Simple Ways to Show Appreciation at Work

by Judy Rathwell | Nov 27, 2023 | Active Listening, Change Management, Communication, Flexible Schedule, Gratitude, Recognition

Simple ways to show appreciation at work

Similar to trust, appreciation is relationship-based — each interaction with someone strengthens or weakens that invisible connection. The more we feel appreciated, the stronger those bonds become, and the more tension they can withstand when something challenges it. Consequently, knowing how to build and maintain relationships where people feel appreciated is a foundational skill — one that’s important to learn from the very early stages of your career.

While appreciation is something you can express, it’s also something you can show through your actions and behaviors. If you – as a manager or an individual contributor — want to build the kind of relationships where people feel valued, communication flows, and great work gets done, it’s important to expand your understanding of appreciation beyond verbal expressions and learn to show people you value them as well.

Show your appreciation for people’s presence.

To feel a sense of belonging, people must know that others care that they are there. Sure, we all get paid to show up to our jobs every day. But the reality is that our peers and direct reports could choose to work elsewhere. Letting someone know their presence is having an impact on you or the organization can make a big difference. Managers and individual contributors alike can share this appreciation with the following actions:

Although it sounds like basic decency, greet people when they arrive at the office or join a meeting, and say goodbye when they leave.
Notice when people are missing at work and reach out: “I haven’t seen you at work for three days. Just checking in to make sure you’re okay?”
If people work late or cover for you or others, notice and acknowledge what they are doing. Bring them a cup of coffee and let them know you are ready to cover for them in the future.
Even if it is people’s job to be there, thank them for coming.

Show your appreciation of people’s ideas and contributions.

Creating a psychologically safe environment where people openly share ideas and speak up when there is a problem is everyone’s job. Managers and individual contributors alike need to show colleagues that their input is welcome and celebrated.

Leaders can role model how to treat one another by actively seeking and amplifying other people’s ideas, and individual contributors can do the same with their peers. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Managers

Nurture a culture of sharing ideas by asking for employee input in each staff meeting.
Honor people’s ideas and expertise by talking them up in senior leader meetings: “Maria is actually the one who came up with the idea for this project and has been leading the team to make the result happen!”
In meetings, ask quiet, less vocal team members to share input or ideas on projects: “Keshia, what do you think about this? I would love to hear your ideas on the project.”

Individual Contributor

When people share input or feedback on a project, whether you like their idea or not, actively listen. Nod along, ask questions, and thank them for sharing.
When working on a project, ask others for feedback and ideas on how to improve.
Adopt a “Yes, and” mentality when it comes to other people’s ideas. Instead of saying “I disagree,” say, “Yes, and what about…?” and share another idea or addition to their idea.
When someone has a great idea that people did not hear, bring it to the attention of others: “I want to bring the attention back to an idea Ethan shared earlier. Ethan, would you mind repeating?”
If someone gives you credit for another person’s ideas, direct their praise to the correct person: “Thank you for noticing, but that was all John’s idea! Make sure you let him know, he will love to know you feel this way!”

Show your appreciation of people’s lives outside of work.

Our jobs should help us live our best lives, not take them over. For our employees to feel appreciated, they need to know that we understand their passions, priorities, and responsibilities outside of work.

People need leaders who respect boundaries and role model self care, and coworkers who nurture a culture of support. Here are a few ideas.

Managers

In order to appreciate people’s lives outside of work, you need to know about them. Take the time to ask about your direct reports’ weekends, holidays, and hobbies outside of work. Learn about their families, kids, and what they do for fun.
Display work-life balance by having a life outside of work yourself. For example, leave work to go to your kids’ events to show others that balance is encouraged.
Avoid scheduling meetings before 9 am and after 5 pm so people are not forced to choose between making the boss happy and living their lives.
Avoid sending emails on weekends, late at night, and on vacations.
If someone has a major life change — like getting married, having a child, losing a loved one, having surgery, or going through a divorce — ask how you and the team can best support them. Put a note in your calendar to check in a month later. It can make a world of difference to your colleague that you remember.
Before making a request at 5 pm on a Friday, think about how the request may impact your employee’s life outside of work. If it can wait until Monday, let it.

