Usually, when I start talking about feedback, folks envision the evaluative feedback they receive or deliver. You know, stuff like annual reviews or the frustrated “This is full of typos, please be more careful,” fired off in quick emails. However, the science on feedback tells us that there are three types of feedback: evaluation, coaching, and appreciation. I suspect that many of us understand that appreciation is an important form of feedback; anyone who has trained a puppy or raised a tiny human knows that positive reinforcement is key to success. The part that I am less sure of is how many folks are practicing truly effective appreciation.
Life in the time of COVID19 is strange and unfun, and many of us are so grateful to all the folks with whom we are doing the work (work-work, movement work, life work). We say “Thank you,” constantly. “Thanks for being here,” at the start of a hastily assembled Zoom call. “Appreciate all your help,” in the close of our latest email.
It wasn’t until I was sitting on my 2348172341389th Zoom call one evening in early June that I realized: I didn’t feel appreciated for any of the labor for which I was ostensibly being thanked. Sure, people had said it (constantly, it seems), but I wasn’t feeling it. Why not?
Research shows us that effective appreciation is specific, authentic, and delivered with individuality in mind. In order to make sure that people really hear and feel your appreciation, it must be all three. As it happens, these are also the keys to make sure that people learn from your appreciation – reinforcing these attitudes and behaviors.
So, how do we give good gratitude?
Specificity:
Be quick about it! Celebrate this win with them as soon as you can. You will do a better job at precisely naming why you are grateful. Use your words. If they can’t answer “Why are they thanking me?” with some detail, you’re not quite there yet. Try things like, “Thanks for answering those emails for me while I focused on that big project this morning.”
Being clear about what we’re grateful for creates a roadmap for others to replicate that situation. For example, the person being appreciated in the example above has learned, “When this person is overwhelmed, I can be a big help just by taking twenty minutes to clear that inbox for them.”
Authenticity:
The key to authenticity isn’t a hand-written card or fifteen minutes on the phone. Showing authenticity is not about the time invested in delivering your appreciation. Authenticity is about the critical thought behind your thanks. It is about making your “Thanks,” more than the knee-jerk reaction trained into us as kids.
Tell them the about impact of their action/attitude on you, personally. For example, if we extend the above scenario about emails, that would look something like: “Thanks for answering those emails for me while I focused on that big project this morning. You know I don’t love email, so it was a huge weight off my shoulders to check in after lunch and see that you had handled them all for me. I felt like you were protecting my time to focus and I appreciate it!” The person who hears this will hold on to how you made them feel, and subsequently what they did to make you feel that way.
Paint a clear picture of what their effort did for you or the team. Show them that you see them.
Individuality:
This one is all about the delivery! Everyone has a preferred way they like to receive these types of kudos. Some cases might call for advocacy; can you share their good work with another stakeholder or supervisor? Some folks love to get their flowers in public, so putting them in for an award or recognizing them at a big meeting is the right way to go. Others, like me, would melt into the floor in one of those scenarios and prefer to hear from you in a text or IM. Other members of your team might most appreciate an act of service (like wrangling the shared email inbox). Last, but of particular importance during the era of COVID, is quality time. Some folks feel most seen when you spend your time with them, be that a phone call to check in or setting up a virtual coffee chat.
So how do you know which format is best?! There are a few approaches you can try:
- Ask them! I know it sounds like it will be awkward, and it might be at first. In my experience, though, people really love to be asked this question. It shows that you care about them as an individual, and will be reinforced once you follow-through on their answer. Once you have a chance to have this conversation once, I promise it won’t be scary or weird again.
- Consider using an assessment tool. Appreciation at Work is by the same team that wrote The Five Love Languages and they’ve adapted the framework to be work-appropriate. Using a tool like this gives you team a common language to discuss this topic moving forward, and creates space to bring a whole team together to discuss their preferences, rather than it being many one-on-one conversations.
This last piece is, of course, the hardest to do at scale. As a manager myself, I have a somewhat scattershot approach. We keep a physical token to pass around (it’s a framed art print of “Four for you Glen Coco” because I’m a millennial and Mean Girls is a classic). I’ve scheduled “STS Meetings” for my team to Shoot The… Stuff, and spend some quality time together. I routinely advocate for my direct reports and coworkers by floating their successes up the chain of command in emails. Not every tradition or habit is the most effective approach for every team member, but everyone has one they appreciate more than the rest and the collective sum of these actions has created a culture of gratitude within our team.
Use Your Newfound Powers for Good
It would be irresponsible not to close up by centering the fact that appreciation and a good ‘thank you,’ is part of being a good human, a good friend, and a good coworker. Appreciation should be given purely for the sake of valuing others and their time and talents. It can also be a powerful way to train new employees and introduce them to your team’s culture. Both are true.
The keys to effective feedback are what ensure that people feel appreciated; they’re not manipulation tactics to generate more of the same behavior. They probably will, though, because giving good thanks is a powerful motivator and people naturally want to do more of what they’re good at. That is, as Bob Ross would say, “a happy little accident.”
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