Try a little acknowledgement...

Here’s an important reminder for you: thanking people for their surface behaviours and actions is good. Recognising them for their deeper qualities is better. Leaders need both to understand and demonstrate the difference.

It has become something of a cliché of management practice to say thanks to your staff for what they have done well. ‘Catching people doing things right’ is the positive catchphrase: and of course as far as it goes, it is a very good thing. However, it only goes so far.

On our coaching courses we teach the benefits of acknowledgement, a positive affirmation technique that goes a lot deeper than the simple thank-you. With an acknowledgement you go beyond thanking someone for whatthey have done, and instead draw positive attention to positive qualitiesin themselves.

Your staff might have been plugging away for years, demonstrating loyalty, persistence, conscientiousness, inventiveness and many other fine qualities, without these getting so much as a mention, except (perhaps) at appraisal time.

What makes acknowledgement so high impact is that you are drawing positive attention to something
about their deeper selves, the parts of themselves that are about their values, beliefsand even identities.

A thank-you generally only draws attention to current behaviours and actions– important of course, but not so fundamental to their sense of self.

Write your own script

While expressing genuine approval you won’t want to appear patronising, so think out your language in
advance.You will of course want to use words that suit you and your style – the word ‘acknowledge’ will
not feel right for everyone.You could try ‘draw attention to’ or ‘mark’ or ‘salute’ or whichever word you choose, just as long as you are drawing attention to the person’s positive qualities.

You may find in due course you can apply the technique to your whole 360° network – peers, customers, even yourboss.You might well get some acknowledgement yourself.