[Music] Can you recall a time that you felt like super valued or appreciated by somebody that had some authority over you, maybe by a manager? What did they do? How do they impact you? I'm just curious. You know, I had a manager named Denise and to be honest, I was not a full grown adult at this point. I think I might have been just 18 at this point, but I was a janitor in a retirement home. I worked by myself most of the time. It was a bit of an isolating job. But she would, first of all, most days I would see her for the first hour of my shift. She was super welcoming and always asked me about my day and just was very caring. I really look forward to seeing her every day. Then she would probably, I don't know how often, but it felt pretty frequently, maybe weekly, I don't know, maybe not even that much. But she would go out of her way to say something like, "I think you're the only janitor that moves the couches and cleans back behind those." I noticed that the other day and I'm just really impressed by that. She would just, again, every so often, she would just point out some really specific thing that she really appreciated about me. It was funny because each thing she mentioned, I had maybe done maybe a couple times. I wasn't doing it necessarily consistently until she said that thing. Then it just became, "Oh, man, I'm doing that." She so proud of me. It was really cool. It was super motivating, but it also I just felt like she really saw me and I just, man, I felt like I would do anything for. Psychologically, why does receiving recognition and appreciation like that matter? How have you thought about this? What does it do for us personally in our jobs and our lives? Why does it matter? Yeah, that's a great question. As you probably know, man, I've thought about that a lot in my life. I know that, and we talk about this a lot in our workshops, we protect our sense of self pretty fiercely. It is really important to us that we are able to see ourselves as valued and worthy. It's actually, it's said that it's one of the worst types of emotional pain to not like yourself. You're 24/7 with this person. If you don't like that person very much, that's super painful. We're very much committed to seeing ourselves as worthy and valuable. Getting some kind of affirmation from somebody else, seeing that we're seen as valuable or we're seen as worthy as worthy by someone else gives us almost some kind of sort of internal permission to see ourselves that way. Bottom line, I just think we're like it or not. For some people more than others, of course, we are looking for affirmation so that we can feel good about who we are. Yeah, absolutely. We also often talk about the different domains in which we're always human beings. There were always scanning the environment for to make sure that we're safe. It's literally about a survival in a sense. One of the things we're always scanning for is this thing they talk about as status. It's not necessarily status. I am higher up in the hierarchy or anything like that. I mean, I might have an element to that, but it's really like, am I respected here? Do I matter? Am I seen? Do my contributions to this tribe, to this community? Are they seen? This is probably no mystery to anybody out there, but maybe it is. Recognition and appreciation is a deep psychological evolutionary human need. Yeah. No, absolutely. In fact, back in the day, our ancient 50 member tribes. Back in your day. Yeah. Thanks, dude. Back in that day, the millions of years ago, we're low status. We might not survive. This really was a physical survival issue. Now, and I say this a lot in class, our brains are confused. Our brains still think we're living back there. They confuse social danger with physical danger. If somebody is going to criticize me or doesn't like me, or whatever, at least to some degree, my brain is a little confused by that. My brain is immediately thinking, oh no, I'm about to die when in reality. No, no big deal. Someone doesn't like me, right? But yeah, we're looking for that status hit quite often. Yeah. Yeah. It's well understood that our software has not updated yet. Our society has, right? When we're in the workplace, it's not actually about our physical danger. We kicked out of the workplace. For most of us, we'll probably survive. But our brains are not operating to the front of our brains, understanding that necessarily, right? Anyways, we're going to get into this. I'm starting to get ahead of myself. By the way, welcome to the managing with Mind and Heart podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Ethan and with me today, Mike, Mike, introduce yourself. Hi, I'm the other host. I'm Mike and, and, and, well, yeah, welcome to the podcast. This is going to be a fun conversation. Yeah, it is. I think it will be. And I, today, as you could probably tell at this point, you're like, we're going to talk about the art, the science, really the skill of providing our employees with recognition and appreciation. And before you decide to tune out here, just understand that it is a much more kind of nuanced. It really is a skill to learn. It's more than just simply, hey, nice job. Good work. Right. So let's talk about this. Now, of course, this is a manager focused podcast, but the skill applies in relationships in general, you know, at some level. Like people are going to be motivated by thoughtful, by sincere recognition. And, you know, I'm sure you believe this as well. But one of my beliefs is that we're just going to have much more profound, much more meaningful relationships when we really start to lean in and embrace this skill of showing recognition and appreciation. So again, it's crucial for managers to get good at this skill. But this skill applies in peer-to-peer relationships. It applies when you're, quote unquote, managing up. It applies to building strong families. So think about that today as we're going through this. I mean, this is really about at the end of the day, emotional IQ. It is recognizing the needs and emotions of other people and then making good choices based on that information. And the good choices here is knowing how and when to provide someone with recognition in a way that actually taps into their emotional needs. And so I'll just tell you a quick story. This is just this week. And I don't think you even know this, but our fridge broke. And so we are in the process of trying to get a part replaced. And so we're using coolers and having to buy bags of ice. And then it's just a constant rhythm roll of keeping our food from spoiling. And so, you know, the evening, I'm dumping out old ice. I'm doing a bunch of things. My wife Alyssa comes home and she just kind of stops me and just says something like, Hey, look, I really just appreciate you jumping in on this stuff and just kind of doing it without complaining and in fact, doing it with kind of a positive attitude and just kind of joking about it. She's like, I was kind of worked up about it. But the way you're handling it, it actually just calms me down about this situation. It's just it was 30 seconds. Now was this manipulation on her part to try to get me to do more? Maybe it might have been no, probably not. No, Alyssa, it was not manipulation. But it guess what? It did cause me to want to just kind of do more and keep contributing. I don't think that was her point when she said it. It was sincere. But it also made me want to find ways to show appreciation for her efforts because I kind of stopped and thought, well, you're kind of jumping in a lot too. And so this is a human skill. And I'm excited. Talk about this today. Yeah, me too. Yeah. You're absolutely right. It's a it is a human need. It's a skill that we all could develop. You know, it's comes easier, right? To some people more than others. Right. There's there's certain behavior styles who
