Starting to use Recognition

“I have managed people for over 5 years now, but have never really done any kind of recognition for my people (outside of a few nominations for corporate wide award programs). I have now realized the value of recognition and want to really start using Recognition very effectively with my team. If I suddenly start now, won’t my people wonder what is wrong and feel suspicious”

This is probably one of the best questions someone has asked me about using recognition.

I first asked him why he wants to do recognition suddenly now? He told me that when he first became a manager, he felt that he had achieved something in his career and he felt he was superior than the folks he managed. Essentially he felt that he became a manager because he could do the job better than others and now his job was to teach the people on the team how to do their jobs. With time, he has realized that his job is really to just support his people and make available the resources they need, to perform their jobs, rather than telling them what to do. For this, he has realized that he needs to build trust with his people and drive up their engagement levels. He believes Recognition is a key component of doing this.

My response to him was quite simple – “At first, your people will wonder what your agenda is behind doing all this recognition suddenly now. They will be very skeptical and cautious and will probably not receive your first few instances of recognition very well. The best way to counter this would be to not stop doing it. If the Recognition is sincere and they see you doing it for a few months, they will start understanding that you are genuinely making an effort to appreciate them. The key here is to have a reasonable recognition plan (say for about 12 months), obtain the budget for it, communicate to the team and stick to the plan without worrying about the results”.