129. How gratitude from leadership improves culture & employee engagement

Transcript – Episode 129: How gratitude from leadership improves culture & employee engagement

Joe: Guess what? You can be amazing at employee recognition and never have to buy another gift ever again.

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Joe: Welcome to the Boss Better Now podcast sponsored by Boss Hero School where we teach leaders and business owners how to activate employee commitment in today’s everchanging workplace. Okay, pop quiz. What is the most common type of employee recognition program in today’s workplace? If you answered tenure, you’re right. Now, what do I mean by tenure? Tenure is, for lack of a better term, time served. You know, like prison. But it’s true. In fact, 87% of employee recognition programs in today’s workplace celebrate the amount of time you have worked for the company. And think about what’s problematic about this. For one thing, it could mean that most employees are going to go a year between being recognized or appreciated for what they do. And that’s if the company celebrates one year of service. I’ve seen places that only serve or that only celebrate milestone anniversaries like five years, 10 years, etc. And think about what we’re celebrating. We’re celebrating not the contribution that the person makes. We’re celebrating that they’re still here, like the coffee maker in the breakroom, still going strong, still doing your thing. realize that of all the different ways that we could celebrate people, this is probably the least effective and we need to do better. We need to do better because we know that recognition that gratitude in particular from the people that that we work for are a central ingredient in experiencing a sense of purpose and that is a central ingredient in activating employee commitment. What we know is that people want to be noticed. They want to feel seen and they want to believe that their work matters. But we don’t always do a great job at creating the interactions and the moments that lead people to feel that way. Even though we sometimes have the best intentions for doing this. When I wrote my first book, I shared a story about a company that went to great lengths to figure out how to celebrate employees. They wanted to create an employee recognition program that would make a difference that would lead to people feeling appreciated. And so, they formed a committee and they gathered a bunch of ideas. And what they ultimately decided to do was celebrate tenure. We would celebrate every employee on the anniversary of their hire. And in order to do this, they contracted with a local florist to deliver a small gift during the week of a particular employee’s anniversary. And so, what would happen is every month somebody in HR would send over a spreadsheet to the florist uh of all the people who were celebrating work anniversaries and each week the florist would make a delivery to the company. And so, if you’re one of these employees, then on a one Monday or Tuesday, you would come into the work into work, you would walk over to your cubicle, and if it was your anniversary week, you would find a little cactus there with a note that said, “Happy anniversary. We’re grateful for all that you do.” Now, on the surface, this sounds like a nice gesture. And don’t get me wrong, I like a good cactus every once in a while. But if I come into work and I see this sitting there on my desk and I know about this program, how appreciated am I going to feel? Am I really going to feel like somebody is noticing what I’m doing, or did we just check the box for me to get my automated gift? But that’s actually not why the program didn’t work. The reason that the program didn’t work is because what would happen a short time later when the employees’ boss would walk by. Story after story after story was told of a person’s supervisor coming out of their office noticing the cactus sitting on the employees’ desk and the boss saying, “Oh, that’s right. It’s your anniversary. Happy anniversary.” This formal program completely removed any responsibility or obligation from the employee’s direct supervisor to pay attention to recognition to remember that it was the employee’s anniversary. And in that way, this program was completely ineffective. It didn’t lead employees to feel seen or that they matter or that they make a contribution. and nobody else in the organization needed to take responsibility for helping people feel that way. Now, let’s play out a different version of this scenario. What if the organization decided rather than a cactus, they were going to ask the employees supervisor to write that person a note? Now, imagine it’s my work anniversary and I come into work on a Monday or Tuesday morning and I go over to my cubicle and instead of a cactus, I find a card and I open up the card, and I read it and inside the cart is a note. Inside the card is a note from my boss and the note says, “Hey, I probably don’t tell you this enough, but I’m really glad you work here. You make a huge difference in what we’re doing. Happy anniversary. Thanks so much for all that you do. Which one of those efforts is more powerful? I would argue it’s the card. And I would argue that the more specific the note is inside the card about the difference that that employee makes, the more impactful it would be. And that’s one of the big takeaways here about how gratitude from leadership can improve culture and employee engagement. Because it’s not about the gift. It’s not about money. It’s not about a gift card. It’s not about a cactus. What matters more than anything else is the specific sentiment that is expressed to the employee about the difference that they make. If on the inside of that card was a kind of documenting of the different contributions that that person made over the past year, that employee is much more likely to feel seen and appreciated. Now we can supercharge a culture of engagement by doing this kind of recognition more frequently by not just leaving it to be a once of year obligation. But if we can specifically articulate the difference that people make in the course of their work whenever we see it happening, it’s like pouring gasoline onto a fire when it comes to employee engagement. So, what kinds of things should you be recognizing? I would tell you to focus not on tenure but on effort, talent and emotional investment. Well, what do I mean by effort? Effort is about try. Effort is about you see people parting with energy in order to achieve something or in support of something or in service of something that matters. And notice that I’m not highlighting outcomes. Outcomes are important. If there was a big win or a big success, then absolutely we should recognize that. But we don’t always get that in response to effort. And so, what I want to praise in people is progress. I might want to say, “Hey, you pulled this committee together and we wanted to improve our customer satisfaction scores. And even though they didn’t move maybe as much as you hoped that they would, I saw you putting in this effort week after week to lead this committee and to launch these new initiatives. and I want