Individual Contributor

One of the best ways to support people’s lives outside of work is to always keep them in mind when you’re at work. Every time we fail to deliver on time, show up, or do our tasks, it has an impact on others. When we don’t do our work to the best of our abilities, it means someone else’s work is impacted. The best way to respect people’s lives outside of work is to honor and respect their time at work. Be an extraordinary coworker.
Take time to understand your coworkers’ lives outside of work. Ask them about their families, hobbies, and how they spend their time.
Nurture a community of support in your office by stepping up for each other when one of you goes on vacation, has a doctor’s appointment, or needs to attend an important event.

Show your appreciation of people’s need for growth and development.

One of the main reasons employees give for leaving jobs is a lack of development opportunities. While many people think development is about promotions and attending trainings, it’s also about being around people who challenge us — managers that take time to understand and support our career goals, and coworkers who help us learn and grow. Give the following a try.

Managers

If you don’t already know the career goals and aspirations of your direct reports, take time to understand them. Learn about what skills they want to develop and the kinds of projects they want to be working on. What topics are interesting to them and what kind of role do they see themselves in in five years?
Once you know people’s goals, actively find opportunities that can help them develop those skills through stretch assignments, job shadowing, conferences, internal presentations, or challenging projects. Be sure to debrief and help the person link the skills they are developing to the assignment they’re working on.
Have regular “stay conversations” to make sure your direct reports feel fulfilled at work and that they are learning and growing in their roles.
If your employee has the desire to go back to school or earn professional certification, find ways to help them carve time out in their schedule to take classes.
If someone is excelling in their position, and there is no room to move up in your company, help them explore opportunities at other companies. Let them know you will be their reference if they find an opportunity for growth outside of your organization.

Individual Contributor

Ask your coworkers for feedback and tips on how you can improve and invite them to do the same with you: “Maria, thank for attending my presentation I would love you’re your input. What are one or two things could I do next time to improve?”
Take time to learn about the career goals of the people on your team and find ways to support them to work toward them: “Jon, I am curious what are some of your career goals? Is there anything I can do to support you with the experience and knowledge I have?
If you hear about learning opportunities or networking events, or find interesting articles they may help your coworker, share them.
When a colleague gets a promotion, celebrate with them. “Hey Vas, I just saw the announcement you were promoted! It made my day to see and just wanted you to know I excited for you.”

Source: Christopher Littlefield, Harvard Business Review

“Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don’t keep it a secret”.
– Mary Kay Ash

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This fun, interactive feature helps teams work better together. By combining DiSC with actionable group insights, teams build cohesion while adapting their behaviors for optimal performance. Learners can create multiple groups, plot members on a DiSC map, and shed light on team dynamics that influence results.

6 Things to Consider Before You Delegate Work

by Judy Rathwell | Oct 24, 2023 | Change Management, Communication, Decision-making, Trust

6 things to consider before you delegate work

The best leaders are masters at delegation. Why? They know how to empower their teams to get work done. But it’s not only about getting work done or knowing how to share tasks in the best way. It’s also about creating an environment where employees are proud of their work and can call it their own. These are the critical pieces to learning how to delegate work effectively.

What Is Delegating?

In short, delegating is allocating the right work to the right people. Delegating work is about sharing a task and decision-making responsibilities to increase others’ commitment, accelerate results, and build capability.

The delegating leadership style, one of the four leadership styles covered in the situational leadership model, is about managers sharing authority and responsibility with their employees.

The Cost of Not Delegating

The reluctance of leaders to delegate carries a steep cost. As leaders take on more work, they get overwhelmed and stressed. They may even burn out completely and quit. 70% of leaders surveyed under the age of 35 report feeling used up at the end of every day, with rates even higher among women and minorities.

At the same time, their team is likely also frustrated. They don’t feel like they’re contributing enough, nor do they have the authority to do their work as they see fit. They’ll likely end up disengaged or start polishing up their resumes for another role.