You know, if they're not careful, they lean a little bit toward the honey. I told you I loved you when I married you. I like that. I changed my mind. You know, do we need to keep rehashing this kind of thing? And, you know, so some of us more than others maybe have to get this on our radar for, and for others, it comes, it comes easier. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, there is this cool study, this research that we've been looking at lately. This is done by the Work Human Analytics and Research Institute, in case you want to look that up. But actually, really well done study, you know, for those nerds out there. I mean, it's like over 3500 different, 3500 different fully employed adults were surveyed here, and they found that the, it was pretty statistically robust. So it's a good study. And what they, so I'll put it this way. The one thing employees would change about their work culture was to question ask, what is the one thing that you would most want to change about your work culture? The answer was more appreciation. When asked, what's the one thing they wish their manager did more of? Guess what the answer is. Number one, show more appreciation. And there's lots of other studies. I mean, you know, another study shows it around 66% of employees said that say they would leave their job if they didn't feel appreciated. There was a Harvard Business Review article. We were reading the other day and it showed that about 82% of employees don't feel their supervisors recognize them enough for their contributions. 40% said that they would actually put more energy into their work if they were recognized more. 87% of employees indicated that recognition is a primary factor that motivates something to do their best work. Now I'll stop rambling on here in a second, but I just want to paint the picture of how big of a deal this is. The last study all point to is the one that we cite often throughout our workshops by Ken Kovak, who is a professor, who studied a lot of research to employ motivation. And this cool study that he did and he repeated it throughout the years is basically he would ask employees, hey, what are your top, top once in the workplace? And he would get aggregated results. Then he would ask their managers, hey, what do you think employees want most? Okay. And then he could pair the results. The difference between what employees say they want and what managers think they want. Number one for employees as far as what they said they want most is interesting work. Number two was appreciation for their efforts. Now where do you think appreciation for their efforts showed up on the manager's list of things they think employees want all the way down at number eight. And so my question for you here, Mr. Nash, Mr. Mike Nash is, I kind of want to explore this gap a little bit. So with recognition, clearly being so important, why does it appear that maybe managers are not appreciating their employees enough or or why does it appear that managers might be like undervaluing the power of appreciation? Good question. We explore that a lot in the workshops and I ask that question and I get tons of good responses, honest, authentic responses. I mean, let's kind of brainstorm on this, but I would say that one of the responses I hear the most often is it's hard for a lot of managers to keep this on the radar because it feels like you're kind of thinking people for doing what they're supposed to do anyways. You know, that feeling of, you know, it's like, well, why should you have to say something when this is what they get paid for? And it kind of, I hear a little bit of, I mean, they get a paycheck, right? Yeah. It's like entitled, like all these people are entitled. Yeah. Somebody gets a trophy thing and I've even had people kind of immediately go to some sort of generational bias and oh, yeah, it's the younger generations that need a whole bunch of thank-us and they're missing the truth of what, you know, I mean, what you've just shared, which is literally research-based truth and it's just kind of just instinctually true as well, right? this about humans. But they're missing this partly out of, yeah, the sphere of kind of creating an entitlement culture. That's one of the things that I hear a lot. And we talk about, I mean, even when they say things like, isn't that paycheck enough of a reward or a thanks? And I just have to remind people that your paycheck is absolutely not a reward. Your paycheck is yours. You earned that. In fact, if you want to test that, try with holding it from your employee for a couple of months, right? It's not a thank you. It's not a reward. It's what they earned. And in fact, you're holding their money for two weeks for them. Their paycheck is the agreement they made when they took this job. That's exactly right. I work here. You give me this paycheck. Yeah, that's the basic agreement. And I think that whole, why should I have to think them? I think that kind of reveals that kind of misunderstanding. Why should I? This is actually about what literally motivates people to bring their best off to work. That's why you should. This isn't something that anyone's demanding from you. This is really about what's going to help people feel seen and cared about, et cetera. So again, one of the roadblocks, I think, is yeah, it's kind of this entitlement fear. I think another one that's closely related is you just don't notice the big stuff. I mean, sorry, you notice only the big stuff. You're waiting for the home runs. You're waiting for that super big extra effort. And I'll remember to say thank you and I'll remember to appreciate that. But I have a hard time maybe remembering to appreciate maybe things about the person's character or the less dramatic, more subtle stuff or the consistency or the positive attitude they always bring or whatever. So you just kind of miss those opportunities and you're just kind of waiting for the big home runs. Yeah, yeah. I think those are all real reasons why giving recognition and appreciation can be difficult for us and for managers at time. I mean, another thing is just like, let's be practical here. Sometimes it's just a lack of time that gets in our way as managers. And we're not even necessarily thinking about it, but we're running from one thing to the next, one meeting to the other, one, and we just don't stop and take the time to appreciate, even if we feel that appreciation towards somebody. I also think that there can also be a fear of favoritism that can get in our way as managers. That's gone in my way before. I just the idea that look, I've already given this person some appreciation, if I give them appreciation again, am I showing favoritism or what if somebody sees me give somebody else appreciation and I'm having given them. And so I'm kind of like overanalyzing, overthinking this situation. Second guessing, your second guessing, right? And so there's all these different factors that can get in our way that I think contributes to this problem that we've outlined in the research of, doesn't seem like employees are feeling like they're getting an appreciation, appreciate as much as they would like to, even though it's one of the greatest motivators at work. Exactly. And I know we want to move on, but let me just mention, there's a couple of really insidious ones and one of them is that sort of your introuble thing. It's, this happens a lot. I used to do, as you know, I was a social worker and well, I raised some kids by the way. You know, you remember that? I raised some kids. And there's this thing that parents slip into and managers slip into, which is that your introuble fallacy, which is the idea that, for example, when I work with foster kids, or foster families, I remember, you know, a kid would be grounded for the weekend, you know, and that's the punishment. That's his consequence for whatever it was he's done. He's grounded. But then the foster parents would kind of accidentally think they had to treat him like he was introuble. Like don't play monopoly with him and don't have popcorn and don't laugh 'cause he's in trouble, right? And the way that applies in the workplace is, you, and I've heard this quite often, you'll have an employee who is not succeeding in some area. They might even be on some sort of corrective action plan. And so the manager feels like, well, I can't be appreciative or say thank you or show, you know, recognition for other things because this person is sort of introuble and I don't want to send mixed messages, right? And that would be a mixed message. If they're, you know, over here, they're not doing well, but I think them about, you know, we're recognizing them about something over here. So taking a little mixed up on that. And then the last thing is the awkward factor. A lot of managers just say it's awkward. Given the phrase is awkward, it just feels weird. It feels condescending. It feels like how do I say it? And, you know, to go up to someone and say, I really appreciate this about you is kind of tender, right? In a way, it's kind of personal. It kind of feels like it's very, very relational in a sense, even though we're talking about work. And I think that a lot of managers just feel awkward. It's a bit awkward, yeah. And for those that, for those that think it feels a bit awkward, I would give them the advice that one of my managers gave me in the past when I said it was,
