had such low recognition scores on their employee engagement surveys that senior management automatically requested reports on how to address the issue. No dollar signs were needed there.

One also has to be careful not to squeeze the wrong numbers. Tangible rewards and bonuses do not necessarily equate with feeling recognized. Most financial rewards are really only compensation and transactional in nature. Intangible and more personal recognition is not only transforming it actually transcends a pure monetary viewpoint of work.

We need to work hard to turn soft stuff into hard results but it’s worth it.

Please share what you are doing to monetize or give stronger hard result focus to employee recognition initiatives you are carrying out.

Employee Recognition: Getting from Expense to Investment

It’s amazing when asking participants in a training session how many organizations continue to view employee recognition initiatives as an expense versus an investment. Let me give you 6 quick points moving recognition directly onto the investment column.

1. Align Employee Recognition with the Corporate Strategy
In interviewing a manager from one corporation today, it was easy to see that they are the ones left in charge of recognition and to make it “work”. The power of an effective recognition strategy is when it helps leaders and managers in achieving the business objectives and help reinforce the culture and values of an organization.

2. Determine existing measurable indicators
Whether it was Peter Drucker or W. Edwards Deming they are often attributed in having said “if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it.” Find out any all numbers available – number of programs running and what type; number of nominations, points or card recipients; how effective are the programs in employees’ eyes, etc. Capture quantitative as well as qualitative data.

3. Establish clear quantifiable business objectives
Reward and recognition programs often get dumped upon for being “soft” stuff. But when you use recognition for acknowledging people for reaching incremental targets, demonstrating great customer service attributes, and then rewarding people when targets were reached, then recognition and rewards can be a powerful player in the performance arena.

4. Apply recognition processes to improve performance and behaviors
So when you know the goals you’re shooting for you need to spell out exactly what behaviours you want to recognize or reward. For example, in one situation a company was rewarding business division managers with gift cards for completed and good safety reports. When asked if employees were being recognized for demonstrating safe workplace practices there was no affirmative answer. Always make sure you recognize the right behaviours – report writing or safe actions.

5. Measure performance and behavioral outcomes of business objectives
This goes back to the last point. Once you know what you really want to have happen – safe carrying and emptying of environmental waste into appropriate storage container, you can then define what looks like and create appropriate observable measures to validate it. Some things can be weighed objectively and others subjectively. Determined the yardstick you will use ahead of time. If you measure up then recognition or rewards are due.

6. Calculate the rate of return for your recognition processes
You simply have to calculate the net benefits from a project and divide that amount by the program costs to generate a Benefits/Cost Ratio. If it equals “1” then Benefits = Costs. If the number came out as “2” for example, it would be written as a ratio as 2:1, and means for every $1 dollar you spent on the recognition program you had a return on investment, or benefit, of $2.
To actually come up with the ROI percentage, simply subtract “1” from the Benefit/Cost Ratio and multiply by a hundred and you have your Return on Investment.

Hope this helps begin a greater focus on making your recognition programs and practices a more meaningful and valuable business tool.

Employee Recognition Community

Social media is certainly becoming a powerful factor in today’s world and in individual lives. The current social networking phenomenon is more than just a trend... it's a revolution!!!

So a few of us thought we should get on the social media revolution movement and proposed the creation of an employee recognition community. We discussed some guidelines around how we saw it functioning.

Here’s what we drafted:

* Create an authentic recognition community.
* Provide a source for member to member service and active contribution.
* Provide a nonpartisan free recognition community.
* Enhance and improve employee recognition

We knew once it was up an out there it would take a life of its own. After all, social media is all about connecting, contributing, and reaching out to other like minded people.

Will you become a part of this new community? Will you share what you know? Will you ask questions so we can all help?

If you are as passionate about recognition as I am, pop on over to the Employee Recognition Community and join right now!

Development of Trust for Authentic Recognition

How do we really create authentic and "real" recognition? Managers and employees alike are concerned what "others" think when they attempt to give positive feedback to a fellow worker.

The secret behind giving Real Recognition is building trust first so that giving of recognition is perceived and received correctly.

How do you do that, you ask?

Development of Trust can be formulaically shown using the following attributes as:

Consistency : Credibility : Trust : Relationship

Let’s look at each of these attributes.

