Encouraging Peer Acknowledgment
One of the the things we strongly encourage in Leadership Made Simple is analyzing successes your team is having ( we assume every leadership opportunity involves some team, group, or at least another individual). If you are inviting a group of people to analyze “what caused the successes” in a particular situation, some interesting things tend to happen automatically.
As the team drills down into the factors that caused the success, it almost always comes down to what some specific people did well. “Linda did an outstanding job doing such and such,” or “Joe had a major breakthrough in such and such.” What will often happen when Linda or Joe are acknowledged is they will turn around and acknowledge others. “Well, thank you, but it wasn’t just me. So and so made a big contribution in such and such area,” they might say.
When these acknowledgments happen, look who is providing them. It is their peers! Why is this so important? In our informal surveys over the years, we have found that peer acknowledgment is more important to people than that from their boss in more than 8 of 10 cases. Think about it. You have some level of expectation that your boss is going to acknowledge you, but you have NO expectation that a peer will. So, it is much more special when you do get that acknowledgment from a peer.
Your leadership role is to encourage the team to analyze their successes. The peer acknowledgment is a natural side benefit of doing that. Try it!
Warm regards,
Ed