awkward to just call people out of the blue and cold call. And the advice was, I understand that. And my best advice is to you is to get over that. That's nice. I like it. Anyways. So like let's touch on a couple more things here and then we're really going to get practical and getting into the skill of delivering this. But I want to talk about like again, a little bit more about why it's so important that managers demonstrate the skill. I mean, we talk about what gets in the way. Obviously we talked about how it can motivate people and it's a human need. But at practical level here, I mean, I'll just start with this one. And we've said this several times on this podcast before, but dogs, dolphins and humans, repeat behaviors, they get rewarded for. And so understanding that the end of the day, one of your jobs as a leader, one of our jobs as managers is to help motivate people. And this is one way to do it. If I see something this great and I would like that thing to be repeated, reward, recognition. So that is one of the reasons why we should be doing this as managers. But what else? That's why I, that's why I started mopping under the couches. Because I exactly got recognized for it. Yeah, that's exactly right. Oh, yeah, lots of reasons, right? I think the big reason is you've just got this. And again, we've talked about this here quite often. It's that relational bank account I have with every one I supervise. There's, well, I have one with everyone I know actually, but, you know, the people that I supervise, there's this relational bank account that I am actually going to have to take withdrawals from quite often, maybe, right? Meaning I'm going to say no to your request or I'm going to have to correct you about something or I'm going to just be grumpy someday or I'm going to forget to follow through or whatever. I'm absolutely going to take withdrawals from this bank account. And you don't want to have a negative bank account with anybody, especially one of your employees, right? And so lots and lots of deposits. And what that creates is these relationships that we call elastic as opposed to brittle. And so that that relationship now becomes more able to withstand hard times or difficult conversations as opposed to these brittle relationships that are going to break because something bad happens. And so, yeah, this, this, these constant or, you know, regular deposits, I think are really necessary for the health of that relationship over time. Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, that bank account is extremely important, one to focus on here, make deposits because you will make withdrawals. I love that. I mean, the other thing here that I think often gets overlooked, especially in our role as a manager is just that showing recognition and appreciation is contagious in a sense. And there's a lot of research that backs us up that, especially as the manager, the things that you do, especially that are, you know, creating kind of positive emotion in people, that spreads. Other people start showing more appreciation or recognition to each other. And do we want a positive workplace culture? I think we do. And so just know that you can have a really cool effect if you just embrace this skill of giving recognition and appreciation. So it's contagious. Yeah. And you just, you just said something about especially for a manager and just a, if we could take just a quick side, sort of side note on the power differential, which we've talked about here quite often, right? And I actually had a conversation recently. We were talking about the power differential with one of my coaching clients. And they were under the impression that I thought the power differential was a bad thing. Like it's a problem, you know, and I can see where they got that. Cause we had talked about how maybe a manager might misuse their power differential and create a lack of approachability. But the power differential is your friend. I mean, it's a, it's actually one of the greatest gifts we have as managers and we get to use it for good. And in this particular topic, man, when you get recognition and thanks and praise from somebody with the power differential, it makes an amazing impact. I mean, people, I test this in class. People remember their whole lives when a manager praised them. Like when a person with a power differential praises them, it's a really big deal. And it can actually do a little bit of restorative transference for people. Like, you know, not, I mean, this gets a little bit more personal, but I mean, not everybody had great childhoods. You know, not everybody received the kind of recognition and praise they needed, you know, as human beings. And here they are in a workplace with this person with a power differential. And that person recognizes them and sees some good in them and is able to, you know, articulate that that gets into people like that actually touches them in a pretty deep place and kind of and can actually help them grow in some pretty healthy directions. So there's not, there's some really great ways to use our power differential, which it's fun to talk about this. Yeah. It's about creating that positive transference in people in a sense. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think the one of the, I think you're hitting on this, but I think one of the bottom lines here with this whole conversation is that power differential, when you have a power differential plus appreciation, I'm giving appreciation, that can equal employees feeling valued, employees feeling engaged, employees having higher morale and ultimately employees being more committed to the team, to the work. Yes. No one of our favorite quotes is by William James, the deepest principle in human nature is a craving to be appreciated, which I think is so true. Yeah. And here's a great follow up code. Stephen Covey, right? Leadership involves communicating someone's worth and potential. So clearly that they're inspired to see it in themselves. I want to talk about instant, instant serity, instant, instant serity. For some reason that word doesn't sound right when I say that, instant serity. I want to talk a little bit about that because I would say that for me, the fear of feedback sounding or positive feedback sounding, instant seer has gotten my way before. And Ethan, you are so awesome. Right. You're just so awesome. G, thanks. Thanks. But all right. So I'll just tell you a quick story. So when I was, when I was managing a team of healthcare recruiters, I went through kind of my first, we did this like kind of standardized feedback process with our team. And I went through my first feedback process with my team and the feedback that I got from my team members, pretty loud and clear was, I don't give enough positive feedback. Okay. And quite frankly, when I first got this feedback and read, and was reading this, I was kind of pissed. And quite frankly, I think I was in denial at the time. Yet I would say this experience here, getting this feedback represented one of my biggest, kind of most profound leadership shifts in terms of what it means to give positive feedback. Because in my mind, and I had this conversation with some of my employees is like, look, I'm constantly saying like good job and good work. And I will, I will never forget this comment. One of my employees just looks at me and goes, what specifically have you given positive feedback on? And I was like, what? She was like, what specifically have you given us positive feedback on? And I drew a blank like it was a light ball moment for me because I was going around saying, hey, good job. You know, great work. Great job today, folks. And other than that's bad, it's just that I was never actually being tackful enough to say this specifically is what I'm thankful for or what I'm appreciative of. And to them, after a while, all the good jobs and good work, it kind of came off as insincere. They stopped kind of believing that that was really true. If that makes sense. Yeah. I don't know. Do you, do you experience that before or seen that before? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's the, it's the, it's the manager, maybe who's kind of got the, just the basic idea that I'm supposed to give praise. So they just randomly give praise. Hey, good job. Or you guys are really awesome or whatever. And it feels a little bit like a management skill they're trying to do. But it doesn't actually connect with anything real. So I'm right. Yeah, you're spot on. It's one of the, one of the reasons I think praise or affirmations can come across as in Cicero's because it's too general. I don't know. I don't know where to plug it in. It's too general. And like what are some other reasons that feedback ends up getting interpreted as insincere outside of just this general good work? You're awesome. Yeah, one of them is, and this is something we talk a lot about in workshops when we're helping organizations or managers create some sustainability and put these skills into practice. You'll have a manager who kind of gets a light bulb moment in, in the workshop and or in coaching and they'll realize, hey, I need to give more appreciation to my team. So they go from zero to 60, right? They go from like not ever doing it.
