“Manners make a person” Surely your parents or grandparents repeated it to you when you were little, and they were right.
Surely you have experienced how good it feels to give a hand to a colleague and have them to thank you. It gives you the feeling that what you do matters, that it creates an impact.
Today I propose that you make an upgrade within your team to go from simply saying “thank you” to gratefulness and recognition.
Imagine that suddenly someone from the team arrives and tells you: thanks for coming in every day in such a good mood, you put me in a better mood after getting pissed off by the morning traffic jam that I get stuck in every day.
How would you feel? Surely very good with yourself, and more satisfied because you are benefiting someone through something that comes naturally to you.
And the thing they told you would probably motivate you to do more because you see the importance it has.
Unfortunately, these types of comments are not usually part of the soundtrack of the workday.
What do we normally do?
- You don’t dare to say these things because it feels cheesy doing it.
- You pay more attention to someone’s unpleasant tone of voice he uses when talking on the phone that at times he has given you a hand.
You are not the only one that happens to, don’t worry. But if you have seen how powerful the gratitude and positive recognition with the previous example, I am sure that you will want to overcome those two limits to build trust, well-being, harmony, satisfaction and motivation in the team.
How can you do it?
1. For the first option, the ideal is that you overcome the discomfort of feeling vulnerable in front of others. Maybe this is very hardcore to start, but you can start doing it in writing, which always makes it easier.
Maybe the culture of “the little fish” will inspire you.
Calling it “the little fish” has its origin in being “borrowed” by the dolphins. According to studies, dolphins only learn by positive reinforcement and that shows how intelligent they are.
That is why you can deliver messages of thanks and positive reinforcement on dolphin-shaped pieces of paper.
If you are like me and crafts are not your thing, you can cut the paper in the form of a tiny fish, which is much easier.
Take advantage of some team building activities that you are going to do outside of the office and start introducing the ideas there.
Let the team know what you are going to do and leave a “fish tank” in sight with the tiny fish cutouts to the side so that everyone who wants to, writes something and puts it in the “fish tank” before the team leaves.
It is likely that at the beginning they find it difficult to be engaged in, but when you read the paper fish during the activities, it will be so powerful that everyone who has not done it before will do so later.
This way you can introduce the gratitude into the team and make it a habitual practice.
2. Paying more attention to the bad than the good is coming for pure survival. We have come here as a species because the mind is constantly thinking about how bad it can happen to you so that you can solve it and the lion does not eat you in the jungle.
The good news? We no longer live in the jungle and you don’t have to be aware of any lions.
The bad news? That your mind continues to behave as if it were in it. The jungle has been changed to offices and lions to bosses.
Here I invite you to be very aware of when those negative thoughts are coming and replace them with positive ones. “It’s true that the tone of that person is super unpleasant when speaks on the phone, but this person is always there when I need help”.
Upgrade ordinary thanks to gratefulness and recognition, and you will see how trust, harmony, well-being and motivation and personal satisfaction improve within the team.
? Unsplash