Once there was a couple that had been married quite a few years and one evening they were sitting at the dinner table talking about their upcoming Anniversary and the wife started to think about love and life so she asked her husband, “Why don’t you tell me you love me anymore?” To which he replied, “Gee, I told you when we got married… I’ll let you know if it changes”.
If you are a leader, when was the last time you showed appreciation to your team?
You might be saying right now, “Come on Jared, I pay these people… isn’t that enough? You want me to tell them I LOVE them too?”
I’m not suggesting you tell them you LOVE them… that could lead to some interesting litigation. What I am saying is that you need to look for opportunities to show gratitude and catch them doing something right.
The last applause most people hear is at their High School Graduation. Successful organizations realize this and are intentional about building people up. I believe that the your Company’s culture is its biggest asset and having a positive, healthy culture starts with leadership.
Company culture is simply the collective behavior of everyone who is a part of your organization and the meanings that those people attach to their actions. Culture includes the organization values, visions, systems, beliefs and habits.
What not to do: Don’t be the Seagull Manager who flies in, squawks a lot, craps on everything and flies out. That apparently is a real management style because a lot of people do it and I myself have experienced it. But… those people aren’t leaders. One of the requirements of being a leader is that you have followers, that you are able to influence people without force.
So, how do you influence people? You start with caring about them. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. If you are in a leadership position and you are busting on someone who doesn’t know you care, you are just a “boss”, a sad country song. You are not a leader.
Where to start? First, remember that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly… Until you can do it well. Don’t be intimidated because you aren’t perfect. A simple way to catch people doing something right is to be intentional about it by putting five pennies in your left pocket. Everyday you have to catch someone doing something right, publicly praise them and move the penny to the other pocket. The goal is to move all your pennies everyday.
There is an I Love Lucy episode where Lucy is crawling around on the living room floor. Ricky comes in and says “Lucy, what are you doing?” Lucy replies, “I’m looking for my earring, I lost it in the bedroom.” Ricky says, “If you lost it in the bedroom, how come you are looking out here?” To which Lucy replies “Well, the light is much better in the living room.”
Going back again and again to “tweak the numbers” while ignoring your Companies Culture is like Lucy looking for her earring in the wrong room. Unfortunately not enough time is spent on culture because it is harder to quantify on a report. Catch people doing things right and explain to them how their actions relate to the mission and core values of the company. If you are able to energize your team around work that matters and build them up, you can’t help but WIN! What are you going to do to WIN today?