Most managers take an, “if, then” approach to recognition. Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, believes this paradigm needs to change, “…from thinking that encouragement and recognition should be used as rewards for high performance as opposed to thinking that encouragement and recognition are drivers of high performance.” I couldn’t agree more. You can’t utilize recognition too soon or too often.
One of the best examples of recognition from What’s Your Green Goldfish comes from the Twin Cities. The Nerdery (#305) agency compiles a video of shout-outs, with employees publicly praising their fellow nerds for going above and beyond. Five shout-out recipients are chosen for free lunches the following week. The weekly shout-out video is played for all at the Friday afternoon Bottlecap Talk, where the agency celebrates the successful launch of a recent project with a show-and-tell demo led by the rockstar developers who made it happen. (Source: Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal)
Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra thrown in good measure) – Here is Nerdery CEO Mike Derheim at TEDx Minot talking about employee engagement and the idea of being a co-president. Command and control is dead, long live empowerment:
