Employee Appreciation: Simplest Reason to Show It | #Leadership
by Kate Nasser | 6 Comments »
Employee Appreciation: The Simple Logical Reason to Show It
Employee Appreciation People Skills: Simplest Reason to Show It. Image via Istock.com.
A training company executive called and asked if I would step in and teach one of their courses. One of their instructors had suddenly left and they were in a jam. I taught the course for them and everyone was pleased.
When he asked me to do more subcontracting for them, I thanked him and yet declined. I explained that I had transitioned out of doing subcontracts and had done that one as a colleague to help them out.
He replied: “Kate, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
In that short statement, he made me doubly glad I had declined his offer. He had no understanding of collaboration or partnership.
It was clear that he saw himself as powerful. He who had the opportunity was feeding others. It never occurred to him that when I taught as a subcontractor for them, we were feeding each other. It was a two-way work relationship not alms for a starving person.
Implications on Employee Appreciation
I reflected on that as I prepared an employee appreciation workshop for new leaders. Some of them had worked for leaders who didn’t believe in showing appreciation. Since they had no model for employee appreciation, it was important to explore its value.
That is the the simplest reason for leaders to show employee appreciation. When leaders treat employees as paid resources rather than valuable, essential relationships, they are guaranteeing turnover. They starve the organization of the very talent needed to succeed.
Companies and leaders are not feeding employees. All employees in an organization feed the success of the whole. It’s the simple logic of employee appreciation.
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
Related posts:
Leaders, Do You Know Why Your Employees Work?
Leaders, Employee Engagement is Uniquely Personal
©2012-2015 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission and guidelines. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.
Engage in people skills learning!
Let’s turn interaction obstacles into business success in leadership, teamwork, and customer service experience.
I invite your questions, welcome your wisdom, and look forward to working with you.
~Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
I can share my experience with this topic!
I work in an IT department looking after IT infrastructure in the company. I worked very hard in making the infrastructure very stable to the extent that everything work with minimum manual intervention from my side and my team. I’ve got some free time so I volunteered in launching two of very important programs in the company (naming Lean and new performance appraisal program) and I lectured our 3,000+ (of course with the elected team) on the new performance appraisal process. It was tough time as I had to go through lots of resistance from employees who didn’t believe in such change but I’m proud of myself in making that transition easier.
I came across my supervisor who said how long time will you waste with non IT initiatives! And I was In shock of hearing his feedback! He said you should focus more on your job and I told him that I built an infrastructure that is solid enough to give me some extra time to open up into other areas within the company!
That was a real downer for me!
Thanks for your spirit lifting posts Kate
Regards,
Khalid
Oh Khalid .. thank you for your story! It is so common and as you say “such a downer”. The extra work you put in is laudable. Your supervisor has no concept of “company”. He sees only the IT dept. and doesn’t understand true company citizenship.
Warmest thanks for your contribution here … and for your talent to see the bigger picture … and your commitment to initiating valuable change.
Kate
Great post Kate!
A couple of years ago, a group of us were leading a large contact centre behavioural transformation project. We had a mantra that Small Actions x Lots of People = Big Change – I challenged 10,000 people to “catch someone doing something great and tell them how much it means to you”. There was an instant buzz – it felt both to give and to receive such spontaneous and considered feedback.
About a week later it stopped and I couldn’t understand it. When I delved deeper my colleagues, the leaders had reverted to their natural style and snuffed out the initiative in it’s infancy. I still live by that mantra – I prefer to catch someone doing something great than find a negative reason to give them feedback.
Bravo Dougie. It was and is a wonderful idea and infuses zeal into any service organization! AND it doesn’t cost anything. Leaders who douse the candle douse customer service excellence. There is no reason to work in the darkness when as you say “Small actions x Lots of People = Big Change!”.
Many thanks for contributing your story here for these stories become an anthology for service greatness.
Warmest wishes,
Kate
Hi Kate,
I thought you and others might also find some ‘science’ behind the value of recognition in leading others. Here’s a post. http://www.maritzmotivation.com/maritzmotivationsolutionsblog/employee_recognition/5-reasons-recognition-leadership/
Nice post Michelle. Thanks for sharing! On Twitter you may want to follow Ellen F Weber — she does a great deal with brain science learning etc…
Best regards,
Kate