When Recognizing Team Members Add a Thank You
recognizing your team members is important — adding thank you goes a long way
As kids, we’re taught to say please and thank you. For those of us who had parents (and grandparents) like mine, thank you became a reflex, like the way we say good to the perfunctory, “How are you?”
We often forget to say thank you in business, or more likely, we’ve made it a reflex by relegating it to auto-filled email signatures, thereby rendering the words insignificant even if we do mean to convey gratitude.
In fact, a recent report found that 74% of employees wished they received more recognition for their work, and 85% felt that receiving recognition motivated them to work harder.
That’s a big deal and part of why recognition exists as an element in mlOS™. It’s especially important to recognize the impact your team makes as a purpose-driven business.
Recognition tends to come in the form of one-on-one conversations or impact stories. The format can change to best suit your organization, as long as you recognize the person’s specific contributions and how those contributions advance your mission and tie back to your purpose.
And then comes the thank you. Recognizing their contributions is critical, but it’s the genuine thank you that makes it clear you value what they’ve done. It’s the human part of the conversation-we all want to feel valued.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to take more joy in the thanking. It requires us to pause long enough to register what we’ve achieved and actually appreciate it. One of the things I’ve personally implemented at my company is the idea of starting any touch-base meeting with at least one win (with a thank you) before we dive into all the new things we need to do. It’s made a huge difference.
While you can get caught up in creative ways to recognize people, the one thing you can start to do right here, right now-and immediately change someone’s day-is to simply say thank you and mean it.
Here’s the formula
[Name], I want to thank you for [insert thing they’ve done]. Specifically, [insert what was so valuable]. Your work has made an impact by [insert how this moves the mission forward and ties back to the purpose]. Thank you again for what you do.
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Originally published at https://www.matterlogic.co on August 30, 2021.