Consistency

You need to prove to people you mean what you say and you do what you say you will do. This will require the following types of behaviours:

Behaviours
Prioritizes relationships (BlackBerry, Outlook, planner; Post-It Note(R) reminders); Self-discipline and self-management; demonstrate in speaking, writing and actions respect and recognition; values driven;

Credibility

By being consistent in your actions and words to people you work with displays a level of credibility in everyone’s eyes. It means you can be counted upon. To develop greater credibility means living the following behaviours:

Behaviours
Purpose driven; principle based; respect and common courtesy; valuing people for who they are and what they do; being transparent; being available; appreciative; calculated risk-taker;

Trust

Once you have demonstrated consistent actions proving yourself to be a credible person, you are likely to be a strong candidate of someone who can be trusted. Further characteristics necessary for being trust-worthy may include:

Behaviours
Confident; caring; right intentions; ethical decisions; admitting when wrong; immediate corrections or restitution of wrongs; logical and emotional; right results; right reasons; belief in others and self;

Relationship

All of these attributes and behaviours lead to the formation of positive relationships with those around us – those at work as well as at home. We display all of the above behaviours and many others, as well as these relationship focused skills as well, i.e.:

Behaviours
People focused: caring, concern, authentic, listening, action oriented, sincere and specific, kind acts, genuine positive feedback, encouraging, affirming, meaningful giving.

Consistency : Credibility : Trust : Relationship

These four attributes and some of the correlating behaviours shown above, are foundational qualities and skills needed to be able to give authentic recognition that can be positively felt.

Real Recognition is about Emotions

Real Recognition is an emotional response – it’s all about feelings.

Consider these facts from brain science research: First off, emotional data or stimuli, receives the second highest priority for processing in short term memory. This means that emotions can actually take over the rational processing of the brain. They tend to impact upon the conscious memory.

Recognition Significance: Powerful and meaningful expressions of praise and appreciation touch the “heart” of a person more than the rational and logical side of our mind. Is it any wonder that 59 percent of people we surveyed re-read Thank You cards they’ve received simply because they want to recall the feelings of being acknowledged?

Now, building upon this emotional connection, look at the execution of recognition giving, how you give it or how events are planned and perceived by the awardees. Brain research shows that events associated with strong emotions, whether good or bad, are usually more easily recalled.
So how you give the award, the staging, the music being played, etc. can all trigger emotional memories – positive or negative.

Recognition Significance: Plan out very carefully how you will present your recognition. Personalize the delivery and orchestrate the atmosphere of the recognition event with attention to detail that will make this memorable for the recipient. These emotional memories tend to be compared in the unconscious memory of past experiences.

So be very mindful that in giving recognition to those we work with and those at home, we are creating trigger points of experiential memory.

Let’s all outweigh any negatives from the past by creating a positive emotional response by giving those around us Real Recognition the right way.

Perceive to Receive

Why the act of recognizing Jane and her correlating positive reaction does does not yield the same results with John is a fascinating study of cognitive perception.

Our brains have greater impact upon successful recognition than we think.

Note, the act of giving recognition is a new stimulus, or set of information, for the brain to process. In fact, the brain goes through a minimum of four steps to process such information.

Register and Compare
So Bob approaches John and thanks him for getting a monthly report completed within three days after the end of the month. The first thing our brain does is looks back within the memory bank to compare this information of being “thanked”. Novel experiences are hard to process as there is nothing to compare to it to. Similar experiences from the past can actually be ignored and become status quo. This is especially the case when we give the generalized statements like “Thanks for getting this report in on time,” or simply “Great job!”

Calculate Causation
Our brain then goes into detective mode and tries to observe and perceive this data of “recognition received” to figure out the “why” – “what does Bob really want?”, “He never thanked me before, why now?”, “Why is he always so trite?” And based upon whatever past experiences we have had we actually formulate a theory for the cause for this novel or oft repeated expression of acknowledgement.

Predicting Outcome
Based on our formulation of a theory we predict what will be the outcome from the expressed thanks. “I knew it! – Bob just wants me to get another report done for him”. Or it might end up being, “Wow! Bob is becoming pretty genuine with everyone around the office. Looks like he has changed!” When we generate a correct hypothesis our brain can resume a more placid state and ignore such interactions. When we can’t seem to put things together, then something else happens.

Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is the process of dealing with discomfort of two contradictory ideas at the same time. “How come Bob is being nice to me all of a sudden?” So we end up having a motivation drive to put some order to our attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. We do this by either changing or justifying our attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. So the ideas we hold in our brain about people, places and things are pretty locked in until proven otherwise.

So as you can see it takes our brain quite a bit of processing to perceive recognition actions or words as actually recognition. We had better make our attempts at recognition giving more “brain friendly” by doing some things like the following:

1. Always be specific with expressing what the person did and how that made a difference.

2. Strive to be consistent with your recognition giving behaviours so it cannot be misinterpreted.

3. Understand where other people’s brains are at and prepare to address people’s (their brains!) concerns.

How Many Languages of Recognition?

Besides my love for reading business and psychological based non-fiction books , I also love reading books about developing oneself and improving one's marriage.

Some of you are probably familiar with Gary Chapman's acclaimed work and book The Five Love Languages which is just an excellent marriage book.

The premise of his book is that each of us has a primary "love language" and that we may be speaking the wrong language to our spouse. The five types of languages he has discovered are:

* Words of Affirmation
* Quality Time
* Receiving Gifts
* Acts of Service
* Physical Touch

I believe similar principles cross over into the field of employee recognition in that an act of recognition for one person is not meaningful to another.

My findings speak to four aspects of recognition versus actual languages, namely:

* "Appreciative Listening" - listening with intent and care
* "Recognition Talking" - speaking meaningful and specific words of acknowledgement
* "Praiseworthy Actions" - demonstrating kind actions and caring concern
* "Rewarding Giving" - taking time to give people the right things

While research continues to show people's differing recognition preferences, I wonder if we actually speak a different recognition language?

What do you think? Do we speak different recognition languages?

Prospect Theory and Recognition

Listened to Dr. John Oesch, from the Rotman School of Management, speak on Five Unusual Ideas About Change at the Strategic Capabilities Network in Toronto today. His observations were a stimulating introduction on how to improve the management of change in our organizations.

Part of his presentation showed the classic Prospect Theory developed by Dr. Daniel Kahneman from Princeton University. Oesch related this theory to change and how we can apply it. But my mind saw the theory’s impact upon employee recognition and better understanding people’s evaluative processes.

Originally built on from empirical findings, the Prospect Theory describes how individuals evaluate potential losses and gains with the original experiments having the prospect as a lottery.

In principle the Prospect Theory suggests an interesting relationship between objective (quantifiable) value and subjective (qualitative) value. Accordingly, losses have a more emotional impact than an equivalent amount of gains.

Perhaps this explains the reason why people leave organizations where there is a lack of or no recognition because they will do more to avoid the pain or loss. At the same time in organizations where recognition appears to be well delivered, after receiving multiple and ongoing recognition actions, the degree of benefit perceived, the subjective value, actually lessens over time. In fact, it would take a lot more recognition to fill the equivalent amount of perceived loss or lack of recognition.

Prospect Theory could imply that losses or lack of recognition are weighted greater or more heavily than an equivalent amount of recognition.

I haven’t found any equivalent studies on rewards and recognition, but that’s where my mind was heading after Dr. Oesch’s presentation.

Stop Thinking and Find Out

Many companies use surveys to find out the latest status on their service topic and also create some media buzz.

Earlier this year Salary.com released their 2008 Employee Satisfaction and Retention Survey results. What I picked up on were the top reasons given for leaving a job remained the same from the previous year's survey results, namely:

* Inadequate Compensation
* Inadequate Development Opportunities
* and, Insufficient Recognition

Now when you dig deeper into the survey results you discover employers were not in synch with employee perceptions. For example, employers had a good sense of overall satisfaction levels they just tended to overestimate the degree of extremely satisfied by nearly 2 to 1.

Let’s take a look at our area of interest – employee recognition.

When asked to rank the reasons why employees leave, insufficient recognition was the third highest behind compensation and career development. What’s more interesting is only 29 percent of employers thought a lack of recognition was a factor. Employees told a different story with 39 percent of them saying insufficient recognition was a key reason. Not knowing what 10 percent of your workforce is feeling about being under recognized is significant.

Managers and business owners must never assume they know the perceptions and degree of impact their employees perceive of retention factors. In other words stop thinking and find out directly. If you want to know the most valuable solution on how employees want to be recognized...ask!