you to know that it really mattered and I really appreciate it. The other thing to recognize is talent. When you see someone who is good at something, being explicit about that is actually like double dipping because you’re not just engaging in recognition. You’re actually pointing out someone’s strengths. And when we are getting to use our strengths in our work, that supercharges our commitment as well. So, by using recognition and focusing on strengths, it’s like a double dip in the recipe for employee commitment. So, if you notice that somebody is good at something, say it, point it out, write them a note, say, “Hey, I don’t know if anybody’s ever told you this before, but you are really good at deescalating frustrated customers when they’re out front at the cash register. I don’t know how you got so good at that, but it’s really something to see. And I really want to thank you for when you are just fearless about doing that. That explicit recognition makes it feel like, wow, my boss really notices that that I’m trying or that I have certain gifts. And when we feel like people are noticing, and when we feel like people are taking time out of their busy schedule away from their to-do list to point that out, it’s like a deposit into the piggy bank of that sense of purpose, which leads to more commitment. By the way, the other thing you heard me say was emotional investment. I want you to praise emotional investment. When you see that someone cares. When you see that someone is affected, when you see that someone is feeling something about the work or things that are happening at work, thank them for it. It means they’re not just going through the motions. It means they’re not just doing the minimum. When we experience gratitude from our leaders, it actually helps us fuel our gas tank, so to speak, for when we encounter the normal difficulties of our work or the occasional hardships that pop up from time to time. And so, in order to do this well, it’s about seizing on those moments and being as explicit as you possibly can in those moments. In other words, don’t just say thank you. Tell them specifically what you are thanking them for. It goes back to the note inside the card. It’s not about the gift. It’s about the sentiment. It’s about the specificity of what you are sharing. A couple of years ago, I was traveling for work. I was coming home from keynoting at a large conference, and I just so happened to be flying on Southwest Airlines, and we took off from the airport. We got up into the air, and you know that little ding came across the intercom that signaled we had crossed 10,000 ft. And a few moments later, a gentleman wearing a Southwest shirt walked up from the back of the plane. And our flight attendant whose name was Brian was obviously shocked to see him. And so, this gentleman in the Southwest shirt took the microphone and announced to everybody on the plane, “Can I have your attention, please? Um, I want to take a moment to express appreciation for this guy right here, your flight attendant, Brian. The gentleman speaking on the microphone was named Sam. And he told us that he was the regional head of flight attendance for Southwest Airlines and that he had snuck onto the plane with the help of some of the other flight attendants in order to recognize Brian. He then pulled out a letter that he had received from a flyer from a customer who told the story of how helpful Brian was on a flight when this passenger had a fussy infant. He then went on to tell all of us on the plane that this is one of many compliments that they get about Brian and about how he shows up for passengers and how he does his job. Now, this whole time, Brian is basically blushing and looks a little bit embarrassed, but you can also tell that he’s really touched by this gesture. The fact that this leader, his boss, would take hours out of their day to ride on a flight that he was going to be on to do this kind of recognition. And that’s the first takeaway, the first lesson from this. You know, Sam could have written Brian a note and it would have been powerful if he wrote it the right way in the way that we’ve been talking about here in this episode. Or Sam could have held a conference call or a Zoom meeting where in front of his peers, he went to great lengths to praise Brian for his efforts and share the letter. And that would have been powerful, too. But going the extra mile here and hopping on the flight and making a little bit of a of a scene is sort of next level, isn’t it? And so, I would challenge you to think about where are opportunities that you could do that that you could do something out of the ordinary to help people to help people feel special. The other takeaway here is what Sam focused on in terms of Brian’s performance. He did not focus on anything out of the ordinary. He took the time to praise Brian for doing the basics of his job. He talked about how Brian was helping passengers with a fussy infant. He told a few other stories about the ways that Brian just takes his time to be there for people who are traveling and to be the flight the best flight attendant that he possibly can be. So, you don’t need exceptional moments to engage in recognition. You can praise people for doing the basic parts of their job and doing them well. You’ve heard me say before on this show that culture is the way we do things around here. That culture is a collection of experiences that when they happen again and again and again lead people to adopt certain behaviors and mindsets around how they show up. This is true about gratitude from leadership. If you can embrace the habit of regularly expressing the specific ways that people make a difference, the specific efforts that they part with, the specific talents that they bring to their work, the emotional investment they deploy on behalf of you and your customers, if you can do that again and again and again, other people are going to see it happening. And I’m telling you, other people will start doing it, too. And then all of a sudden, gratitude, explicit, specific gratitude isn’t just something that people get from time to time. It becomes a part of your culture. It becomes the way we do things around here. And that is going to improve employee commitment wherever you work. I’d love to hear your thoughts. How do you engage in gratitude to create the kind of workplace that people want to be a part of? Drop a comment in the box below the YouTube video that you’re watching here. Or if you’re listening to the podcast on your favorite platform, send me an email at boss bettergmail.com. I’d also love to know what questions you’d like to see me tackle in a future episode of the show. So, you can drop a comment about that or send me an email with an idea there as well. Thanks for being here. See you next time.

Joe: Hey friends, did you know that I have been publishing my Boss Better email newsletter for more than 10 years? That’s right. If you want to keep in touch with me and keep your finger on the pulse of all things employee engagement and retention, workplace culture and leadership, then go to bossetnow.com to subscribe.

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