to come into work the next day and just kind of saturating everybody with praise. And it just looks phony. And that, by the way, is a real. This is a real catch-22 for people because just a quick story. I remember one time an employee complained to me and said, "Our manager is pretending to care about us." What does that mean? She said, "Well, she's saying good morning and she's asking our opinions and she brought donuts." And I couldn't find the problem. I was asking, "Well, what is the problem here?" Well, it's all fake and I said, "Well, how do you know it's fake?" Well, because she wasn't doing it before. So I said, "Well, would you rather her not do it?" "Just keep not doing it or would you rather have her do it?" Well, it doesn't matter because it's fake. And so her reason for saying it's fake is because this manager has made a change and she started doing this thing. So therefore, it must be fake, which is such a no-win for the manager. So this is what makes this point a little bit tricky. Don't go from zero to 60 because that's a little too dramatic. Maybe you ramp up a little bit slowly when it comes to praise and recognition. But you also have to understand that if it's something you weren't doing before and you're doing it now, you are at risk of people thinking you're now just doing a thing and maybe it's not sincere. And you're going to have to think in two ways. Number one, be persistent, right? Keep doing it. And ask yourself, is it sincere? Am I actually noticing things that I appreciate? And saying something? Yes, it is sincere. I'm just going to tell myself that. Over time, people are going to relax. So all that to say, it can look insincere because I wasn't doing it before. Yeah, absolutely. And I just got to double click on kind of a key subpoint there that's really important is you might be listening to this as a manager and after the end of this episode, decide to make some significant changes. I want to come back to the point that you mentioned just be persistent. People tend to resist change even when they want that change, even when it's good for them, even when the, again, even when they requested it. And so there might be a period of, wow, you know, she's bringing a bunch of donuts, how insincere, all of a sudden she must have listened to that man. You have my art podcast again. And now she's doing this thing. It's just like, you got to not let that discourage you. You got to keep persisting, plowing ahead. And after a while, it becomes the norm. People settle in. And it will start to feel a bit more meaningful and sincere. This is not one of those skills you should announce. There's many skills you can announce. Hey, I'm going to try to run better meetings or I'm going to try to follow through more. You know, hold me accountable. Please don't come to work and say, I'm going to start giving more praise. Yeah. Well, I get that. Yeah. I mean, to play devil's advocate on that, just for the fun of it, like, couldn't there be some, you could get some manager points and demonstrate some humility by talking with your team and just saying, hey, folks, I've gone some feedback that I don't give a lot of praise or positive recognition. And I just want to say that I feel a lot of thankfulness and I think it. And I also recognize I just haven't been great at saying it out loud. And I want to start saying those things that I'm thinking out loud. And so I just want to kind of put that out there for you all. That this is a growth opportunity for me. And it's something I'm going to be working on. I mean, couldn't that actually be a good way to approach that conversation? And also gives you some, like, a little bit more rope if, you know, they know you're working on this. So maybe you don't show appreciation when you should have. And they're like, well, at least I know that Ethan's working on that. Yeah, this one's a close call. I'm not going to disagree. But it is a close call because there are very many skills that I would absolutely agree with you on that. Like show some humility. I'm working on follow through or I'm working on this. But we tend to say if it's the relational things, here's an analogy. For example, if I'm going to try to show more caring and respect, which is our first management skill of the top 15, I don't want to tell people I'm going to start sharing, showing more caring and respect. It almost feels like I'm setting myself up for looking in sincere by telling people I'm going to start doing this thing. So this one is almost in that category, but maybe not, right? Where it's almost like this is one of those almost, at least for me, you know, do it. Don't say it and let that just happen. As opposed to I'm going to start giving you more praise and now they start thinking, oh, he's doing this thing. He said he was going to do and it's not real. But it's a close call. I think there's many, you know, skills including, I know I've been defensive. I'm going to work on not being defensive. Please tell me if I'm being defensive. So it's a close call. Yeah, it's a close call. That's fair. I'm a big believer in having accountability buddies. And this might be one of those skills where the accountability buddy is maybe not your direct reports on this one, but maybe a peer manager that you work with very closely or even your manager so they can help kind of see some things. Yes. Point you back on track. But again, I'm a big believer and if you want to work on something, get it out of your head into somebody else's and let them help you with that. Okay, so I want to transition here. You know, so I know that you have these, these kind of four big categories of recognition. In a sense, these kind of four different types of recognition that you can provide people. Would you mind just maybe kind of briefly touching on all four of those categories? And then we'll kind of deep dive a little bit more into each one. So yeah, yeah, super quick. And it's four categories, but in practice, it sort of becomes eight, which we'll get to, right? But yeah, the four main categories, you've gotten merit-based recognition, which is simply stated, they've done something and you want to recognize them for that. You know, great job on the project, kind of idea. You've got character-based or we sometimes call this always behaviors. As opposed to something they've done, it's something they always do or something about them, right? And your positive vibe you bring to meetings is really helpful. So that's a little bit more about who they are or what they always do. So that's character-based or always behaviors. There's JFB and I always have people try to guess in class what that is and it's just for breathing. It's just because I'm here and I work here and you show appreciation just because, right? And just a quick side note, we, you know, every so often when my first mention that, you might have someone cynical, oh, everyone gets a trophy and I remind them that, hey, how many of you have raised kids or are in the middle of that right now? I know you're not just showing appreciation when your kids accomplish something, right? You're doing it because they're just in your family. Then there's the fourth category is some version of embedded or programmed merit rewards or recognition that's just in the organization. It's a system in the organization like productivity bonuses or catch me awards or employee of the month. They're kind of built into the system. So those are four categories, but we call it eight because we have this team of people that we work with as well, not just one employee. In most cases, we have more than one employee. That team is a separate employee. You think of that group of people as its own entity, as it's like your fifth employee if you only have four employees. So recognition on the individual level and recognition on the group level. You're kind of thinking of those four of those categories. Show up a little differently, but they all apply to this other employee I have, which is the group. Merit-based, great job team. You've really rocked that character or always. This is what I really appreciate about you as a team. You're really good