I Like Being Recognized

I like to be recognized for when I do something good. How about you? If you are like most people, and I think you are, then you love to be recognized for your efforts. Last night, I went to a meeting at church and was pleasantly surprised to be named Volunteer of the Month for December. What a nice honor. I received a certificate and had all my peers congratulating me. I was proud. Some of you may say, what's the big deal?

Well, recognition is a prize that a person gets for positive behavior. If you reward that positive behavior, you will get more positive behavior. Then, you give more reward and get more positive behavior and so on. The recognition becomes a motivator. It lets people know that their performance was valued. It builds confidence for future behavior and performance. And it makes people happy. And happier people are positive people.

You don't need to be a supervisor or a manager to recognize good performance. How many of you are parents? How about recognizing your child for their positive behaviors? Do that consistently and see what happens to your child. Is the clerk at the convenience store especially nice? Then tell them so. Thank them for being very friendly and helpful and let them know how happy you are to see them when you come into the store. Begin consistently recognizing the positives that your spouse does. You can do this with anyone. Your child's teacher, a receptionist, a barista, a restaurant server....the list is endless.

When I was a restaurant manager, there was a couple who were regulars. They always made it a point to stick their head in the window to the kitchen and told the cooks what a great job they were doing. On some occasions, they even tipped the cooks. The cooks worked amazingly better after one of those episodes. They felt more pride in what they were doing. They were motivated to put their best effort into their work. They were happier. And that is what a little recognition can do.

If you want better results from people, you are going to have to recognize the good they are already doing. Sometimes it is hard to find the good that someone is doing. But if you don't recognize and reward that small positive behavior then you are unlikely to get anything more from them. I had a guy who worked for me when I was a Marine in California. No one else wanted anything to do with him. But I never had a problem with him. Everyone else wanted to yell at him and belittle him for being a screwup. I never did that with him. I yelled at others because that's what they needed to perform better. But not this guy. He made me look like a genius or some kind of great leader. I wasn't either one. I was just someone who saw the positives this guy was doing and recognized him for it.

And that's what I want you to do. I want you to recognize people in your life who are doing something positive so you can get more of that behavior. Or maybe you want them to perform better than they are. Either way, the key lies in rewarding the positive performance they are giving now. It may be a small gift or just a sincere thank you. Whatever it is, make sure you reference the behaviors that you want more of. I can assure you through my experience, you will love the results you elicit from others. Have a great day!!

Productivity vs Activity

Let me tell you a story about myself. When I was a restaurant manager, I had a server who worked my last nerve. This guy was a pretty good server. If anything, he could be too good...sometimes becoming more of an interruption to his customers than necessary. But that aside, he was good. Except, that servers in restaurants have a little thing called sidework. For those of you who have worked as a server, you probably just cringed at the word....sidework. Sidework is that work a server must do on top of waiting their tables. It usually entails rolling silverware into napkins and cleaning certain areas of the restaurant. Well, this guy was a master at putting it off.

When confronted with why his sidework wasn't getting done, Sam (not his real name) would tell of how busy he was and to not worry, that it would all get done. Yet, at the end of his shift, he wouldn't even be close to finishing. I started watching him shift after shift, and I began to notice that he flew around the restaurant like a mini-tornado. At first glance, it would seem as though he were truly busy. But he was not actually doing anything. He was only moving quickly from one spot to another. Like a fly buzzing around, searching for that oh-so-perfect pile of poop to land on. Anyone who has worked for me or knows me, knows that his actions didn't sit very well with me. Let's just say we had a mutual dislike for one another......I didn't like how he tried to get out of doing his job and he didn't like how I held him to standards of his job.

How many of us, though, act like Sam? We buzz around like busy little bees but at the end of the day have nothing, or very little, to show for it. I mean if these people really were bees they would be fired from the colony for producing no honey. In our world, no honey = no money. You see, production is where it's at. Produce the result you are being paid to produce and all is well. Don't produce and you can't act surprised at the consequences. Your actions really are NOT good enough. Simply showing up to work isn't enough, either. You are not being paid to show up. Shoot, a dog can be trained to be a certain place at a certain time. Even a cat knows what time is feeding time and where the food bowl is. But you are to do more. You are to produce measurable results. Whether you work for someone else or for yourself, the future probability of you continuing to get paid rests solely on production of results and not actions or good intentions.

So, cut out the busy bee, do-nothing actions of your day and ramp up the results producing actions that will  simplify or de-stress your life. Cut out the time wasting activities of your work and replace them with actions that create tangible, measurable, positive results and watch your business stature and success grow.