Recognizing and Celebrating Successes

As a leader, how do you recognize and celebrate the successes of your staff?

In the end, people will forget what you said, forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

As a leader, recognizing and celebrating the successes of your staff can be very motivating.  Kouzes and Posner (2002) speak about encouraging the heart and its significance for people.  As leaders, we often focus on the front-end deliverables related to planning, implementing, resourcing, and managing.  It can be easy to forget about the power and energy that comes from sincere recognition and celebration of actual accomplishments.  Emphasis here is on the word 'sincere'.  If it's not coming from your heart to their hearts, it's meaningless.  People see through insincerity very easily.

In his book Drive (2009), Daniel Pink cautions us that an excess of recognition and celebration can actually de-motivate people.  Staff learn quickly that if there is no 'reward' on the way, the work is either not important or it's not worth doing because recognition won't come on the heels of completion.  When recognition becomes routine, isn't sincere, and doesn't recognize truly worthwhile work, it means nothing.  

For you as a leader, it's a case of knowing your staff and how much recognition and celebration are appropriate.  Here are a few questions to guide your thinking about when and when not to praise.

• How often will it be given?  In what forum?
• Does it always come from you?  Can it also come from colleagues?
• Is it done publicly or privately?
• Is everyone recognized at some point?  Is anyone left out?
• Do people know what merits recognition or does it appear to be arbitrary?  Does recognition come when school/organizational goals are met?
• Are people praised for results, effort, or other reasons?  Why?
• What have your staff told you about what they'd like in terms of praise, recognition, and celebration?
• Is it sincere and honest?

From:  Leading Every Day by Joyce Kaser, Susan Mundry, Katherine E. Stiles, & Susan Loucks-Horsley
Published by: Corwin Press

Performance Appraisals

As a leader, how do you handle performance appraisals?

One of the important tasks any supervising leader must assume is engaging in performance appraisals with members of your staff.  Performance appraisals can be seen as an annoying task that needs to be completed to get it out of the way until the next appraisal cycle comes round......or......it can be an opportunity to celebrate the good work of your staff, to support their professional growth, and to build capacity for ever-better results.  The difference is huge - a mundane task or a celebratory process focused on growth.  What makes the difference?  It's the leader - and how the leader engages in performance appraisal processes. 

If you'd like to lead a work culture that doesn't fear but embraces performance appraisals, it's up to you as the leader, to change your processes.  A few things to consider when doing performance appraisals:

• Who does the talking?  Is it you, the leader/appraiser, or do your staff members have more of the 'air time'?  This is a chance for your staff to present themselves and their work to you.
• Do staff members have a chance:
• to articulate their work,
• to explain why they work in the way that they do,
• to talk about what they believe their greatest strengths and accomplishments are,
• to describe from their own perspective where they believe they need to grow?
• Do you use coaching questions in the conversations?  True coaching questions mediate thinking and are non-threatening.  They open up honest conversation.
• Do your staff members have an opportunity to provide evidence of their work that demonstrates their strengths and accomplishments? 
• Who decides what the next steps - or growth goals- are?  As the leader/appraiser do you tell your staff member or do they have the opportunity first to explain to you what their growth needs to be.  You might be very surprised that they likely know even better than you what they need to learn next in order to grow professionally.
• Once the performance appraisal process finishes, is that it?  Done?  Or do you take the opportunity to check in with your staff to see how they're doing with the growth goals that were set?  Friendly, on-going monitoring - if done well - can be encouraging and motivating without seeming like you're checking up on them.

Performance appraisals can be a time-consuming, routine task or it can be a growth-oriented celebration of each staff members' work.  It's up to you as the leader, to create the culture by your actions.

Celebrate, Recognize, Reinforce, Reward

As a leader, do you Celebrate, Recognize, Reinforce, and Reward your staff?

The kind of significant, sustained improvement that we need in [organizations] will not occur in an isolated, free-lance culture, where no one knows what anyone else is doing or what each other's operative goals are.  That is a system in disarray.

[Organizations] improve when purpose and effort unite.  One key is leadership that recognizes its most vital function: to keep everyone's eyes on the prize of [improvement].  The crush of competing agendas and distractions does not make that focus easy.

One of the most effective means to cultivate a goal-oriented culture is to regularly reinforce and recognize improvement efforts, both privately and publicly. 

From: Results by Mike Schmoker
(Published by: ASCD - The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)