Does Your Team Know That You Appreciate Them?

How do you show your IT team that you appreciate them?
How do you show your IT team that you appreciate them?

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Appreciation is a word that I believe that we’re all familiar with, but do we really know what it means? More importantly, as IT managers do we take the time to show the members of our team that we appreciate them and the work that they do? If we’re not doing this, then we’re missing out on a great opportunity…

Why Appreciation Is So Importantly

As a IT manager, one of your most important IT manager skills is to communicate clearly with your team. I think that we all understand that we need to quickly step in and correct actions that team members are doing that are not right. However, I think that all too often we forget that there is another side to this – we also need to show appreciation for our team members when they do something right.

The beauty of showing appreciation is that it really doesn’t cost anything. It also doesn’t take a lot of time to do correctly. However, when you take the time to show appreciation for a member of your team, it can have a very large impact on them – they feel that their work is being noticed and their efforts are valued.

How you go about showing appreciation is up to you. There are countless ways to make this happen. Of course a face-to-face meeting is the most direct way. However, in today’s distributed work environment you can also show your appreciation via a telephone call, an email, or even via a text message.

The Problem With Not Showing Appreciation

All too often we IT managers don’t even think about showing appreciation to our team members. The reasons for this can be quite complex. More often than not, it comes down to the simple fact that during our career, our bosses never showed us much appreciation so we don’t think to show it to our team members. We never got any IT manager training in how to show appreciation.

Another reason that some IT managers are hesitant to show appreciation is because they think that they don’t have to. Their thinking goes that the members of their team are being paid to perform their jobs, why should any additional appreciation be required? The mistake here is that by showing some appreciation, there is a good chance that your team will do an even better job of performing their jobs.

At the end of the day, your job as an IT manager is to inspire your team to do their best work. The simple act of showing some appreciation can go a long way in making this happen. There is no good reason that showing appreciation should not be a part of your everyday manager activities.

What All Of This Means For You

As an IT manager it is your responsibility to keep your team motivated and performing at their peak level. Sure IT team building can help with this; however, limited budgets and the time crunch that most teams live under mean that we need to always be on the lookout for ways that we can tell our team that they are doing a good job. It turns out that appreciation is a great way to go about doing this.

Appreciation doesn’t cost anything and it really does mean a lot to the members of your team. Many managers are hesitant to provide their team members with appreciation because they think that they don’t need it. It turns out that appreciation is one of the most sought after things that all IT team members want.

In this life it is all too rare for a tool to come along that doesn’t cost us anything to use. Appreciation is one such tool. Realize that the members of your team are desperate for appreciation from you and make sure that you give it to them. It’s easy to do and you sure can’t beat the price!

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that it is possible to provide the members of your team with too much appreciation?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When a IT Manager makes a hiring decision, it can have a long lasting impact on the team. This means that the IT Manager wants use their IT manager skills and take his or her time when considering candidates and not make a foolish blunder. However, all too often we select the wrong person for the wrong job. Looking back at our hiring mistakes, more often than not it turns out that we made one of the three most common mistakes that IT Managers make when hiring someone.