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How writing “love letters” inspires employee recognition

Everyone needs a pat on the back and recognition for a job well done – even you!

A letter I wrote

Every week, I solicit from our managers the names of a couple of individuals who deserve a letter of recognition. I take the names and the details about why they deserve recognition  and write them a hand written note thanking them in detail for what they did and why they are being recognized.

Over the years, these hand-written notes to staff have become known as Andy’s Love Letters. I do this every week, writing notes to anywhere from two to six staff members each week.

Just last week, I had quite a surprise after our managers meeting when I had three envelopes sitting on my desk. Inside each envelope was a motivational card with a hand-written thank you message from each one of my three managers in our Fredericton store. For the past three weeks, I’ve been extremely busy behind the scenes working on a major initiative for the company, and that week, when asked who deserved recognition, they all agreed that it would be me. So upon returning to the office after a meeting, I found three Love Letters addressed to me for a change.

It was a great surprise for me and an action that I truly appreciated. What I found incredible was that they realize that I too would truly appreciate some recognition from time to time. I have to say that I have an amazing team!

Recognition by way of a hand-written note is an extremely powerful tool. I was reminded of just how powerful it is, when I received my hand written thank you notes just last week. Check out the one I attached to this blog post. Its got an amazing feeling of personalization – something email can’t convey.

What do you do to recognize your team when they do something right?

I motivate high performance the way a leader should – with pom-poms

Don’t forget to celebrate the wins and communicate goals with your staff before the holidays. As a leader, your number one job is to become the cheerleader for your staff and team.”

This is probably one of the best business lessons I have learned over the past 5 years. This saying came from Jack Daly, a professional sales coach and speaker whom I’ve gotten to know very well. Jack is one of the most dynamic motivators I have ever known. 

He has built several companies during his career, and through each adventure, he admits that his number one job was to be the cheerleader for his team. He encourages all leaders to do the little things that make a big difference. Here are some tricks that I learned from Jack and use regularly.

• Hand written thank you notes to staff. I do them weekly.
• Take lots of pictures of staff doing great things. Then have them printed on a card and sent to them.
• Give staff freedom to make their own decisions. Then acknowledge them when they take the initiative on their own.
• Celebrate wins with your staff. For that matter, celebrate everything.
• Celebrate when someone new joins your company. Forget the departing dinner. Celebrate with they start and maybe then they won’t leave.
• Have your staff set goals and then work like hell to help them achieve those goals.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate. Especially during tough times.
• Regular performance evaluations. Remember YOU are not doing most of the work, your staff is.
• Always be full of energy and enthusiasm. If you can’t be, get the hell out of the office. Never let them see you down.
• Get to know staff personally and ask them about their families. Make notes if you have to, in order to remember all the details for later conversations.
• Be there when they need you. You are their coach and cheerleader. Act the part.

Hire right, educate, empower then motivate a high performing team to greatness. That is what a leader does. Become the cheerleader for your team.

Draw attention and promote your business by creating reasons to celebrate with customers, staff and media

Want to draw attention to something? Make it a reason to celebrate.

This fall, our company launched the premier issue of our Green Village Home & Garden Magazine. To celebrate, we had a large cake and an official ribbon cutting on the opening day of our Fall Open House.

We did invite the press out for pictures, but the main reason we wanted to have an official launch was to simply draw attention to our magazine. Even if very few people actually came out for the launch, it gave us a reason to celebrate with our staff and customers.

With a large poster and cake, it gave us a reason to stop everyone walking into the store that morning to offer them a piece of cake and to talk up our magazine.

Great excitement and fun for all staff and customers, plus it’s an easy way to draw attention to something that you want to promote. Celebrating with your customers makes them part of your community and your store a part of theirs.

Take time, and look for reasons you and your business can celebrate.

The way you portray leadership qualities and instil confidence directly affects your employee’s performance

During good times and especially in bad, do you portray leadership qualities in your daily interactions with your staff? As leaders, we always have to conduct ourselves in a manner that instils confidence in the eyes of our team. Employees look to management for leadership during turbulent times. And in today’s economy this is more important than ever.

Okay, so you believe that you do instil confidence in the way you conduct yourself. Well, what about those little personality quarks or habits that come out when things aren’t going so well? Do you have a “tell”? That’s the poker term that used for habits of physical ticks that gives away someone’s hand when they’re trying to bluff. You may be wondering, what are some of these tells? (more…)

Consistent employee communication is crucial in building a successful company. I recently had a not-so-great experience with a member of my team that I’m sure would sound a little too familiar to many of us. Have you had a new employee join your team, show up eager to work, perform extremely well for the first few months, and then something starts to go wrong?

Their work starts to slide, they start showing up late, their performance starts to go down hill, and they seem to start losing interest in their job. You may blame the employee and think he or she is just not ambitious enough for you or your company. But is this a fair assessment?

When a person comes to work on their first day, they usually want to do a good job. If you’ve done a decent job at hiring the right person, they’ll be eager to learn and to contribute to the company. This is what you get on the first day. Now it is up to us to nurture this. So how do you do it? I suggest you take a look at your orientation process and your performance review process.

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