How gratitude increases team profitability (and three ways to show it)

And the consequence, I think we’re seeing a lot of this is the quiet quitting people doing bare minimum people just throwing their hands up and saying, well, you know, why bother? What’s the point? It’s so sad when we get to that point, because there’s a moment when someone can be tapped into right? When someone joins your team, they’re so excited to get going. When people are really coached and mentored and really utilize it their best. People can overcome any obstacle.

Let’s tap into that. Welcome to the managing mid simple podcast. I’m Lia Garvin, your host and team operations consultant through this show and my signature ops playbook. I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech to save you time, money, and stress. It doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be. Are a new manager looking to learn the ropes?

Or are a season manager ready to up their game. Everyone is welcome to hang out with managing made simple from conflicts to feedback to delegating and more we leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it and everything in between. Let’s go. Welcome back to the show, and on this Thanksgiving week if you’re based in the US I wanted to talk about nothing other than gratitude and appreciation and recognition.

Because, let’s be honest, none of us get enough of that these days. And I’m telling you, as business owners and team leaders, your team members need more of it than you think. Today, I want to talk about three ways to recognize people and show appreciation. And the first is positive feedback, the second is acknowledgement, and the third is, well, Paying those bills. Okay. She’s giving some kind of financial incentive. But before I do that, you know, I wanted to say, Hey, on this show, we talk about all sorts of stuff, feedback, hard conversations, recognition, goal setting, you know, navigating team operations.

And if you’re feeling stuck at any point. Hop on a SOS call the, this is a new series of, of coaching calls that I launched recently. And they’re really popular. Folks are loving having that one hour of dedicated support. You share a challenge and we work through in that hour, getting you some concrete strategies to try right away in your team. So if you’re feeling stuck, whatever it is, book an SOS call at LiaGarvin.com/SOS. And we will just work through it and get you on your way.

I love helping people get unstuck. And these calls have been a great way to get you very, very targeted support, really a lot deeper than what we go on the show, because we can get specific on your team. So if you want that support, hop onto LiaGarvin.com/SOS and get that scheduled right away. All right, let’s talk recognition. Now before I talk about strategies to recognize and appreciate people more and show gratitude, we got to say why it’s so important.

You know, right now folks are feeling less motivated. Folks are feeling less of a sense of purpose. People are still leaving the workforce in high numbers and a lot of folks are staying in jobs even when they’re unhappy because of all the economic uncertainty and you know, we don’t want to be a team where people stay just because they’re afraid to leave. We want to have teams where people stay because they feel appreciated, where they feel motivated, where they feel like their work is seen.

Okay. And that’s where you’re going to get the best results. That’s why recognition drives profitability, because when people feel like they’re really being utilized well, when, when they’re seen, when people care about them, that’s when they do their best work. And what does that result in? Better resilience, better responsiveness to change, you know, better folks interacting with clients, better people being better problem solvers. Everything is better when we’re recognized because we don’t feel like who cares.

Um, when we don’t, I mean, I’ve been in roles where I feel like there’s nothing I can do that’s going to get that thank you. There’s nothing I can do that’s going to get my manager to notice me and appreciate me where I feel like it’s, you know, one of those things where I only get feedback when something’s bad and it starts to make you feel like, well, why am I even here? And the consequence, I think we’re seeing a lot of this is the quiet quitting people doing bare minimum people just throwing their hands up and saying, well, you know, why bother?

What’s the point? It’s so sad when we get to that point because there’s a moment when someone can be tapped into, right? When someone joins your team, they’re so excited to get going. When people are really coached and mentored and really utilize it their best, people can overcome any obstacle. Let’s tap into that. And one of the biggest ways to do that is by recognizing and saying, thank you. So the first strategy I want to talk about is positive feedback.

And I know I’ve talked about this before on the show, and it’s something that we got to be doing all the time. And I don’t mean just giving out participation awards, okay, for coming to work, like, thanks. I know, you know, got a lot going on. Thanks for coming to work. No, I mean, calling out specific things that people are doing right that you want to keep seeing. And now that’s, what’s awesome about positive feedback is that it both fuels more motivation, but it also reinforces the behaviors you want to see.

So your team member is happier and you’re seeing more of that good stuff. That’s really working well. So here’s an example saying, Hey, Sarah. I know we had a really difficult meeting with the client the other day, and I just wanted to really recognize how you really stepped up. You addressed all the client’s concerns, you worked, you spent a little bit of extra time really diving into where they were feeling stuck and by really listening to them, we ended that conversation in such a great place and we really couldn’t have done it without you.

I just appreciate that so much how you held your ground, you, you troubleshooted it and, and you really helped us get to a great place with that client. Thank you. Wow. If I’m Sarah, I feel seen, I feel appreciated. I feel like, gosh, this thing that was really hard for me, my manager noticed it and it mattered. Okay. So now I’m going to bring that same effort into the next client call. And when it gets stressful, I’m going to know that my manager has my back and it means something when I work through a tough situation.

Okay. So that’s why this is so important. And now you don’t have Sarah like, no, I’m not going on those client calls again. She feels this boost of confidence because her instincts worked. Okay, how she approached the situation worked well. That’s why positive feedback is so powerful. Now, a related thing to this, which is the second thing I want to talk about is acknowledgement. And acknowledgement is a coaching skill that when we use this as managers, it is really transformational for our team members.

