Recognition is one of the most powerful tools in a leader’s armory. It helps drive engagement, performance, and also boosts a leader’s reputation and makes them desirable to work for.
Last start with the last of those, because reputation is an important for leaders, and giving recognition is a great way of boosting your reputation. This is because everyone craves recognition, it makes us feel seen, feel valued, and feel that we have done a good job. So receiving recognition meets one of our most basic needs and when we find someone who fills that need then of course it is going to make us, and others want to keep working for them, which helps build their reputation.
It helps to drive engagement because again, people like to be involved in something where their contribution is valued. When people keep contributing but don’t get any positive feedback for their efforts, it helps to build that feeling of “why do I bother” which ultimately leads to disengagement.
One of my favourite sayings is “what gets recognized, gets repeated, and as we repeat things we learn and get better at them.
So recognition leads to improvement.
I have had multiple discussions with HR directors about recognition and does it really deliver all these benefits.
Well, let me tell you about it from my personal experience.
I have now written over 1500 articles on leadership, which is a lot. What was it that inspired me to write so much, because that is quite an achievement.
The answer is recognition.
Every comment and every like encourages me to write more, to pen another article. Every award I get for my leadership expertise encourages me to keep going to keep sharing my thoughts and ideas on leadership. This really starts small but as it grew and i was selected #9 on the Global Gurus leadership list that got me to go on a spurt of writing new articles, just recently when I got my own Wikipedia page, it encouraged me to write some more articles.
Everyone is the same, the need for recognition is one of our most basic needs Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
So if you want to help build your reputation, drive engagement and performance then increase the amount of positive feedback and recognition you give.
It has to be sincere, and it can be as simple as good job, well done, or thanks I appreciate your effort these simple words can have an amazing impact.
It costs nothing and can deliver an amazing return.
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