at this. Just for breathing, I'm going to just do something fun for you all. Just to show that I appreciate you and then program stuff. So nice. Well, later towards the end of this episode, we'll maybe briefly touch on these four different categories of recognition and think about which categories are going to be the most powerful for motivating our employees. Which categories need to be done carefully or could lead to some negative results. As we're talking through these four categories a bit more, as a listener, maybe be thinking about that. How might these be used? Where am I need to be careful? So on and so forth. But let's talk about the first category of just merit. Something they did, giving recognition appreciation for something they did. Maybe just give me some examples of what this would sound like, what this would look like. Merit-based recognition. Well, there's an art to this. We'll get to here in a minute to really make it sticky, but this can be everything from thanks for speaking up about that in the meeting. That was really helpful. Appreciate, man, you put some extra effort into that project. Your suggestion for improving the checkout or the checkoff list really helped. Thanks for that. Thanks for the idea. Thanks for staying late.
You know, man, the mentoring you've done with Charlie over there, really appreciate that. And those things, I'll just say they're targeted, they're very specific, they're very powerful. And I don't think they can be, well, I almost said they can't be overdone, everything can be overdone. But what can be overdone is like you were saying, Ethan, the real general, you guys are all great, good work everyone. That can be overdone, but it's kind of hard to overdo mentioning the stuff you're noticing people doing well. Yeah. Yeah. So basically this is about giving positive feedback on a positive behavior that you saw as a manager. Yeah. And I would just say the skill here is to be open to noticing, right? To not take things for granted to just notice that there's things happening. Just a quick note on this, one of the activities we do in class, I had them think about their employees and just jot some notes. What are some things you've seen them do recently? Big things, little things. And I had one manager who I think he had a handful of employees, he had four or five employees, he literally could not come up with one thing. Not one thing. And that's the chances of him having four useless employees who have never done anything good in the last three weeks is pretty low. That's not what's happening here. He's having a really hard time noticing. Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. Notice, start noticing. I think that is a great principle to keep in mind. If you want to do this well, you got to open up your eyes a bit more and have this on your radar so you see the things. And maybe even do that exercise, sit down and write down the names and try to make yourself find three things that each person has done in the last two months. And then you've got it right there. It's good practice for your brain and it's a good, it's a good to-do list to maybe go share some of those with the person. Good. Well, let's deep dive more into the real art of giving feedback in this way. So all those examples, I mean, those are great. At some level, don't over think it too much, but this really can be a powerful tool if we do it real well. When we talk about how to give corrective feedback, so how to give negative feedback, we talk about the BIR method and the BI stands for behavior impact. So I say, hey, here's the behavior, the behavior that I don't like or want to be different. The I is, here's the impact of that behavior. So I'm not just stopping on, just don't do this behavior, but here's the reason why this behavior should change. Here's the impact it has on me, the team, the organization, et cetera. And if you're interested in reviewing that, we on episode number eight, actually, we talked about the BIR method. So go check that out. But I think the same concept, the BIPAR, behavior impact applies when giving positive feedback here as well, in a sense. So for example, when I'm giving this praise, this recognition, I'm going to talk about what they did, which is the behavior. And I'm also going to mention the difference it made, which is the impact of that behavior. So for example, hey, thanks for staying late to troubleshoot the system. That's the behavior. And then I link that behavior to the positive impact that kept the team from missing a key deadline or something like that. And now that praise feels earned, like it doesn't just feel vague in a sense. Does that does that make sense? Does that how you would explain that? It's behavior and impact. And you can do that literally every time. Like if you're noticing a behavior, yes, and you like the behavior, there's a reason you liked it. What's the reason you liked it? Well, because there was an impact that I like. So there's always behavior and impact always. So man, thanks for double checking the site setup. It prevented a serious delay. There's behavior and impact. Yeah. It gets us to understand why that's important, which solidifies it. But I think in our mind, and it's going to be more likely that I would repeat that behavior in the future when I understand the positive impact. And it's very unlikely that they're going to think that's insincere because you've actually negated any insincereity. It's clearly sincere because you're saying this is why that behavior was so awesome. You're literally telling them. So it's very real. Now let's add this. So we got the behavior. We got the impact, which is great. Like even if you were to stop there, I think that's excellent, an excellent way to give recognition and appreciation. And we can even make this more sticky. And so I actually want to introduce you all to my three friends. My three friends, their names are BIP, BIL, and BIG. Okay? BIP, BIL and BIG. Hey, BIP, BIL and BID. Welcome. So I know you, like I know you know who BIP Bill and BIG are as well. Okay. Talk to me about BIP. Oh, good old BIP. BIP is where you take behavior plus impact, which is our base formula. And you add an add-on. And this add-on happens to be P, which stands for praise. And this directly gets into that second category that we spoke about just a bit ago. It's that always behavior. It's that character-based praise. So you're now tagging that kind of praise onto the merit-based praise. You're putting those two things together. So now you're doing, here's the behavior. Here's the impact. And here's a thing about you that that speaks to. Here's the thing about you that that behavior represents or demonstrates. So you handled that complaint from the customer like a pro. So there's the behavior. They left smiling and we love that. So there's the impact. You're really good at that. You have a talent for turning grumpy customers into happy customers. I really appreciate that about you. So man, you handled that really well. They left smiling. You have a talent for that. Right? There's BIP. You've given them the behavior, the impact, and then you've tagged on something about them that you appreciate that relates to that situation. That's really sticky. I think that really affirms what they did and who they are. Yeah. And it helps them see themselves as skilled. That I have a talent here. I have a skill here. I have a character trait here that's really cool. And it builds self-confidence. It helps them tap into maybe some skills or talents that they might not have totally like known about themselves or totally seen or affirms that that is a talent they want to keep leaning into. So that's BIP. Yeah. And the other thing it does, by the way, is it tells them that my manager sees this thing about me. That's kind of special. And I think that's deep and powerful. Yeah. Or it tells your spouse or your partner or your kid or your boss or your colleague. Again, these are just relational skills at the end of the day. Can I share about my friend Bill? Please do. All right. Bill. Bill, my good friend Bill. Mr. Bill Show. Remember that one? I do. Yeah. Okay. Mr. Bill