What to Consider Before You Delegate Work

Delegation has to go beyond simply assigning a task. It has to be done thoughtfully, with the right balance of direction from the leader.

Here’s what to consider before you delegate work:

What’s the desired output? What will the completed task look like? How will you judge whether it is completed well or not?
What’s the importance of the task? How important is this assigned task to the team? How important is this assigned task to the company?
Are you delegating authority appropriately? What key decisions will need to be made during the project? Will the person or team have the authority to make critical decisions?
To whom should you delegate the work? Who has the skills to complete this work? Who has the motivation? Is there anyone who might be interested in the work that you haven’t considered before? What are the benefits to the person completing this delegated task?
What’s the method of sharing work? Will you have a meeting to generate ideas or to define the task further with the person? What is the delegation process? Have clear expectations been given?
How will you assess the results of the tasks you’ve delegated? How will you give feedback along the way? How will you ensure that the criteria is clear for what success looks like?

If the leader is struggling to answer these questions, then they should re-evaluate if the task should actually be delegated.

Source: DDI, 2023

“Delegation is not about micromanaging, its about trusting others to do their best work”.
– Unknown

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The Counterintuitive Wisdom You Need to Get People to Embrace Change

by Judy Rathwell | Apr 18, 2021 | Adaptability, Change Management, Communication, Influence, Newsletter

Common wisdom in management science and practice has it that to build support for a change project, visionary leadership is needed to outline what is wrong with the current situation. By explaining how the envisioned change will result in a better and more appealing future, leaders can overcome resistance to change. But research, recently published in the Academy of Management Journal, leads us to add a very important caveat to this.

A root cause of resistance to change is that employees identify with and care for their organizations. People fear that after the change, the organization will no longer be the organization they value and identify with — and the higher the uncertainty surrounding the change, the more they anticipate such threats to the organizational identity they hold dear. Change leadership that emphasizes what is good about the envisioned change and bad about the current state of affairs typically fuels these fears because it signals that changes will be fundamental and far-reaching.

Counterintuitively, then, effective change leadership has to emphasize continuity — how what is central to “who we are” as an organization will be preserved, despite the uncertainty and changes on the horizon.

This is a straightforward and actionable notion that we put to the test in two studies. The first study was a survey of 209 employees and their supervisors from a number of organizations that announced organizational change plans (including relocations and business expansions, reorganizations, structural or technical changes, product changes, changes in leadership, and mergers). The focus was on how effective the leadership was in stimulating employee support for the change, measured through supervisor ratings of employee behavior. As predicted, results showed that leadership was more effective in building support for change the more that leaders also communicated a vision of continuity, because a vision of continuity instilled a sense of continuity of organizational identity in employees. These effects were larger when employees experienced more uncertainty at work (as measured by employee self-ratings).

In the second study, we tested the same idea using a laboratory experiment so that we could draw conclusions about causality. 208 business school students participated in the study, and the context was potential changes in the school’s curriculum. They received one of two messages allegedly from the dean of the business school. One conveyed a vision of change for the curriculum, and the other conveyed the same vision of change but also conveyed a vision of continuity of identity. Independent of which message they were exposed to, students received one of two versions of background information that suggested either low uncertainty or high uncertainty about change outcomes. We then assessed their sense of continuity of identity and their support for the change as expressed in actual behavior: help in drafting a letter to persuade other students to support the change. The results of this second study were similar to those of the first: Support for change was higher when the vision of change was accompanied by a vision of continuity, because in this case people’s sense of continuity of identity was higher. Again, the effects were stronger when uncertainty about the change was higher.

The implications of this research are straightforward. In overcoming resistance to change and building support for change, leaders need to communicate an appealing vision of change in combination with a vision of continuity. Unless they are able to ensure people that what defines the organization’s identity — “what makes us who we are” — will be preserved despite the changes, leaders may have to brace themselves for a wave of resistance.

Source: Harvard Business Review – by Merlijn Venus, Daan Stam, and Daan van Knippenberg