Don't Make Individual Team Members Blow Their Own Horn

 

I once worked with a guy who felt the need to take credit for anything good that happened within his department. If anyone noticed something the team had worked on in a positive light, he took credit for it. "Yeah, that was my idea," he would say. On the other hand, if it was something that wasn't as positive, he would blame the team. Most of us had skid marks on our backs where the bus had slammed on the brakes for another pass.

Needless to say, it didn't really take very long for him to expose himself as the fraud he was. Ultimately the team didn't like him, his boss didn't respect him and he was sent packing.

As a project leader (or any kind of leader for that matter) I think it's important to appropriately recognize achievements. In a recent article titled How to Build Trust When Your Team Doesn't Know Each Other, written by Wayne Turmel for Bnet, Turmel suggests, "There are many ways to show off the competence of team members. When you have message boards and social network tools, there are opportunities to answer questions, refer other team members and generally offer individuals a chance to shine they might not otherwise get. As the manager, take the chance to commend workers in ways that let the entire team know who did such great work."

In many organizations that espouse a top-down command-and-control management approach the only time anyone hears from the boss or their manager is when there's something to do or something is wrong. I like the idea of making it a point to look for ways to show off the competence of my team—to share their accomplishments with my superiors. It creates an atmosphere where people aren't afraid to speak with me and makes it a lot easier to have those sometimes difficult conversations when there are problems.

There's nothing wrong with finding ways to shine the light on exceptional effort or an exceptional member of the team. What's more, although money is a motivator for performance, it isn't the only motivator. Most people leave their employment for reasons other than money. Maybe their commute was too long, maybe they didn't like the job—but it's more than likely they didn't feel their contribution was recognized and appreciated or they didn't like the boss.

Over the course of my career, I've noticed the times when I've been the most successful have been the times when I've been able to facilitate an atmosphere where individual members of the team could shine and be recognized for what they bring to the effort. When my need to shine is superseded by the ability of individuals on my team to shine, projects have been more successful, the team is happier and as a result, it reflects well on me.

As a side note, in most cases, praise for a job well done should be specific and public. Vague platitudes aren't worth the wasted words. "Jones, the extra work you did to get the Acme project in on time really made the difference," is much more effective than, "Good work everyone."

Specific and public is how I try to address praise to members on my team as opposed to reprimand, which should be handled privately—unless you want to do irreparable damage to personal relationships (which are the foundation of project leadership in a world where most of the time everyone on the project team is usually a dotted line on the org chart).

What do you do to recognize exceptional work or exceptional team members?