Don't Recognize

A friend of mine, David Zinger, introduced me to Improvisational Theatre and drama teacher, Keith Johnstone’s work. I hadn’t heard of him before but became intrigued.

In the late 1950s, as a play-reader, director and drama teacher at the Royal Court Theatre in London, England, Johnstone reversed many of the things his teachers had taught him in order to develop more spontaneity in acting. Instruction could include making faces at each other and being playfully nasty to each other. He would tell his students, "Don't concentrate," "Don't think," "Be obvious," and "Don't be clever!" This unorthodox approach and his unique techniques opened his students' minds up to being more imaginative and spontaneous.

In my work with coaching and educating people on being more “real” and effective with their verbal expression of recognition to others, I often find myself providing structure on thinking through various steps of what to say and how to give recognition.

For those of us who have used more structured approaches of being specific, timely, etc., maybe we can begin to learn to be more spontaneous with our recognition giving.

So let’s apply some of Johnstone’s techniques towards positive verbal recognition:

“Don’t be structured”

“Be natural”

“Be yourself”

“Don’t recognize”

What if this turned into a conversation instead of an acknowledgement? Choose to get excited in doing a genuine kind act instead of giving something. Allow yourself to think what you should do next rather than planning everything out. Don’t single someone out just honor them.

Taking recognition to a more spontaneous level will stretch even those of us more comfortable and proficient in giving appreciation. It will allow us to be ourselves and make recognition giving more authentic.

My Social Media Savvy CEO

I think I just took for granted his example and so followed the lead of my CEO, Peter Hart, when it came to blogging and getting on to the social media scene. Peter has a great recognition perspective blog that you can read about here.

However, recent research from UberCEO.com indicates that CEO’s from the 2009 Fortune’s top 100 CEO’s list found they were mostly absent from the growing social media community.

The study found only two CEOs had Twitter accounts and 81 percent of CEOs did not have a personal Facebook page.

Only 13 CEOs had profiles on the professional networking site LinkedIn. Three CEOs stood out with more than 80 connections but they were all from technology companies — Michael Dell from computer maker Dell, Gregory Spierkel from technology products distributor Ingram Micro, and John Chambers from Cisco Systems Ltd.

Three quarters of the CEOs did have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those had limited or outdated information such as incorrect titles, or lacked sources.

Not one Fortune 100 CEO had a blog.

As I mentioned, Rideau’s CEO, Peter Hart has a blog, has Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as being connected on LinkedIn. So I guess I have a pretty social media savvy CEO.

How well connected with the social media is your CEO?

We've Got Barbara!

Don’t mind me if I break into singing a number from the musical movie “Annie” but changing it to “We’ve got Barbara!”

I am so happy to share with you that Barbara Ruddy, CRP, has joined the Recognition Management Institute as Senior Consultant and Trainer.

Those of you who are members of the Recognition Professionals International (RPI) should be very familiar with Barbara Ruddy, CRP. Barbara teaches all of RPI’s Certified Recognition Professional certification courses and has done a remarkable job of chairing the Recognition Champion Award program in honor of her friend and colleague, the late Pamela Sabin.

Barbara's wealth of recognition experience will greatly benefit our RMI clients as we expand our services to reach a wider audience and show leaders how to give strategic employee recognition with our focus on Real Recognition TM for Real Results.

If there is one thing Barbara and I have in common – it is our passion for employees receiving the positive and meaningful recognition they deserve.

We’re thrilled Barbara has joined our team. Welcome aboard, Barbara!

Connecting the Dots, Connecting People

Remember those join-the-dot picture or coloring books? Once you had drawn the lines between all the consecutive numbered dots...voila! There appeared the picture that was otherwise hidden from view.

Recognition can do exactly the same thing.

When you acknowledge people the right way you help connect the dots. That’s why it is critical to not just tell people specifically what they did. It is almost more important that you tell the person how and why what they did actually made a difference. This is the Two-Part Specificity Rule in action – the what and the why.

Whether an employee’s actions helped you get some performance numbers in on time for your report to look good for a meeting presentation; or a hotel registration clerk sent up some water and cookies to your room because they heard you had a headache; or perhaps an employee got a shipment out that night for a special order request for a customer - TELL them how this benefited you, the customer, and/or the company.

Connect the dots!

Recognition also allows us to connect better with people.