Show. So remember Bill. So Bill is again, we have our behavior and impact. It's the BIS or base. And then we're adding on the L. And in this case, L is learning, adding kind of a learning prompt. I love this one. I know you know I love this one. I just am a big believer in this. When this type of feedback has been given to me, it is really stuck with me throughout my life. And so what this looks like is again, mention the behavior, mention the impact. And then I am actually giving a phrase that helps the person kind of dig in a little bit into why that went so well or why that was so good or had a great outcome. So this is where you would say something like, hey, outstanding work on the project, like really impressive results here. And then I would say something like, you know, I actually think we're going to finish ahead of schedule this time. So that's the impact. Now I'm adding the L, which is something like, I'm curious like this again, this project went so well like what for you, what do you think made the biggest difference here? I just be curious to know like what you did this time to kind of get this pretty awesome outcome. And I have my thoughts on maybe what this, you know, what you did well, but I'd be curious to know what you think.
first. And so we're actually having them not just get the feedback, pause the feedback, but really start thinking about, yeah, you know what, what did I do? What were the inputs? What were the behaviors? What were all those cool things that I did that made this that made this successful? And the outcomes of that can be, I mean, a helps build some confidence, but b, they actually started to dissect the things that they can repeat next time. So by having them think about what led to these outcomes, I'm more likely to repeat those behaviors in the future that leads to those outcomes. And it builds confidence and it actually starts to create that neuroplacicity for people, because it, because it reinforces the how, the how they did this, not just the what. I'll give you another example. Hey, you manage this rebuild, really well, there actually wasn't a single safety issue during the entire job. That's huge. What did you do to help to go so smoothly? Yeah, that's, that's bill. Just getting to the learning prompt. That's that's great. I love that. I mean, it's almost like it combines a little bit of the benefit of the of the bit. It also helps them see themselves as skilled, even more nuanced, like they really do see their skills because you're making them process their skills. And that's like you said, builds confidence, neuroplasticity. I love it. Yeah, I've, I've cited this article several times in this podcast, but I encourage everybody to read one of my favorite articles, which is called the feedback fallacy. I think it was published in Harvard Business Review, but it kind of talks about this whole learning prompt conversation when giving positive feedback. And that positive feedback in this way is actually a bigger indicator of that person growing and succeeding to the future than critical negative feedback. Which yeah, and our last person introduced here is is big. So let you talk about big big behavior plus impact plus some kind of growth, Q or growth opportunity. And all of these, by the way, our little bit of an art, we have to be a little careful. Like I think Bill can come off a little condescending if we aren't showing true curiosity, right? But if we're kind of showing up like already know the answer. And now I want you to tell me what you did. This one as well, we got to be really careful of there's some there's some nuances, but it's it's growth Q, right? It's, you know, you you brief the team really well. Yesterday, they nailed it. This this group of new recruits is going to do fantastic. So there's the B, there's the I. Have you ever thought about helping design our training? Or you know, would you be willing to work on a checklist or it's basically just it's an invitation to ask them to consider how they can maybe use this gift or this skill or this talent in other ways. And the reason I said here's one, you know, there's always a little bit of let's be careful. This one you got to be a little careful with because there's there is that kind of common meme out there that, you know, man, my reward for doing good work at work is to get more work, you know, so you don't want this to feel like you're just piling on more work on somebody just because they're good at something. So it really does have to feel like a career opportunity or a growth development in any event, it has to feel like an invitation something for them to consider. But it's really affirming because what you're saying is here's the behavior, here's the impact. And man, I would love to see this talent used in other ways, you know, I'd like to see you develop this in other cool ways that could help you or help us. Yeah, I mean, you could even ask, you know, you know, where, where could you see this, this skill or talent of yours being applied in other areas of our team or of our business here, right? You might not have to have a your specific idea of how it could be applied. That's a half thing through that. Well, actually, you know, I've been really wanting to work a bit more on these type of building projects. And I think I could excel at that given X Y and Z that contributed to the success of this project. Right. Yeah. I love it. One thing I just noticed about these these three, these three approaches to feedback, the giving praise, the learning prompt or the growth prompt. I mean, these are all coaching skills. As a manager, as a leader, your coaching people, right? You're saying your your highlighting their strength for them, your asking some good questions that help them kind of unpack their success, your indicating other areas that they could use this talent and helping them think through that. I mean, these are really high level coaching skills, which I just think is cool to think about a remember that the end of the day, you know, one of our key roles as managers is to be a coach. Right. This is all this was all about the the merit category, something they did. Well, we'll maybe again, briefly touch on the other three categories here real quickly before we do that. I just want to take a quick pause and make an ask of our listeners, if you will. So the vast majority of our regular listeners have not left us a review. And that makes us sad. But presumably, these listeners, you out there, you find value in the show because you're a regular listener. And so here's a favor like the ask of you. Yes, you listener out there, listening to this podcast while while multitasking. I just asked you consider maybe being the outlier of our audience and leaving us a review on Spotify or on Apple podcasts, it will literally take you 30 seconds to a minute and you know, leaving the review is the best way to support us. And it helps other people find the show. So please and thank you for considering that. Alright, let's talk about the other few categories here. So we talked about merit, anything more to say on the next category, the the character category, more positive feedback on who they are. No, other than to say we've, you know, we've referred to it with the VIP, they're, you know, we're kind of borrowing from that category when we're doing behavior impact and praise about the person, this would be as a standalone, just focusing on that, just being able to notice something about somebody that's true about their character, about what they always do and mentioning it, I actually believe that when you get this kind of recognition from somebody, it's, it, it hits deeper in a pretty beautiful way, even than merit-based praise. Because now you're noticing something about the human themselves, right? Not just about what they do or what they've done, or what they've done. So it's really the theme is here's something I appreciate about you. And it's a really good activity for, again, for anybody, you can do this as a parent, you can do this as a manager, you know, this as a partner or a spouse, just do the exercise of listing five things. You really