And this is naming a specific quality you see in them. So it’s not saying, I think you’re good at this, or, um, I noticed this. It’s saying you are, and woohoo, it like, it gives us the chills when you say, you are a dot connector. You are a problem solver. You are someone that has tenacity. Hey, when, when someone tells us this, we feel seen like on a deeper level. I’m telling you, it gives you the chills when someone calls out a quality that maybe you kind of recognize in yourself.

But maybe you didn’t. We believe it’s true and we rise to that occasion. So this is another reason why acknowledgement is such a powerful recognition and appreciation and gratitude skill because we’re showing our team members that I see what you’re capable of and I see you rising to this bigger self. And then again, just like with the positive feedback, our team members want to keep doing it. So that’s why this is so important. And that’s an easy one, right?

Name, equality, name, something that you’re observing, and just remove the qualifiers, okay? Don’t say, I think you are this or, or anything like that. Just call it out and it is going to be so powerful. And do that with your friends, your kids, your partners, whoever it is, because it’s a really way to build close connection with someone. Third thing, you know, I gotta say it, saying thank you through some sort of monetary, you know, vehicle is is really important.

Um, and I understand, uh, it’s really unpredictable right now. Maybe we feel like we can’t guarantee a certain amount for a bonus or a raise, and we don’t want to get stuck where we said something that we committed to and we can’t really fulfill it. So I totally understand that. But Stacy Millard, fractional CFO and business in business mentor who was on the show recently, she shared a strategy with me when we did a LinkedIn live a couple of weeks ago around, um, if you are not totally sure what you can commit to on, on raises or bonuses.

You know, she works with clients to set a target and figure out, well, what would we have to hit in order to be able to give out raises bonuses? And then communicate that with your team and say, Hey, here’s our target. Here’s what we’re working towards. We are all accountable to this. And if we hit this, then we’re going to have bonuses. And when you do that, your team gets all bought into it. They understand what their role is.

Maybe they help each other out across different departments to all try to get closer to over delivering so that you can meet that goal. They also understand if you don’t meet it, that it wasn’t arbitrary, that you didn’t just pull the rug out from under them, that you didn’t do a bait and switch, that you had this plan that everybody was aware of and you either hit it or you didn’t. Okay, so I think that’s a really powerful tool for creating transparency in things like raises and bonuses that, you know, people just want to know, is it happening or not?

Now you can share maybe monthly you go through and you say, Hey, how close are we to the target? And then people have a sense. I also think there’s other ways to say thank you. First of all, by the way, just routinely saying thank you. You can say thank you through a gift of some kind. You can say thank you through giving folks extra vacation days. Maybe, maybe you noticed it really gets slow between that Christmas and New Year that week.

That’s always kind of a, a weird week where no one’s really around. Give that as, as comp to vacation days. Or if folks don’t want that time, give out floating holidays. That is a way to give someone a really concrete benefit that has monetary value. Even if you can’t do raises or bonuses this year. The point here is that we do something and I think it’s, it’s important to not just let time go by. Without doing something to appreciate your team members, and this is not just for Thanksgiving week.

This is for all the time Thinking every day about what are my team members goals? What are their passions? What are they interested in? What’s something I can do to show them? I see them I noticed them that they matter to me. It might be a thank you card. It might be having a team lunch It might be a bunch of different stuff But we don’t want to have these kinds of things be just once a year Because we have an opportunity, like I said, to reignite motivation and an energy and enthusiasm about the work all the time.

If we do these three things throughout the year. I want to say one more thing about clients and stakeholders. We also want to be recognizing, you know, folks that have really supported our work. Or if we’re working with vendors, folks that have really done an awesome job supporting our business. Saying, thank you, sending a card, doing something to just be putting it out there, creating an environment of gratitude. You know, being someone that recognizes great work when it’s happening, that appreciates the clients that have supported you in your business growth, that appreciates the vendors who have gotten you to point aid from point A to point B with something else.

Um, who checks in with a stakeholder, you know, if you’re in the corporate world, someone that you really work through to solve some hard problems with acknowledging it saying, Hey, this last year was a tough one with our product and, and we really got through this. I really appreciate you being such a great partner  though. It’s again, not just this time of year, but it’s a really powerful moment to reflect on. How can I say more thank yous?

How can I bring in more gratitude? And the thing about gratitude is when we put it out there, it creates abundance. So if you are feeling like, gosh, this has been a tough year, I have a lot of uncertainty. I don’t know where things are going. The more we practice gratitude and feeling like, Hey, there is a lot to celebrate here. I have had these wins. My team has shown up for me. The more that it actually starts to fuel more of it.

That’s all I have for today. Have a wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving week. If you are in the U S if you are not have a wonderful week anyway. And again, if you’re feeling stuck with anything when it comes to managing your team, because managing your team is hard, right? And that’s why we’re making it simple on this show. But if you’re feeling stuck, schedule that SOS call. Let’s talk about it. Let’s figure out what you can do right away so that you don’t get to the end of the year feeling like, Oh, I could have ended on a better note.

I am here to support, and I cannot wait to help you form a better relationship with your team, feel less overwhelmed and just like end the year on a high. All right. LiaGarvin.com/SOS. See you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive.

With that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.