We are going to talk about learning to appreciate your team and show it in tangible ways and letting them know how much you value their contribution. This is such a key component of building relationships and building trust with your team.

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Appreciation, why is it necessary?

Appreciation is one of the simplest ways that you can actually build rapport with your team. When you regularly engage with your team over small tasks, thank them. Show them that you have noticed the work that they do. It makes them feel noticed and shows them that you care about them. This is really crucial. As a leader, you need to show your team that you care about them. When you show them that you care about them what happens is they actually want to work well.

So if you are wanting your team to go above and beyond or you are wanting your team to go in a direction that they maybe have never been in, you need to make sure that they are prepared to trust you. They need to feel appreciated by you. It is really simple. Be observant, take a walk around. I do this in my organization every day, I am in the office, I take a walk around, visit everybody and just say “Hi.” I ask them how they are going, I ask them what their day has got in store and then I say, ” Thank you so much for all that you are doing today”.

If I see them at the end of the day, I ask them how their day was, how it ended up, whether they had any challenges and I say,  “Thank you. I really appreciate all your hard work.” It is a really simple thing, it takes about 10 minutes out of your day but it fosters relationships and fosters an attitude in team members where they actually want to go the extra mile for you. So that’s the easy way of doing it.

What are some other benefits of appreciation?

Parallel Acknowledgement

Appreciation can actually be used to modify behavior. Let me explain this in teaching, which is my professional root originally. There is a technique called Parallel Acknowledgement. If we see behavior that we are unhappy with or needs addressing, one of the ways we can address it is, rather than correcting the behavior that is negative or inappropriate we find somebody that is doing the right thing, doing things the way that we want it to be done and show them some appreciation and appreciate  what they are doing by saying, “Thank you so much for following the procedures when you executed this project Sandy.”

We praise them or appreciate them in front of everybody else. What that does is it tells everybody else who is not following the procedure that this is what you want to see because you are praising and giving attention to the thing you want to see rather than focusing on the things you do not want to see.

So appreciation can be a really powerful way of modifying behaviour and it is good for building relationships with your team when you praise and appreciate the behaviour that you want to see rather than focusing on correcting the behaviour you don’t want to see. Now if the person you are trying to correct modifies their behaviour in response, make sure you go back and show them appreciation too.

It is really important that as soon as you see the change in behaviour, as soon as you see the adjustment in attitude, focus or whatever it is, that you go back and say, “Hey Tom, I love the way that you are doing that and following the procedure and I really appreciate you adhering to that system.” So, use appreciation to correct the behaviour and once the behaviour is corrected go and appreciate the person that has corrected their behaviour. That is relationship behaviour modification.

Appreciation Builds Confidence

The other thing that appreciation can do is, it actually builds confidence in your team. If you have team members who lack confidence or doubt their ability to do the job well, one of the most powerful ways to help them to grow in their confidence is to actually appreciate them at every opportunity. When you have seen that they have put in the effort, go the extra mile to say, “Hey you know what, I want to tell you how much I appreciate you putting in the effort with this. I know this has been tough for you and you struggled, but I really love the way that you have stuck to it and gone the extra mile and I want to tell you how much I appreciate you.”

When you appreciate somebody in those circumstances, their confidence grows and as their confidence grows their productivity grows, their output grows and their ability to perform their tasks grows exponentially.  So use appreciation to actually build confidence and build the capacity of the people that you are leading.

So these are three little tips on how you can use appreciation.

•  Appreciate your team regularly and often to show them that you care and to build trust and loyalty with them. 
• Use appreciation to modify behavior. Appreciate people who are doing the right thing and that will in turn correct people who are doing the wrong thing. 
• Thirdly use appreciation to build confidence in your team. If they lack confidence or they are trying something for the first time, show lots of appreciation and encouragement and that will build their confidence, increase their skill and their productivity.

I hope that was really helpful for you. Make sure that you leave a comment and tell us what you thought or share it with somebody that you know would benefit from this.

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