Are You Taking Time To Acknowledge The Good Things Your Employees Are Doing?

Staying positive is challenging for some, even under the best circumstances, never mind the extreme conditions in which we've been living and working over the past two years - the pandemic, war, political unrest, global warming, and unprecedented inflation and financial distress. Layer in the demands of keeping an organization on track while remaining competitive and viable, and the challenge of staying positive and noticing the good becomes even greater.

Our brains are wired to detect negative circumstances, danger, and risk. This served us well in 2500 BC, but in 2022, the skills we need to survive are different. Today, we need to hone the skills to cope and thrive amidst so many negative circumstances and bad news to stay physically and psychologically safe.

You must be intentional about finding the good

Noticing good requires intention and a certain degree of understanding about how the brain works.

It isn’t natural for us to focus on the positive. Psychological research suggests that we pay more attention to adverse events than we do positive ones. Our natural negativity bias causes us to zero in on what is going wrong rather than taking stock of everything going right, and negative events get more of our attention and energy.

How often has this happened to you? You are having a good day and then, just before you finish up, something goes wrong. This negative experience grabs all your attention, and when you go home, and your partner asks how your day was, you automatically respond, "It was not that great." Those few minutes triggered your negativity bias and eliminated all the good that happened earlier in the day.

When we allow this to happen, it can impact motivation, planning, and decision-making. This article points out that we feel criticism more deeply than we do praise, and when we strive to reach a goal, we pay more attention to what we might have to give up to achieve it rather than what we'll gain by succeeding. It also notes that we give more credence to negative news than positive. Think about how often you take stock of all the things you haven’t done in a day versus what you did accomplish.

Resilient and sustainable organizations are built on inspirational leadership

A study published by Management Science showed a strong correlation between organizational management, stress, and even mortality. Researchers found that 120,000 deaths and 5%-8% of annual healthcare costs were associated and may have been attributable to how US companies managed their workforces.

Leaders are not superhuman. You have your own natural emotions and responses to all that is going on around you. However, research shows that you can significantly impact the employee experience and your own well-being by being mindful of how you show up each day and what you notice and acknowledge.

Tips for noticing the good:

1. Start with you - Consider developing intrapersonal skills for managing your physiology and emotional well-being. Building the ability to reframe events and acknowledge the good that you experience will positively impact your own health and outlook and will naturally spill over into your interactions with employees.
2. Do not take good work for granted. Some leaders think doing a job well is expected and is why employees get paid. However, humans benefit from feeling they are a valued part of the organization. When a worker does their job well, tell them and take time to acknowledge that their contribution matters.
3. Keep a notice-the-good log. Practicing gratitude improves your ability to notice more good things. Start simply by documenting three good things you notice about your employees every day. Review your log weekly to see what you've noticed, and if you're finding it difficult to notice good things, examine why. Leading sometimes requires us to challenge our implicit bias by asking ourselves tough 'why' questions.
4. Talk about what you've noticed in formal and informal settings - Weave your observations into casual conversations and formal meetings so that employees know and feel that they are valued.
5. Be careful that you aren't negating emotions - Being positive is important, but there are times when employees and peers need to have negative emotions such as fear, uncertainty, or anger acknowledged. Be careful not to diminish those feelings by trying to redirect to the positive.
6. Learn how to dampen reactivity. Bad things have and will continue to happen. We can't control this, but we can control how we react. If you are mentally tired and not paying attention to your own mental (behavioural) health, you may be more reactive. As a result, your negative bias may prevail and put a negative strain on employees.

Building practices into your day that help you notice the good things around you will go a long way toward helping your employees build resilience and coping skills and protect them from burnout. It can also help reduce the amount of turnover in your workplace.

Get to know the author – Dr. Bill Howatt