October 04, 2010

Five Ways To Build Someone Up At Work

At Chik Fil A, there's a leadership question:  "Do you know how to recognize people who need encouragement?" Answer: "If they are breathing!" Here's the point - your best people need constant encouragement to maintain their energy and creativity.  

The difficulty lies in credibility.  Too often, we think of platitudes like "you can do it" as a form of encouragement. At work, this just isn't enough.  If you show, through your actions, that you care about that person's success, then you are giving them reasons to believe that things will get better in the future. 

One of the best ways to be encouraging is to commit yourself to building up your talent.  Even for a small business owner, this applies beyond your employees to vendors and partners.  By building up, I mean that you make a conscious investment in them, to better them professionally and beyond.  It's very organic, and has a long term impact on the psyche of the recipient.  

We like to do this when there's a significant milestone, an annual review or a surplus in the bank.  But lately, we've likely come up short in this area.  Here are five ways you can build up someone at work: 

1.  Share a great book.  When you share knowledge, you create hope in others.  Great business books offer keen insight and useful how-to's that can help people create solutions or drive innovations.  Pick out one that you've recently read that applies to someone, talk to him/her about it's value prop, then give a copy as a gift.  

2. Call out a person's accomplishment at a public meeting.  In fact, start out your next meeting with 'a review of contributions,' thanking someone for a specific accomplishment.  

3.  Create an Good Job! case study.  On one page, outline the mission, tactics and results that one of your people executed.  At the end of the page, put in a few sentences sincerely thanking this person for a job well done.  Include a graphic - print out, and give to the person.  

4.  Put someone new in charge of the next meeting/project.  Always a bold move, but can surprise and delight someone that feels like all he/she does is take orders.  Give him/her plenty of time to prepare, and be smart about who you select for this ad hoc  leadership position. 

5.  Network someone to a potential mentor/mentee.  The act of mentorship builds up both parties every time. Create a lunch where you can introduce on of your people to a perfect match, where there's  value to be exchanged.  Don't limit this to co-workers, in fact, be willing to cross pollinate vendors with each other.  Who knows, you might also create an independent business opportunity. 

 

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