By giving sincere, positive and timely feedback to people and by using the Two-Part Specificity Rule – the feedback and praise given will come across as being genuine, authentic and thereby REAL!

And it will be “felt”.

Giving meaningful recognition allows you to connect with people because it is all about relationships. Check out the positive friendships you have with those at work, your neighbourhood, and other networks, how did you form those connections?

Simply, you were consistent in your greetings and giving of time to that person and they reciprocated in kind. Your consistency in actions led to credibility you could be counted on as a friend to do anything they might need. And this credibility led to a high balance of trust. Relationships are built upon this trust.

So there you have it. Recognition not only helps you see the big picture of what your company’s really doing – the connecting the dots – it also helps you reinforce wonderful relationships – connecting people.

What is recognition?

One of the dilemmas we have in the recognition industry is our use of the word “recognition”. It is no wonder our clients are confused if we the educators, consultants and providers of recognition services and products don’t even agree on what we mean by the term.

A case in point became very evident to me when I assessed a particular company wanting to improve their recognition specific engagement scores. After looking at the formal quantifiable data I requested to interview a sampling of both managers and employees to gain an insight on the human perceptions.

Like many companies this one had focused on delivery of cash based awards through an on-line approval based system. Recognition practices, however, were inconsistent in occurrence and were typically associated with stronger interpersonal skilled leaders versus technical skilled managers.

So I asked a simple question of each manager and employee I met with, “Does your company give and focus more on “rewards” or on “recognition”?” Besides coming out with an overwhelming consensus that their company followed a rewards paradigm, there was one employee I could not even shift in his thinking that “recognition” and “rewards” were two separate things. Scary isn’t it?

This is my take on defining the two terms:

Recognition: is a tangible or intangible expression of acknowledging an individual’s contribution, achievements or observed behaviours.

• You’ll find recognition works on the intrinsic motivation of a person
• Because recognition affects the self-esteem of an individual it positively influences future performance
• Recognition impacts long-term focus of a person and retains them and keeps them engaged

Rewards: are something given or done in return for meeting pre-determined goals, or as merits for some service or achievement and can often be financial in nature.

• Rewards are an extrinsic motivation tool so are externally focused
• Rewards are contractual in nature – you do this and you get that. It has little or no effect on self-esteem
• They are always short-term focused so they don’t last long in their effect and have far less retention or engagement value.

So before you begin to give recognition, make sure you know what it is you’re really giving.

What is “recognition” to you?

In-Room Breakfast – On Time or the Best Banana?

While attending the Society for Human Resource Management conference where I am presenting on “Recognition ROI 3: Measuring Employee Recognition for Maximum Results”, I have been staying at the Marriott New Orleans at the Convention Center just across the road from the Morial Convention Center.

To speed things along each morning I have done the door hanger ordering of breakfast for the last two days.

Ashley has been my server each day and yesterday arrived bang on the initial time of the 15 minute range you tick off for arrival time. She even suggested I use the same door hanger again if I was ordering the same option. No one has ever suggested that before but for us creatures of habit it was a Green idea that I liked.

Today she arrived right in the middle at 7:07 a.m.

Ashley apologized for not being there on time – which for her the standard was the first time on the tick off box. Then she explained she had waited till they had some better bananas in the kitchen (I had ordered one) because what they had were small and not as nice.

I enjoyed that banana very much this morning. It was not picked fresh of the tree today. Instead, it was picked by a very caring server who thought more about the end result in the eyes of the customer that being absolutely on time.

After all she still had 7 minutes to go before it would have been considered late! Thank you, Ashley!!

Are we instilling similar initiative into our employees for them to think what would the customer really want? This can be the same for either internal or external customers. And when they take that extra special caring action why not share with the customer exactly what they did. Ashley’s actions made me thank her a little more enthusiastically than I normally do. She also made me think about what I do to give my clients “a better banana” with the service I provide.

Imagine starting your day with this experience as I did. It has left an impact and made a blog entry. Now go check the quality of your bananas before you give them to a customer.

Two Factors for Winning Over Cultural Differences

Are there differences with giving meaningful recognition by people from different countries? The simple answer is, “yes”. Some countries are better at it than others.

The solution is very interesting.

After an 8 country tour of Europe while conducting training sessions there, I started to observe some patterns of behaviour. In fact, by the presence or lack of these behaviours one could predict the level of proficiency in giving effective employee recognition from one country to another.

