The first thing to get right about recognizing and rewarding your people.
Recognition and rewards are not the same thing, but lots of us act like they are.
Recognition and appreciation are getting a whole lot of workplace attention these days. This is a difficult concept for lots of us. Aren’t people just doing their job? Isn’t a paycheck appreciation enough?
The answer, quite simply, is no. Research shows that extrinsic rewards like pay and benefits motivate most of us to do just enough to keep our jobs, but not much more.
If we want our teams giving something extra, some discretionary effort, if we want them engaged and owning their work, we need to do more than just give them their paychecks every couple of weeks.
First, we’ve got to make a mindset shift.
We tend to hold on to recognition and appreciation until someone “deserves” it. Until someone has done truly excellent work. The shift we have to make is to realize that expressing appreciation is a way to get truly excellent work, not a reward for it.
Recognition is not a reward. It’s a way to turn good into great.
