Page 161 - Appreciative Leadership

134 Appreciative Leadership

leader—came up to me and complimented me on how I
had handled a situation in a meeting. I remember thinking,
“I guess I can do this job.” I’ll never forget it. His sincere words
of encouragement were pivotal to my success there.

As this story suggests, letting people know you value them in turn,
value themselves. Spontaneous appreciation can have a lasting posi-
tive impact.
Establishing regular times and processes for peer appreciation is
another practice for inspiring high performance and unleashing posi-
tive power. We heard many creative ideas during our research. Here are
two that you can easily adapt and use with your team or department:

• We created what we call a kudos corner. It is a time on the
agenda during our weekly staff meetings when everyone

nominates people who went above and beyond that week.
We publicly thank them during the meeting, and then we

privately thank them after the meeting. It’s great because
it has spread beyond our meetings to include spontane-
ous compliments—which are so much more common
now than in the past.
• Across departments, we celebrate our hiring anniversa-
ries. Before someone’s anniversary, we circulate a card.
Everyone signs it and writes something they appreciate
about the person. On the anniversary day, we all gather.
We each read what we wrote to honor the person, and
then we give him or her the card. This tradition really fos-

ters collaboration among our different departments and
helps keep the company together.