Now while I cannot generalize from the representatives from one client to the citizens of a country as whole, there is still much that can learned from these two variables.

Are you ready for them?

By the degree of courtesy demonstrated and the quality of leadership displayed one could create a strong correlation as to who had high versus low recognition specific scores from their engagement survey.

Low courtesy and weaker leadership = low recognition scores.

High courtesy and strong leadership = high recognition scores.

These factors did not reside in just one person. They were manifest by the first person met whether at the reception or on the elevator. It seems either everyone reflected these qualities or just a small subset did. The more universal courtesy and leadership were in an office this impacted the kind of scores an office achieved.

So how courteous are your people to those who visit your company? Does everyone display leadership qualities in doing the right thing without having to ask someone?

Two simple ideas for overcoming potential cultural limitations in giving recognition in the workplace.

Oh ...you’re very welcome!!

CNN Effect for Communicating Recognition to Senior Leaders

In order to get senior leader buy-in to strategize, align and use recognition effectively you may have to use the CNN Method to communicate the power and benefit of recognition practices and programs.

My travel across Europe and staying in hotels causes me to turn on the English version of CNN to catch up on the news. You can use the CNN methods of news reporting to inform, inspire and reinforce recognition with your senior leader team.

Let’s examine closely and apply the CNN Method of communication

Developing Story
Often you will hear and see the broad headline category of a Developing Story on CNN. Keep your leaders informed of any new developments with recognition practices or programs. Never let them hear about some new recognition initiative through the grapevine. They must hear directly and where possible hear it first.

Breaking News
Negative news always travels faster than positive with some research stating 10 times faster. Provide your leaders with any recognition faux pas in presentations or missed recognition opportunities with employees so they can be addressed quickly and apologetically. At the same time make sure they hear about exemplary actions and behaviours of people that might provide your leader with a chance to shine by sending some personal acknowledgement to an employee in the company.

Scroll-bar Updates
You’ve seen them while watching a CNN report. Underneath the camera shot or news report you find succinct news updates highlighted in short text scrolling to the left underneath. This is similar with providing short email reports to a leader on what’s happening. Or it’s taking advantage of hallway or elevator encounters to give a headline version report to them.

Special Report
Then on a predetermined frequency you need to provide your leaders with Special Reports. These are the accountability reviews that should be held at least quarterly with an annual end of year review ahead of annual planning for the following year.

So take advantage of one of the media's leading news sources in communicating your recognition messages...use the CNN Effect.

Make Eye Contact

Flying over to Europe yesterday (and today!!) to conduct some recognition training for a client, I realized that I am making some extra effort to make better eye contact with those I thank.

Check out what happens for you when you thank someone. Do you take the time, as I had to, to look up, focus clearly on the person's eyes, and THEN say thank you?

Often it is easy to make a tertiary glance towards someone but with eyes never meeting one another.

For me, the response was almost consistently to receive a smile back and, I believe, a more enthusiastic intonation in the verbal response back.

Take time today, and everyday, to assess your experience and make better eye contact with those you acknowledge face-to-face.

Survivor's Strategy

You’ve heard the numbers. As of April 2009, the U.S. national unemployment rate was 8.9%, which constitutes 13.7 million workers out of work which is up from the prior month. These figures strike fear in employees and leaders alike but what turns fear into terror? Seeing it happen right before your eyes.

Watching fellow worker’s positions eliminated is extremely stressful for the workers left behind. Those remaining are made to feel they are the lucky ones. But these workers may not be feeling all that lucky. Eight-hour shifts now stretch into ten-hours or more. These employees have taken on the additional tasks and duties of those recently let go.

Dr. Jean-Pierre Brun in a study at the University of Laval in Quebec, showed the second highest cause of workplace stress was a lack of recognition. No recognition came only one place behind being overworked.

To help reduce employee stress leaders must improve the quality of recognition being delivered and create greater connection with each other.

Action Items

1. Allow your employees to connect with those around them. Increase the social aspect to break the intense level of pressure employees are feeling through lunches together or sports activities, etc. Don’t forget to connect yourself with employees by getting out on the floor and listening one on one and providing feedback.

2. Express appreciation every chance you can. Employees need to know you understand their feelings. Acknowledge the stress and pressure they are going through.