If you care about employee motivation and morale, this is an important question to ask…

At a supervisory skills seminar I gave last week, a participant who was a new supervisor told the group he realized that he was thanking his people too much and that this was diminishing his credibility.

"You mean showing appreciation is a BAD thing?"

I was curious about how he “knew” it was diminishing his credibility, and asked him if it was a theory he had or if his employees actually told him this.

Neither was the case. It was the veteran supervisors he worked with who told him “it was a bad thing.”

I asked the group for their take on this. Another group member said she has “old school” managers at her company who believe that you shouldn’t thank employees or show appreciation and, she noted:

“It shows… they have incredibly high turnover in their departments.”

Research on employee motivation has shown us time and time again that if you want disengaged employees—employees who don’t care about helping their employer succeed—taking them for granted is a great way to get there.

Few actions trigger resentment and diminished motivation faster than having one’s hard work, extra effort, and significant contributions taken for granted.

Think of your own experience as an employee. Think of times you worked weekends, put in extra hours, went above and beyond, and never got a simple “thank you.” Think of what you thought about your boss or management in general, and how you felt.

Is not bothering to show appreciation really a big deal?

According to Tom Rath of the Gallup organization, the #1 reason employees leave is because they don’t feel appreciated. Furthermore, Gallup’s research revealed that 65% of American workers reported that they had received zero recognition in the workplace in the past year.

Thus, having ones work appreciated and recognized is:

A) Really important
B) Not happening for the majority of employees

So…If you want your employees to care more, show more initiative, and feel like you value them (you do, don’t you?), here’s what you can do:

1. Let them know that you read this and wondered if you showed enough appreciation. If they say “No”, ask for examples of when you dropped the ball. Make it clear that you’re not asking them to defend their position. Specific examples increase your ability to recognize future opportunities.

2. Ask each team member how he or she prefers having a boss show appreciation. Ask them if they’ve had previous supervisors show appreciation in ways that worked for them. Some people like effusive praise, others like an understated, off-hand comment. Most want specific details about what their boss appreciated or recognized as excellent work.

3. Let your team know that you will work on showing more appreciation. By doing this, you remove the awkwardness supervisors often feel when contemplating trying out new behaviors. “What if they think ‘Why’s she doing this? What… did she go to some seminar?’”. By spelling it out, you know they know that you know you’re trying something new. Doing this also communicates that you care about how you treat them enough to want to improve.

4. Stay on the lookout for opportunities to show appreciation, such as when an employee goes the extra mile, does an especially good job, works overtime or on weekends makes some other sacrifice, or simply has a great attitude.

5. If you have team members that you truly can’t find anything to be appreciative of about them, maybe you need to ask yourself why they’re still in your team. It doesn’t do you or them any good if you’re not happy with their performance. Talk to them about what you want them to improve in and help them get there or get out.

6. When someone from another department does something especially helpful, let them – and their boss – know you appreciate it. In the same seminar mentioned above, a participant said that she makes a habit of CCing the president of their small company when she emails a thank you email to an employee who did a stellar job. By doing this, she also models mindfulness and appreciation for the president. Thus, the more you show gratitude, the more your recipients – and onlookers – will do the same to others.

7. Cultivate an “Attitude of Gratitude”. The more we recognize and appreciate the blessings in our life and the more we express that – especially to the people who bring them – the greater our feeling of goodwill and good cheer. By doing this, we become more of the type of person that uplifts others, simply by our presence. In fact, research by University of Virginia’s Rob Cross, PhD and his associates, has shown that people who are perceived as “energizers” are far more effective than those perceived as de-energizers. In fact, whether a person was seen as an energizer was four times stronger of a predictor of their performance than the next closet variable measured.

By expressing appreciation and gratitude, you increase your energizing effect on others, and become more of a “force for good” in your organization.

Summary

By becoming more mindful of expressing appreciation and gratitude, you can have a dramatic effect on not just your employees, but your peers and even those above you in your organization.

Recommended Readings

Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier by Robert Emmons

How Full Is Your Bucket?: Positive Strategies for Work and Life by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton

Also, I have a new article out you might find helpful:

Why You Need a Resilient Workforce in Today's Economy

Sometimes when doing customer service training, I’ll have a participant cheerfully describe their “cute” sense of humor and how customers just love it.

Other times, they’ll describe a situation where they thought they were being funny and were puzzled why the customer didn’t.

