Image Credit: Multnomah County Library
As a manager you need to remember that celebrating our achievements is important for every team. Joyfully acknowledging milestones gives credit to the hard work done by the team, provides motivation for reaching goals, and rewards everyone for a job well done. Nowhere is this truer than where we work. Managers need to realize that many of team members spend more time working than with their families, and the rewards can seem few and far between. How can a manager acknowledge a job well done?
Use Company Meetings
Take the time to hold a monthly all-hands meetings for the team to have lunch, conversation, and a performance review. These are natural occasions for celebrating achievements, because the atmosphere is as festive as it is formal. It can have the ambience and energy of a party without actually being one. The members of your team will know that they are there to work, but the excitement of reuniting with friends and colleagues while chowing down on a delicious buffet lifts their spirits and create extra incentive to revel in their victories while still acknowledging where they have fallen short.
Utilize Employee Shout-Outs
Managers can make use of the communication tools that are being used in the office to celebrate accomplishments. If your office uses the Slack group communication tool, consider dedicating a Slack channel to nothing but shout-outs from one colleague to another. These shout-outs are a brief notice of congratulation or gratitude. One of these takes seconds to compose, cost absolutely nothing, and can be read and appreciated no matter where team members happen to be working at the moment.
What we need to understand is that when you like and admire someone, reading about their triumphs is emotionally akin to experiencing a triumph of your own. This is even better when you know that the person who wrote the shout-out did so of their own volition. It means more because no one was pressuring them – it stemmed from a spontaneous moment of affection and esteem.
A shout-out using the Slack tool is both public and personal; a universal shot in the arm. You need to tell your team to be aware of the efforts of others. You can make this happen by setting the example by posting regular shout-outs yourself.
Generate Customer Shout-Outs
It is the responsibility of a manager that when your company reaches a major milestone you try to keep your customers in the loop. One way to do this is to engage the public. You can craft a special email or blog post; publish a press release; host a charitable event. Some managers send out personal thank-you notes to those clients who’ve been with them the longest.
Only Celebrate Appropriate Events
Every organization has their own set of so-called vanity metrics that are achievements that look awesome on paper without serving the primary goals of the business. Managers who celebrate them are showing their team cynicism, confusion, desperation, or all three at once.
Always Remember The Individual Contributor
Good managers don’t forget personal milestones. If you have a team member who’s been with you 10 years, reach out to them. If someone’s just had twins, reach out. A great way to acknowledge anniversaries is to have a monthly lunch with employees who hit their year mark. Gather at a restaurant with these employees tell funny or moving stories and just enjoy your time together. Pick someone to remind you, and note special events in your calendar. Arrive and recognize that these occasions aren’t so much about your company as about the people who keep it going.
What All Of This Means For You
Good managers are the ones who realize that the members of their team who are contributing a great deal to the success of the team need to be recognized. Yes, a big party is nice but taking the time to recognize them in smaller, more meaningful ways can go a long way also. There is no one perfect way to make sure that you show the members of your team that you appreciate them, but there are a lot of different ways that you can get the word out. Take the time to recognize what your team has been able to accomplish and you’ll be setting the stage for their future accomplishments.
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™
Question For You: Do you think that it is important that senior management hear about your team’s accomplishments?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
The world of management is filled with a number of different buzz words. One such word that we’ve been hearing for a while is “emotional intelligence”. The reason that managers should start to pay attention to this topic is because evidence is showing that emotional intelligence plays a big role in workplace performance if we can develop the right manager skills. Team members with high emotional intelligence perform better and usually experience better psychological and physical well-being. As managers, clearly this is something that we are going to have to take some time to get some manager training in order to get our hands around it. Let’s see what we should be doing to become more emotionally intelligent.