Using Everything DiSC’s Catalyst Platform to Increase Team Engagement
Human beings crave recognition for their efforts. A single sentence of praise from your boss makes your day. Now that you’re a boss, you can use the same approach to supercharge your team members’ morale, driving team engagement. To get the best from your team members, you need to remember what Dale Carnegie said about praise: “People work for money but go the extra mile for recognition, praise, and rewards.“
But the problem is that generic praise isn’t enough. Making a halfhearted effort to hand everyone the same soulless piece of praise becomes obvious. In fact, it can even boomerang. Recognition at the workplace needs to be personalized, or else it isn’t registered as recognition at all.
Today’s article will help you give personalized recognition to your reports to encourage them to walk that extra mile and consistently deliver matchless results.
Let’s start with the basics.
What Exactly is Employee Recognition?
Employee recognition is any act of acknowledging, appreciating, and rewarding individuals for their positive contributions to the organization. Recognition is a powerful tool; it rewards positive performance and reinforces the organization’s desired behaviors. It also helps boost employee engagement, productivity, and commitment to the organization.
The importance of recognition can be seen in the fact that according to SHRM, 80% of organizations have employee recognition programs in place. These programs ensure that every achievement of their employees can be appreciated so that they keep delivering more of the great stuff.
Let’s look at how vital employee recognition is for keeping your employees’ performance at optimum levels.
The Importance of Personal Recognition
From a company’s point of view, recognition offers several long-term benefits, such as better work relationships and employee morale, improved productivity, reduced stress, higher retention rates, and increased profitability. According to Gallup, workplace recognition boosts employee engagement, allows workers to feel valued, and increases loyalty to the organization.
As a manager, you need to individually recognize every one of your team members’ contributions and ensure that you share personal feedback with every member. By personally recognizing and sharing constructive feedback with your team members, you are developing them and building a better relationship with them. As a result, your team’s energy levels will improve, and each member will be more likely to repeat those behaviors that draw appreciation.
When Should You Provide Recognition?
Timing is important when it comes to giving positive feedback to your employees. Here are two things to keep in mind when developing your recognition habits at work.
Recognize frequently!
Managers should develop a habit of frequently recognizing their team members. Recognizing and rewarding your top achievers should not happen once in a blue moon. Praise your reports at every genuine instance of good work. Don’t wait for big accomplishments, year-end reviews, or fancy award functions.
At the same time, stay mindful of not overdoing it or else it’ll lose its effect and your people will start taking your praise for granted. Find your balance.
Don’t delay.
A delay in appreciating someone for a task done well doesn’t have the same impact as appreciating him immediately. Monitor performance closely and share your positive views as soon as you observe your reports doing a good job. Be quick to recognize achievement, praise positive behavior, highlight team efforts, and appreciate performance improvement.
Workplace Recognition Best Practices
Keep celebrating the unique traits of your employees and always be the first to offer personalized recognition instead of saying something like “You all did a great job!”.
Here’s what you need to create a culture of recognition at your workplace.
Be Specific
Don’t keep your remarks too vague. Go the extra mile and include as many details as possible about the specific behavior or achievement that’s being recognized. Give your team the impression that details matter and that even the smallest effort can make a difference.
Personalize Recognition
Team efforts are successful when all members give their best. However, there may be times when employees might feel unappreciated as their individual efforts are not acknowledged. Giving personalized recognition to every team member may seem like a taxing task but it can become an enjoyable one with the help of Everything DiSC’s Catalyst tool.
The DiSC Personality Model allows you to categorize your team members according to the following four basic styles:
- (D) Dominance
- (i) Influence
- (S) Steadiness
- (C) Conscientiousness
Use DiSC Styles for Personalized Employee Recognition
Think of DiSC as your management coach. It is specifically customized to help you understand your management style, the people you manage, and ways to adapt to meet individual needs that help create a motivating environment.
The guideline below shows you how to design personalized recognition strategies for all personality types.
Recognizing Your (D) Style Employees:
Your D Style employees are direct and strong-willed. They enjoy authority and take pride in their success. Give them goal-oriented tasks and recognize their innovative ideas.
Recognize their innovative ideas that lead to better results. Be consistent with rewarding their strong performance by giving them more autonomy. Present them with opportunities to develop in their job roles and offer them more challenging positions.
Recognizing Your (i) Style Employees:
Your i Style employees are enthusiastic and optimistic. They look for high-energy environments where innovative ideas are valued. They enjoy social interactions and building relationships.
Thank them personally for their energy and high spirits. Recognize their successes in public and assign them roles with increased visibility in the organization. Since they desire public appreciation, reward them generously at corporate events.
Recognizing Your (S) Style Employees:
S style employees are the accommodating and patient members of your team. They prefer calm and structured environments. They are very supportive and collaborate well with others.
Offer warm and sincere recognition in a one-on-one setting. Apprise them of how their supportive attitude is of value to the company. Turn their level of responsibility up gradually to show your trust in them.
Recognizing Your (C) Style Employees:
Your C Style employees are reserved, analytical, and precise. They like working in environments that give them time to analyze ideas and produce perfect outcomes. S Style workers keep a moderate pace and exercise extreme caution while working.
Offer them compliments on their accomplishments in private. Thank them for their analytical style and explain how this positively impacts the company. Show that you appreciate their expertise by seeking help from them when problems arise. Reward their work quality by allowing autonomy and giving them more challenging projects.
Working As A Team
As a manager, you need to realize the power of personal recognition. Using Everything DiSC Catalyst, you can quickly determine the preferences of your team members and tailor your recognition strategies that best suit individual needs and brings results.
If you aim to improve the engagement levels of your team members by developing winning recognition strategies, head over to our Everything DiSC Management page and sign up to get instant access. To help you see the power of Everything DiSC in action, we have a free sample Management profile for you that can be accessed here.
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