Recognition

Hello! 

Last week, I headed to our global team off-site in the historic Roman city of Bath (if you haven't been, add it to your bucket list). One of the highlights was opening an envelope of positivity - you may have seen my LinkedIn post about it.

Everyone on the team, is asked to write a short paragraph celebrating the strengths / contributions of each of their teammates. The remarks are then collated, printed out and given to each of us in an envelope.

The experience of reading through a few pages of praise is wonderful. Very simple, but highly motivating. Feel free to steal this idea and use it with your own team!

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Feeling appreciated. 

It got me thinking about the power of recognition and giving thanks. We can no doubt all recall plenty of times in the past, when our hard work has gone under-appreciated or perhaps even unnoticed. You feel totally deflated. It's one of the most demotivating experiences. 

Hopefully those memories inform how we behave in our day to day. I try to say thank you to close team mates on a habitual basis. I build it into routine collaboration authentically, rather than waiting for a rigid - and no doubt occasional - "feedback session". In these meetings, positivity is commonly overshadowed by negativity - we have no doubt all experienced the sh*t sandwich.

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Recognising your own strengths and contributions is also something that's very easy to forget to do. Most of us probably don't do it at all. And if we do make time, it's probably a lot less regular than it should be. 

However, recognising your own strengths, preferences and contributions is one of the most powerful things you can do to support your career. It helps you become clear on critical questions like:

1. What environment you perform best in (e.g, company size, office vs wfh balance etc)?
2. What role best allows you to play to your strengths?
3. What compromises you're willing to make to reach your goals vs,
4. What red lines you're simply not willing to cross?
5. What impact you've had in the last year? 

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So ask yourself this question - are you in a routine of recognising your own achievements?

Not only does that ritual give you energy, but the "impact log" you create and add to through making this part of your routine (I recommend keeping a clear list & adding to it monthly), is so helpful when you're preparing for an annual review, positioning yourself for a promotion / internal move and if you're looking externally too.

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Have a wonderful weekend,

Rich