I want to discuss providing acknowledgement or giving praise in the workplace and identify a few areas.

Firstly, when giving praise, we want it to be meaningful, meaning that it’s either meaningful to us as the leader or we know it’s something that is meaningful to the employee. We also want that acknowledgement to be in real time or as close to an event or a review as possible so that we’re not necessarily waiting two, three, even four weeks out of a situation or event that went really well and then waiting an excessive amount of time to let that person know that we appreciate their contributions. So that’s another important factor.

The next thing is that not everyone in the workplace wants or needs to receive feedback or acknowledgement publicly. For some individuals it is much more meaningful for them to receive acknowledgement one-on-one in a more private manner so it’s another factor to take into consideration.

The final point when we start to look at acknowledgement is making it meaningful is truly a skill. It is not necessarily something that comes naturally to all individuals but for the people who we see that can develop this skill, what we find is that they can start to build much more trusting relationships and they can really increase the comfort in disclosing information or even opening channels of communication with their employees. So what this does, over time, is build the confidence level in the employees; it can increase the comfort to share, but where this really starts to be powerful is that we can start to discuss constructive criticisms. We can start to look at sorts of things that we would like to change or things that we could start to develop. We can really start to have some of those more constructive conversations without necessarily damaging a relationship if we put in the time to really help build this person’s confidence and really make a very healthy relationship. Regardless of whether it’s an employee to another employee or an employee to a leader.

So again, when we talk about acknowledgement, we find that it is a critical skill and we would hope that you will take this information and maybe just remember that it is okay to celebrate small successes and that when you as a leader can take the time to acknowledge the contributions of another person, that it could be a real difference maker to that individual, especially when we have individuals in the workplace that don’t necessarily have an accurate self-assessment of whether they are doing a good job or not. With those individuals, you could imagine how a leader taking the time to acknowledge their contributions would be incredibly meaningful for those individuals.