appreciate about this person, about this employee. You don't have to be committed to saying all these things to the person, but you sure could, at some point, you could pick one of those and you could, in your next one on one with an employee, just want to say, Hey, I just want to let you know, I don't think you've ever been late to a deadline ever. Your timeliness is incredible. I really appreciate that. Now, is that merit? Yeah, it's something they did, but it's a little bit brighter than that. It's something they always do, right? That that great attitude you just tend to bring every day to work it just makes the workplace a happier place. I really appreciate that about you, right? Yeah. So yeah, just finding something about the person and letting them know. Yeah, you're always super careful when you review the data, right? You seem to just like really have an eye for noticing the the important details, right? I appreciate that. You're, you're a really a subject matter expert in this area. You know, you tend to see to just always take new employees under your wing, like I really appreciate that. And I see that. I saw so many different areas this could apply to. Yeah. Well, the, the third category here, so we've covered merit. We've covered the character, slash always type of behaviors. And the third category is J.F.B. Just for breathing. Again, this is, Hey, I'm glad you're here. This could be like, Hey, how are you doing? Right? I'm actually recognizing them. How can I help? That's a form of recognition. Hey, look at I got you some donuts or I got you a coffee. So it's just for breathing. Now people struggle with this one, I think the most like, why do I give? Why do I need to give positive feedback for someone for just for breathing? It seems like a little bit more of that like everybody gets a trophy type of, you know, thing that I see the pushback on, how do you think about that? The difference is it's subtle, but you're actually not
giving feedback. So that's what makes this category a little bit odd. You're not giving any feedback. You are just showing that you appreciate them. That's all it is. So there's no trophy involved. And I could see why people get confused about that. This is just I am showing you that I appreciate you because you're part of this team. So the fact that I have brought you a coffee, there's no feedback there. It's just showing you appreciation. This is another way, frankly, of just saying treat everyone with respect and kindness and warmth and show caring. It kind of goes back to what we talk about when we talk about the first of the 15 management skills, right? Show people caring and respect. It dovetails perfectly with that. So it's any version of demonstrating or saying, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're part of this team. I like that. The last category here is is programmed merit. This is more kind of expected rewards. Kind of rewards that are more part of a formal process. What are examples in a workplace of these type of programmed rewards program merit? Every agency we work with, I ask them what they have in place and they always have these. And yet just yesterday we did this workshop and they had all the things. They have some version of what's often called catch me awards where people can notice good things happening with peers, things that peers have done and they have little cards or little write ups and those go to managers and managers can then say something to that person or sometimes they even get creative and there's a drawing of those at some point and there's maybe a prize. The classic employee of the month kind of thing. There's awards for customer service. There's even built in. There's built in financial bonuses sometimes for productivity. There's a lot of these and most organizations have these in place. So this then also include end of the year bonuses based on getting a good performance review that some people have set up. That would also be a programmed merit. Yep. Exactly. There's one that came up yesterday which was a years of service recognition which is actually a combination now of programmed merit coupled with just for breathing. Just because you've been here a long time we're going to recognize you. So there's a combination of those two categories. Now are all four of these categories created equal and that's not totally rhetorical question and I'm actually kind of prompting our listeners to be thinking about that. Okay. We got merit. We got character. We got this just for breathing. We got program merit. Like are all of these going to motivate equally or you know, what does that look like? They all have their own purpose is what might look at this and I love the way you ask that. If you're talking though about motivating people to just bring their best self and to be fully engaged, no, they're not all created equal. In fact, one of those categories, if we're not careful, could have some reverse effects. But let's just focus in on merit and character. Like those first two categories that we spent most of our time on, that's where the magic happens. So merit and character always, we're kind of saying those are your best forms of showing recognition and appreciation. And I would also imagine that the advice here, at least for me, is not, well, they're both really good. So choose the one that you like the most and just use that one. So I'm just going to use character always. I would say no, like these two are the best and use them both flexibly, right? Implement both of them. You know, don't just pick one. Yes. Because if you lean too far into the just the character always and not do enough of the merit, I think it can start to feel a bit insincere. It's the balance of the two. Yep. Really starts to hit home with people. My experience. Yep. And there's some good research that backs us up. You know, my favorite, one of my favorite stories to talk about in classes, when we talk about the study that's chronicle in the Daniel Pink book, the book called Drive, the surprising truth about what motivates people. And you know, in that research experiment, they basically had an experimenter at a booth or at a table. And there's some kind of invitation on a sign or something for people to come up and participate in the study and make a little bit of pocket change. And so the study goes like this. The experimenter would hand the participant a piece of paper with a dense paragraph written on it. And the job of the participant is to circle the letter A every time it shows up, lots of circles, lots of letter A's. And it's supposed to be a boring, mind numbing job. But they're told that you're going to get $2 when you turn in your first page. And then you're going to get $1.75 when you turn in your next page and then $1.50 all the way down. So you can make some pocket change here. It's kind of fun. And they had three groups though. The first group, when they would turn their page in, the experimenter would look at it and give a really brief, like two word praise. Good job. Looks good. Good work. Here's your $1.75. Here's your next page. And then good job. Here's your $1.50. The second group, the experimenter would look at the page, not say anything. Here's your $1.75. The third group, not even kidding, the experimenter would take the page and put it through a paper shredder. Oh, wow. Here's your money. Here's your $1.50. Well, the results were not surprising. Although some of the results were surprising, the not surprising results were, you know, yes, which group did the most pages? Ethan, you know the answer to this. The group that got there at their paper shredded. Okay. Remedial class will start after this podcast. No. The group that did the most pages, of course, was the group that had the two word praise. And it was weird. There was actually people in that group who went all the way down to, here's your $0.25. And they get it. So they're working for free. The second group who had no comment, they did far less far fewer pages and many, many more people in that group stopped when they could have made more money. And when you think about the contrast there, people that are actually working for very little money versus people who are leaving money on the table and the only difference is this quick word of praise. That's all that, that's all that. And these people, you know, don't know that there's two groups or three groups. They just are doing what they do because their brain is getting rewarded. Their need for praises being met and they want to do more, right? And then the weird thing, it's that third group that had their paper shredded. They statistically did the exact same amount of work as the second group as the group that had no comment. And so with that proofs, of course, is that if you really want to demotivate your employees, you don't even have to destroy their work right in front of them. You just have to do what? Shred their paper. Just don't say anything. Just ignore them. Just don't praise them. And you'll get the same results as if you shredded their work. