Full Capacity

My colleague, Max Brown, and I had the delight of interviewing Jim Kouzes, co-author of The Leadership Challenge today for our Real Recognition Radio show.

As I came away from this insightful sharing from Jim on the simplicity and awesome power and responsibility of leadership as a driving force for “encouraging the heart” I realized many leaders are not operating on full “leadership” capacity.

Jim reminds all of us that the job of a leader is to improve performance, not to diminish or leave performance where it currently is. If those in leadership position cannot fulfill the role of being able to encourage and help people do more and be more they should get out of leadership.

Leaders must daily fill up their leadership gas tanks to be on full when they reach the company and interact with their people.

Jim told us leaders must develop their capacity to encourage the hearts of others. They must turn introspectively on their own lives and reflect and recall the emotional connection of their own meaningful recognition experience. By tapping into this emotional well of human reality they will find the meaning and reason for acknowledging the worth and contributions of those around them.

Never drive to work on empty.

RMI hits the airwaves

Beginning on February 23rd, I will be co-hosting along with S. Max Brown, RMI’s VP of Organizational Learning, Voice of America’s newest weekly radio show: Real Recognition Radio.

Real Recognition Radio is going to go back to what recognition is really all about. We’re going to help make better people and create more positive relationships. We’ll look at what’s new and exciting in the field of employee rewards, recognition and incentives. We’ll also talk to people who have lived successes and failures to help us learn what works and what doesn’t.

The show’s first installment will be featuring Brenna Garratt as our first guest. Brenna Garratt is a member of Rideau Recognition Solutions’ board of directors and CEO of The Delve Group, Inc. Brenna has been instrumental in working with Senior Executives to reshape and reposition existing brands, as well as invent, position and promote new ones so they are correctly understood internally and externally in their respective marketplaces.

Having been active in both the recognition field and marketing, Brenna’ll be discussing the importance of marketing and communication within your recognition program so your program touches your employees and achieves the goals you intended it to.

Real Recognition Radio will show you how to get real results in the workplace through meaningful recognition solutions.

The show premiers February 23rd, and will air every Tuesday at 1 PM ET on the VoiceAmerica Business Channel. Click here for more info!

Kept and Re-read Thank You's

You probably have them too.

Thank you cards and notes from people in drawers, on bulletin boards or special places. You just can’t make yourself chuck them or recycle them, can you? And have you also noticed if you’ve kept a card you are likely to re-read it at different points of your life.

Why is that?

We conducted research to answer this question and discovered the highest ranked reason recipients gave for re-reading cards was simply to recall the feelings they had when they were first acknowledged.

We thought we should dig deeper and ask what factors contributed to a thank you card actually being kept.

We gave them a bunch of factors to choose from. Let’s see how these factors stacked up against your first impressions. Here are the top 5 items given:

1. Top of the list with 84 percent of respondents was the sender writing the card versus having their assistant or someone else writing it.
2. Second, was ensuring the card or note was handwritten and not typed.
3. Next, was the specific wording used in the content of the card.
4. Obviously the relationship between the writer and the recipient was important.
5. And finally the timeliness of the card being received after the action or event being acknowledged.

Now go write a keeper!

ACTION: Share your reasons for why you keep certain thank you cards or notes and toss out others.

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.

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.

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.