Sharing appreciation at work builds a culture of trust and motivation
Since we started taking leaders outside, at the end of every day of every program at Cairn Leadership, everyone shares a specific appreciation for another person. After 70 programs with an average of 10 clients, we have seen well over 1,000 specific and direct appreciations in the last eight years. They are still pure magic. So why don’t more people share appreciation at work?
Why Appreciation and not Gratitude?
Let’s begin with definitions. We are not only talking about gratitude here. While important, gratitude means you are grateful for someone doing something for you. It’s more limited and can have power connotations associated with it, such as the well-known influence factor of reciprocity. Gratitude is a subset of the broader act of appreciating.
We are talking about appreciation. The barrier to entry is very low to appreciate someone. The dictionary calls appreciation “recognition or enjoyment of the good qualities of someone or something.” Maybe someone on your team lightens the mood with a well-timed joke. Expressing gratitude for that might feel weird, whereas simply sharing that you appreciate the sprinkle of humor would be easy and beneficial for the reasons below.
Here are four compelling reasons to explicitly and specifically appreciate someone today (if you need any). Keep reading for the in-depth analysis you expect from Cairn Leadership below that!
1. Appreciation creates energy!
→ Sharing positive feedback with people is a surefire way to increase your own emotional energy, something we all need more of these days.
2. Positive feedback reinforces good future work.
→ Not to get too Pavlovian, but when we fail to appreciate employees’ great work, they tend to stop doing it. Scientists call this behavioral extinction.
3. Sharing appreciation forces managers to listen more effectively.
→ We have all wondered if our manager even knows what we do from time to time. When leaders share appreciation, it forces them to pay attention. This also pays dividends in your performance management system.
4. Appreciation builds a strong culture.
→ Dr. Druskat highlights belonging as a stronger driver of high performance than psychological safety. Few things signal belonging as strongly as frequent and specific sharing of appreciation.
Appreciations Give coworker's (AND YOU) Energy
If you’re not familiar with Jono Hey, take a look. The above picture comes from his book Big Ideas, Little Pictures, and it’s a powerful reminder. We know that people tend to over-index on the negative, likely due to evolutionary survival instincts. We could also all admit that a lot of good happens to us every day. If you’re on the fence, read Man’s Search for Meaning. If Viktor Frankl could find moments of joy at Auschwitz, we likely have a few we overlook during our workdays. For another compelling example, check out The Choice by Dr. Edith Eger.
Bottom line, we choose to feel joy or feel stressed out and unhappy. When we choose to notice and enjoy the positive things people around us do, we can appreciate them, and this gives us more energy. Shwartz and McCarthy share appreciation as a way to increase your own emotional energy, and Hazlet et al. go a step further in their randomized control trial to show that expressing gratitude can increase our physical health too.
Reinforce positive work behaviors by appreciating them
Appreciating people is never an emergency, so it often gets dropped. We do it every Monday on our team because it helps build relationships and motivates great work. When we think about feedback, we typically consider it to be constructive. That’s the harder type to give and receive, and it often yields marginal results. Sadly, by spending our time and energy pointing out potential areas of improvement, we neglect to highlight what we appreciate about someone’s work. The problem is that we assume that they know what they do well and will continue doing it. Operant conditioning proves otherwise. Any parent who has said, “Just ignore it, and they will stop,” was using extinction. Without any clear appreciation, people tend to stop doing what they are doing. Imagine an employee wondering if going the extra mile even matters when no one seems to notice. The most effective way to incorporate appreciative feedback is to integrate it into your performance management system.
Keys to success:
Schedule appreciations. We share them every Monday. Make them an expectation. An expectation of appreciation in your performance management system is critical because people notice what they are looking for. Finally, set a standard. Appreciations should be specific and timely. People often do good things when we pay attention. Simply saying, “I appreciate your hard work,” is lazy leadership. Go the extra mile and be specific. That goes to the next point – you gotta pay attention!
LEarn to reflect, Pay attention, and be present
One of my favorite things to do on our adventures is to write down things I appreciate about other people. Honestly, that is not my norm, and it’s probably not yours either. In fact, studies on the spotlight effect portray our tendency to overanticipate the attention others give us. Experiments show that when you wear a ridiculous t-shirt into a crowded room, you’ll guess that most of the people there noticed. In reality, very few notice your crazy shirt. That makes me wonder if we are all moving around in our self-conscious bubbles with very little awareness of what other people are doing – not a great way for a team to operate.
I like to define listening as paying attention. Dr. Amishi Jha has done some fantastic work on attention. She points out that we cannot learn something if we are not paying attention to it; literally, the knowledge never enters our brains. So, if we ignore the positive aspects of our coworkers, we won’t have access to them. We won’t be proud of who’s on our team. They won’t either. When we commit to sharing appreciations, we suddenly have a compelling reason to look for the good all around us.
Incorporate appreciations to drive a high performance culture
In her book, The Emotionally Intelligent Team, Dr. Vanessa Druskat identifies a feeling of belonging as critical to high performance on teams. This does not mean inclusion (you are welcome here), but rather a deep sense that the team’s work would be harder without you there (we need you here). It does not mean people are friends, just that they count on each other.
Sharing specific appreciation for team members strengthens their sense of belonging. If people on the team consistently hear why others value them, whether in gratitude for the help they offer or in appreciation for the qualities they bring to the team, it becomes clear that they belong. This removes social anxiety, allowing people to focus fully on the task at hand.
Increasing a sense of belonging strengthens the culture and fosters greater trust. An essential component of trust is the feeling that people care. Noticing and appreciating each other clearly highlights that other team members care. This Huberman Lab podcast episode delves deeper into the best practices of sharing gratitude, with the key point being that it’s more important to receive appreciation from others than to give it to reap the positive benefits. This makes it critical that an expectation of sharing appreciation is baked into your culture to maximize benefits for everyone.
