Good Leaders Acknowledge Their Employees Often
- by Magdalena Nowicka Mook
Harvard Business Review — In today’s evolving professional environment, people are working hard just to keep up. The transition to a post-Covid world is daunting for everyone; the way we do business now, which we thought would be a temporary accommodation, is becoming an entirely new normal. We may have been at this for more than a year, but there still is a lot left to learn.
The work-from-home transition was stressful for many professionals, resulting in an atmosphere of near-chronic anxiety.
Good leaders quickly learned that acknowledgement is one of the greatest positive motivators, and an important tool to help team members overcome uncertainty. We also learned that recognition need not be elaborate or expensive, but merely authentic and deserved. It serves as a great learning tool for others and a way to move beyond mental exhaustion to a sense of inspiration.
The difficulty now is not making leaders aware of recognition’s value, but rather encouraging them to provide it more often.
Although coaching may help managers find the best opportunities to inspire their teams with praise, acknowledging direct reports’ good work can in fact be easy: