Recognize Others

I remember when I first started working on this software project, the CEO would come once a year to visit our department to see the latest projects. The first year I was there, my boss met with him to show him the projects. I remember feeling left out and at the same time it was understandable since I was just out of college and working at company with over forty thousand employees. My boss hadn’t done much on that project, but he got to be the one to hear the good words that the CEO had to say. The following year I had taken over much more of a leadership role on the project and I was the one to present the software to the CEO when he made his annual visit. I asked him if it was ok to introduce him quickly to each of the team members and he agreed. Then as I hoped, he offered words of appreciation to each of them. It was a small gesture that seemed to make the work more worth while. It meant a lot to all of the team members to hear those words of praise directly from the CEO and to know that he personally had met them and knew who was completing those projects. It was one thing to hear me tell them what the CEO said, but it was another thing to hear it directly from him. Each year after that, I made sure to plan the time during the meeting for the CEO to say hello to the team members. They all looked forward to his visit and I think he understood the impact that spending those few minutes with team had.

I can also remember working at another company where the CEO did not understand the value of taking a few minutes to praise the people who work for the company. In the year that I was there, I only saw the CEO one time. She came to our facility and hid out in a conference room for several hours. This was after our team had just finished a project that was critical to the company’s success. What made it worse was that people thought with the timing that she was there to say something about the project as people had put in tons of overtime and really poured their best efforts into its success. Unfortunately she left without saying a word. She lost a golden opportunity that would have only taken a few minutes. As a leader when you have the opportunity to offer praise and you don’t, it may be remembered for a long time to come. You may not get the same effort out of people that you did the last time. The value of simply recognizing someone’s effort goes a long way.