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow. That is that is wild. Huh. Thanks for sharing that. By the way, in episode number 77, I did a super nerdy, deep dive on motivation and just kind of reviewed the lot of the research and literature on what tends to motivate people in the workplace, what has to demotivate people. And so maybe check that one out. So, okay. So we've, we've established, you know, merit, you know, the character always those are, those are going to be our most powerful forms of motivating employees. What about the just for breathing category? How should we be thinking about that one as well as the programmed merit? It is, it is not less than the others. It's just a, it's a, it's scratching a different itch, which is a weird way of putting it. It is really about creating a bank account, a relational bank account, like we talked about earlier. This is about showing people that you care about them, that you value them, not for anything they're doing necessarily or anything they've done. It's about relational bank account and it has a, it's, it's contagious, meaning when you treat people this way, it helps to build a positive workplace environment. It's one of the reasons people want to come to work is this sense of belonging and there's a ton of research on that and this can help with that as well. So it's a, it's a broader way of saying I appreciate you, that's not connected to anything they've done, but it is absolutely about building a relationship and of course the more I build a relationship with you as an employee, the more trust you have in me, the more elastic our relationship becomes, all the good stuff. Okay. What about programmed merit? Well,
This one can be a little tricky. This is the one we want to ask people to be cautious about, but I'm really cautious about saying that because we are not asking organizations to not do this. We're not asking organizations to stop doing these things. We are asking people, we are asking organizations, executive teams, et cetera, to have this mindset. When you get an employee survey that says people don't feel appreciated, unfortunately what a lot of organizations do is they say, okay, we are going to. We're going to add in some systemic built-in program that's going to make everybody feel appreciated. I'll just say this probably emphatically, it never works. As a standalone way of meeting that need, it doesn't work for so many reasons, including. Well, let's start with employee of the month. You have 300 employees. What's the chances you're going to get it? It's just that month, right? How many people are driving to work and thinking, dang, I'm going to get employee of the month this month and I'm going to work really hard. It's not happening. It creates a sense of unfairness sometimes. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's an add-on. It's like a great newsletter. It's not a great way to communicate. It's an add-on though, right? It adds morale. These are really good things to do as add-ons, but what a rather organizations do when they realize they want to improve in this area instead of spending effort and money and time creating some kind of system way of recognizing, train your managers. Focus on managers doing all the things we've been talking about for this last hour because that's where the real magic happens. Well said. Well said. Yeah, with program merit, to your point, we're not saying don't do those things. The problem is if it's the only lever that you pull. Pull that lever, have those, but recognize the other forms are probably going to be more powerful and that is something that each individual manager has to take responsibility for. They have to be the ones that provide that recognition and appreciation and know how to do it well, know how to do it tactfully, commit to it, and yes, that's the individual manager's responsibility, but at the organizational level, so that organization's responsibility to say, hey, this is how we want to lead and manage here. Let's work on this as a group. So yeah, and a couple of quick thoughts. An executive team or upper management finding ways to show appreciation through some of these systems is again, is a great thing to do. It shows that others in this organization appreciate you too, not just the manager. And then I got it. I got to tell the kindergarten story. One more caution. They took this group of kindergartners and they said, for that first hour of today, your job is to color. And there's all these coloring pages and all these crayons. And with the second group, they said, for the first hour of today, your job is to color. And whoever colors 10 pages gets this really cool certificate with the sparkles and ribbon on it and stuff. Well, which group colored more would you think? And when I asked that class, that question in class, almost everybody says, oh, the group that got this certificate, they, they, they, they, they, I'm sure they call it. They colored more. Nope. Those kids colored 10 pages. And then they stopped. Mm-hmm. And the other group, they kept coloring. And why did they do that? Because coloring is fun. And that certificate kind of removed the intrinsic reward and made it, what's the opposite of intrinsic, extrinsic. Extrinsic. Extrinsic. Yeah. Right. Right. And again, it's just a caution if you put all your eggs in one basket. Like you said, if you only have that one lever, there could be a downside to that. Absolutely. Well, very good. Well, very good, folks. So, you know, just remember that recognition is one of if not the largest driver of motivation. It is a core human need to want to feel appreciated, to want to be recognized. And so for me, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm learning along with you all. And here, and here's the simple takeaway. For me is like the easiest and most effective way to meet an employee's need is to feel, for them to feel appreciated. And the best way to do that as for us as managers, I think is just to open our pie holes for 10 seconds and say, you know what, Mike, thank you for blank. I appreciate it because blank. Okay. Now, folks, I encourage you to just think about what you want to, what you want to do with this information. And so I really just encourage you to consider like what might you want to do more of or less of in terms of showing appreciation to your team and to your employees? Also are there maybe some specific employees like this week that you're going to communicate your appreciation to. And then looking at the team level, like what do you appreciate about your team? Maybe write down some notes and then, you know, would you be willing to share that with them sometime soon? So I hope you can go from learning here to action. That's the reason why we do this podcast as we hope it actually helps managers out there continue to lead with mine and heart and and and take some action. So appreciate it and see you on the next episode. Hey folks, wait. Don't go yet. Please stay with me for one second here. I want to let you know about a couple cool little goodies that we have available for you. If you dig this podcast, you will probably also dig our managing with mind and heart newsletter. 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