“Inside the Magic Kingdom” Lesson 6 by Cindy Stradling CSP, CPC

 “Inside the Magic Kingdom” Continued from previous week…

LESSON 6

Reward, Recognize and Celebrate

One of the deepest human yearnings is to be appreciated.  The books highlights that a lot of organizations go through the motions of recognizing people but only a few make it part of a system.  Often companies spend more time pointing out mistakes than achievements.  This can greatly affect morale. Recognition is about appreciating and acknowledging that someone has done something special.   Years ago when I worked in a manufacturing plant we implemented a system where employees would give each other a pin (shaped like a star) when they did something special for another employee.  At first people were a little reluctant to participate and once they started to see the visual chart we created, things changed.  It was the incentive to help get everyone on board.  Some of the things people did for each other is drive someone to the subway on a cold evening, offer to babysit when someone had a doctor’s appointment, bring someone a coffee who was having a bad day…. it worked to build a stronger team.  We had created a structure with guidelines that encouraged recognition.

Questions for discussion with your team:

1.    How often does good performance go unrecognized?

2.    In general, what’s the positive-to-negative feedback ratio in our company/plant/department etc?

3.    How could we improve that ratio?

4.    What is your individual ratio of positive-to-negative feedback?