Praise and Appreciation at the work place
*Written by Tekeste Asghedom*
*This article will focus at the work place. However its applicability could
also prevail at home, in schools and in group meetings, be it in business
or social gatherings.*
*Praise and appreciation should be part and parcel of the art of
management. However it is rather common to see managers with frowned face
who enjoy sadistically seeing their staff tremble in their presence. With
such scene they wrongly feel that they are one of the most highly respected
managers. In such atmosphere the workers would feign to look industrious
during the attendance of their rude manager. They will go here and there
simply to show him how busy they look like. In his absence, however, they
deliberately slow down their activities and on occasions they even plunder
into some sort of sabotage. The act of so much seriousness on the part of
the managers simply bars the communication that could have existed with the
employees. It is a body language demonstrated by the mangers that rebuffs
the approach of the employees. The manager is stet to loose important
information that the employees could have provided him. The employees will
simply be indifferent.In the women’s rest room one worker was wasting the
toilet paper in great folds. When asked by one colleague why she has to
resort into such unruly behaviour, the answer was, she has to do it as
retribution to the rude, or according to her, the rather evil acts of the
manager. I hate the boss she continued. He has never been appreciative of
whatever good jobs we would perform. He would bark on any trivial mistakes
we make and he takes grudge for several months. I am now on the way of
quitting this job and will join another organization. “My wife is a
monster”, told Simon to his friend Ande. She has never been appreciative of
whatever I do or our children perform. For years she has shown us a
horrendous gloomy face. She never demonstrated a charming face. Our
children would tremble in her presence for they would not expect any good
words from her. Always she makes everyone in the family feel absolutely
guilty even for trivial matters. In short she has been a disaster. It was
a chaotic family affair. Finally I have to break and now I am leading a
peaceful life. I am able to view a different horizon of
tranquillity. During a farewell party on the occasion of his retirement,
Suleiman told his colleagues that he has enjoyed working with his boss. He
vowed to keep him in his heart to the end of his life for he was such a
motivating and respectful leader in his organization. As individuals people
have various reasons for working. Basically they have to lead their lives
by earning a commensurate income. However the most important thing is that
as humans they need love and affection. Great leaders will make all efforts
in injecting the feeling of belongingness among the staff. That would be a
brilliant way of retaining a staff member for a prolonged period of time.
People have many expectations from their organization which impacts morale,
employee motivation, and the quality of life.Some people work for personal
fulfillment; others work for love of what they do. Others work to
accomplish goals and to feel as if they are contributing to something
larger than themselves. The bottom line is that we all work for money and
for reasons too individual to assign similarities to all workers.If one
would ask anyone in any working place what treatment they most want at
work. They will likely top their list with the desire to be treated with
dignity and respect. In this instance it would be appropriate to look into
how appreciation is defined. Wikipedia defines appreciation or (gratitude):
“A positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has
received or will receive. According to University of California-Davis
researcher, Robert Davis, gratitude requires three conditions: a gracious
individual must behave in a way that was 1) costly to him or her, 2)
valuable to the recipient, and 3) intentionally rendered”When you express
to someone how you value his or her specific contribution you are giving
appreciation. You might ask the opinion of someone for some thoughts and
you could say something like "Thank you for your excellent note. It was
short, you did it very promptly and it answered all the questions I had."*
*Appreciation can have the following implications*
*• People feel elated and it further increases their energy and
commitment.• It rewards and encourages the behaviour you want. It always
keeps them as new people • It encourages people to pay attention to, and
magnify, what already works well.• It quickly spreads, if you take the
lead, and increases co-operation and teamwork.• It is good to give and
it will cost you nothing.• There is an eventual reciprocation for
yourself if you give it a lot.How to use appreciation*
*Informally• Appreciate people doing things right as you see them doing
their work. This can be as ordinary as saying "What a lovely tidy desk",
when she is the only person with a tidy desk in the office!*
*• Appreciate people making a special effort. "Thanks for staying over
to get that proposal off last night. You had to do it in a rush, but it
still looked very professional, as always".*
*• Appreciate people for trying. Someone might give you an idea that
looks impractical. You could say, "Thank you for that, your ideas are
always interesting. Do you have any thoughts on the first steps?"*
*• Appreciate your boss! He or she is human and will respond positively.
You could say, "I appreciate your supporting my position at the project
planning meeting".*
*At meetings*
*• When you have a particularly good meeting, talk about what making it
go so well and why.*
*• If you wish, you can give each other appreciation on their
contribution to the success of a very important or extended meeting or
project. *
*• After every meeting, ask the people for their thoughts on what went
well at the meeting and why. You can then use these thoughts to make every
meeting go as well.*
*For organization development*
*• An appreciative enquiry is an appropriate way of managing change. You
review and find out what already works well and help people build from
this. For example, if you want to increase peoples' commitment to customer
care, you would find examples in the organization where this was already
going well. Then you would help them create a shared vision and a plan of
action starting from there.*
*When to use appreciation*
*• When you genuinely value what someone else has done or how he or she
is.• When someone who works for you or a colleague has done a good piece
of work.• When you are in a meeting, especially one that is going
well.• When a project has been successful. • When you want to create
a positive cultural change.More often than not it is rather common to note
that managers would rather fail to enthusiastically give praise and
appreciation for their workers for various reasons. The following has been
cited by management scholars.*
*• False sense of fairness – “If I appreciate someone, others will think
I am being unfair to them“. Managers get into this trap too often, and end
up not appreciating anyone’s good work. Rather than looking at the positive
side of it (if the team is good, and manager is doing a good job at
recognizing good work, he/she will end up praising everyone), they look at
negative side of it and cause more damage.*
*• Lack of involvement –”I don’t have time to know all the details about
all the work, especially ones going on well“. Appreciation of the type
‘thanks a lot for great work’ doesn’t help and many managers know it. To be
effective, they need to be specific. However, being that specific requires
spending more time with the project and know enough details, not every
manager has this time, and so they hesitate.*
*• Lack of appreciation skills – “Should I send a thank-you mail, or
should I go buy flowers for him?” Managers understand that appreciation
done in a wrong way can be worse than no appreciation at all since
appreciation can backfire too. However, not every manager is comfortable in
their knowledge of how to do appreciation the right way (like any other
skill, this requires training and practice). This can put them in a bind
and they end up not doing anything at all.*
*• Distorted prioritization – “I have too many problems to solve today, I
will send an appreciation note tomorrow“. Appreciation requires effort.
Most of the time, benefits of appreciation are intangible, long-term and
hard to quantify, which makes many managers prioritize this below the
immediate and urgent work items whose results are more quantifiable and
immediate. And given the fact that most managers have more work than time,
they never get around to doing a low priority work like appreciation.*
*• Organizational culture – “This is not the time to celebrate or
praise, let’s continue to fix our problems and be the best org“. Many
organizations are ‘continuous improvement focused’, which means they focus
a lot on identifying inefficiencies in the system, structure and people,
and work to fix them. Such a focus on problems does not allow managers to
hone their skills of identifying good work (since they never look for it).
Also, such a culture typically reward managers more for finding problems
and solving them (tangible and measurable) rather than motivating and
appreciating employees to create a happier workforce (intangible and
non-measurable).Any person on the leadership saddle should be thoughtful of
the art of appreciation for it is part and parcel of management. The
following are a tip of advice recommended by researchers to keep in mind
when appreciating someone:*
*• Be specific: This is the most important one. Appreciation of type “I
really liked the way you approached the problem and could sort out on your
own and find the problem in less than 24 hours! Thanks for being so
responsive to our most important customer” are way more effective and
memorable than “Thanks for a great job for our most important customer“.
This shows you took effort to understand the work and also this shows
exactly which part of the work you are appreciating.*
*• Look for opportunities to appreciate – Sometimes the manager sets the
bar of appreciation so high that no one meets it. However, appreciation is
also needed when the individual thinks they did a good job. So sometimes
managers have to look for opportunities to appreciate rather than waiting
to be wowed.*
*• Timeliness – Appreciate as soon as you notice the act, rather than
wait for right or better time. Timeliness reinforces the right behavior by
associating the appreciation with the work done (especially when it is
specific). Stale appreciation is easily forgotten and definitely loses its
impact.*
*• Understand your team: People have different views on how they like to
be appreciated. Some like being appreciated in private 1-1 setting. Others
like to be recognized in front of their peers. Some may want money to go
with it, others may hate it if you mention money for a job well done*
*• Be truthful and honest – Appreciation that is not genuine and
heart-felt is worse than no appreciation because it hurts manager’s
credibility and manager can end up losing trust and respect (‘phony’ is not
a good word to be associated with).*
*• Behave the way you feel: Appreciate by action too, not only by words.
Appreciating someone for displaying good leadership and vision, and then
never involving them in ongoing work requiring leadership and vision sends
a strong message that the appreciation was a mere lip service.*
*Usually motivation is a factor of managerial tool for the sustainable
growth of an organization. In this article however, I have only focused on
the praise and appreciation as in many instances it is believed that it
is a missing link in various managerial situations. Employees should not
feel that the minor mistakes that they commit inadvertently surfaces more
than their good performances. The culture of blame game should be avoided.
Therefore if efforts are done to identify the good side of work performance
and plans are made to reward those exemplary employees the drive for
creativity and dynamism will keep any organization on continuous growth.*
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