Sincere appreciation sometimes gets overshadowed in this era driven by results and hefty performance bonuses. While performance bonus, incentives, elaborate felicitation ceremonies function as ‘ATL’ strategy, sincere appreciation can be a vital ‘BTL’ strategy to improve morale and drive performance by inducing the individual to excel. Though lot can be said on appreciation, I will tell you 3 things you must remember while appreciating anyone
1. Appreciate the progress: Imagine your team member who is normally late in submitting reports 75% of the time. After you counsel her, you may see that her on time submissions have gone up to 60%, a significant improvement. What should you do? Should you come down heavily on the 40% gap still remaining? No, the right way would be perhaps to say “Good to see the effort you are putting in, Reema. If you can improve like this, I have no doubt you will achieve 100% timely submissions, which both of us agreed upon.” This way you are ensuring Reema stays on the path to progress. Progress appreciation is important on any task which has an agreed upon end objective.
2. Avoid Congratulations with a rider: During my sales days, I used to read the congratulatory notes fellow Area Managers would write to their colleagues on some specific out of the way, achievement. They would go something like this; “Congratulations Hemant on booking 500 units of XYZ at Getwell Hospital. Looking to you to get the next 1000 units order.” Remember this is an exceptional event. Therefore, at this moment when an exceptional task is done, 100% of that moment should be spent on the current appreciation. Let him enjoy the moment fully. Standards can and will be set later.
3. Serve Appreciation fresh: Imagine your sales guy has handled an important customer objection exceedingly well in front of you on the first call of the day. Do not wait till the end of the day to appreciate his effort. Appreciate instantly and on the spot. Do not wait to get back, write a formal mail and then maybe send some token. You may do all that but not at the cost of compromising the freshness. Sometimes freshness of the appreciation is more valuable than the size of the appreciation.
I have said what I wanted to say. I want you to try this out for 1 week. Yes, 1 week. You be the judge of the results.
Happy Appreciating.
Sir,i have not worked with you during my Ranbaxy days but i heard from my Delhi colleagues that you send the feedback mail of your joint working on the same day by evening.....n i think sir its good if u give the feedback in front of the person with whom u hv worked n actually it releases the congestion of ur mind.
ReplyDeleteThanx a lot for reading my blog, Arti. You are absolutely correct in your feedback. I too agree that a face to face feedback is the best..In fact I always gave on the spot appreciation plus improvement areas. The reason i would send a feedback mail later was to put the good points and improvement areas in 1 page as a checklist for the person to act on. It also used to be marked as a cc to the immediate boss so that he can be aware of the good things and also work with the MSR / BE to improve on the other areas. Trust, I have been amble to clarify.
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