Do you know the type? The ones who are either “characters” or simply lack the ability to recognize when it’s appropriate to use humor and when it isn’t?

Do you have CSRs who might be doing this?

Here’s an example of this I just experienced….

I waited at the service counter of one of the buying clubs this week, to see if my photos were in. The man waiting on the current customer was a clerk who had caught my attention in the past because of his oddly officious demeanor. His stuffy, stilted formality seemed more like someone pretending to be a maitre de, than someone being a clerk at a retail store.

Sure enough, when the man ahead of me finished, the clerk says in a very grave, formal voice “I will help the next person”. He says this while looking straight ahead, as if the next person – me – is way off in the distance, instead of right in front of him.

I tell him I wanted to check to see if my pictures are in and tell him my name. He flips through the envelopes and finds mine.

“Would you like them?” he asks, in a mock challenging tone.

“Uh yeah” I say with a laugh, thinking: Duh! Of course I want them. What a stupid question!

“Well…”, he says with a twisted smile and a lecturing tone, “You didn’t say you wanted them, you just asked if they were there.” His grin shouted just how proud he was of his cleverness.

Incredulous at his response, I blurt out: “Boy… I bet people love you”

He says “Oh yeah” and then proudly tells me how if people ask him if he knows the time, he demonstrates to me with a flourish how he looks at his watch as he’s telling them this “Yes, I do.”

“But…I tell them, ‘you just asked me if I knew the time. You didn’t ask me to tell you the time.’ I always say it with a smile on my face. It makes people laugh.”

I bet it does. I’m sure they find it immensely amusing.

I found it interesting that despite my initial response which I would think indicated “Not amused or impressed” he persisted in another example of his amazing cleverness.

So impressed was he with his brand of humor, he was blind to the fact that he was the only one impressed.

Ah… But he wasn’t finished yet with his comedy routine. When he gave me my change - $20 – he says, with a sly smile “So you said you’d like this in pennies right?”

“I’ll definitely be writing about you” I cheerfully replied and left, thinking:

“Who thought having this guy wait on the public was a good idea?"

In his excellent book Social Intelligence, Dan Goleman writes about how some people demonstrate sensitivity to social cues, facial expressions, etc. and know how to generate positive relational responses, while others don’t.

A socially astute CSR knows how to put people at ease and that playing “gotcha” humor doesn’t tend to endear yourself to your customers.

Not only do they know the difference between humor that puts people off, they also know when and with whom it’s appropriate to joke around.

It’s one things to play with familiar customers who are more like friends and appreciate that familiarity. It’s quite another thing to joke around with an unfamiliar customer in an overly familiar way.

Do your people know the difference?

Do your processes support – or thwart – your customers’ attempts to do business with you? I just read a painfully amusing story in Dan Kennedy’s NO B.S. Marketing Newsletter about his failed attempt to give money to a high end winery that had been sending him their fancy 42 page catalogs for years.

When he finally decided to place an order for their $2400/year wine of the month program, he got stuck in menu option purgatory. The option for ordering (“push 10”) instead dumped him back into the main menu for another go round. When he tried again, instead of sending him to the order line, it sent him to voice mail for an employee, Brad Ackerman, with no indication of who this person was. He hung up.

Kennedy then comments that he will NEVER call them again. He then notes how much thought, money, and creativity was focused on putting out an effective catalog to get people to call, only to DRIVE the customer away through a poorly conceived, ineffectively executed phone system.

The same can be said for businesses that invest in advertising to get people through the door, and then hire people who should never wait on the public, who then drive the people back out the door.

Dan Kennedy also notes that the cost of the company’s error was compounded by the fact that they were marketing to targeting the affluent, who place a high premium on competence when deciding who to do business with.

Let this scenario focus you on two questions:

1) Do your processes make it hard for your customers to do business with you – i.e. to give you money?

2) Do your processes or any aspect of your interactions with your customers or potential customers reek of incompetence, of “not getting it”?

If your answer to either is “Yes”, you’re driving away customers. If you answer “Yes” to the second question, besides driving away the “average” customer, you are likely driving away the segment of the population that is both especially demanding and especially affluent. These are the customers who are willing to pay premium prices for value. These are the one who are most in a position to buy your goods or services.

If you really want some good answers to these questions, and if you want to engage your employees more – i.e. get them to care more about your business – ask them these questions and listen carefully to what they have to say.

Finally, ask your favorite customers these questions. Take notes and then upgrade your processes so they make it easy for people to do business with you.