Employee Recognition and Other Thoughts
K&P Chapter 11 is all about employee recognition for contributions made to the organization and how leaders can improve organizational performance through that recognition. K&P stress that leaders should set clear expectations of high performance for their employees and provide personal recognition when that performance is achieved. I found nothing to disagree with in the pages of this chapter. All of K&P’s advice makes sense, and, I have no doubt, works very well in organizations that develop in a way that naturally facilitates outstanding leadership and employee recognition. My questions arise when I think about organizations that do not inherently support outstanding leadership and that do not actively encourage employee recognition.
Right away, one of my first questions comes from the recognition that people require a wide variety of skills to truly achieve what I would define as quality leadership abilities. How does one become a great leader in time to utilize that greatness before they retire? As I review back through the chapters we have read in K&P, it is clear that providing meaningful employee recognition is not the only key area that leaders must focus in order to be great. They must be enlisting others, sharing vision, collaborating, looking for new opportunities, taking risks, and empowering others. This book is very aptly named “The Leadership Challenge!” I realize I have swayed somewhat from the specific chapter topic, but my reaction resulted from this reading and my thoughts regarding the time and energy necessary to foster an environment of employee recognition.
For me, employee recognition is critically important to a quality organization. Within my current organization, there are a few issues that prevent employee recognition from having optimal effect. The leadership do set high expectations for performance and put some faith in their employees to achieve those expectations, but not complete faith. If they fear an expectation will not be met, they tend to switch to the “command-and-control” method rather than working with their team to solve whatever issue may be hindering success. That is not necessarily the character of each leader in my organization, but it is certainly the culture of the leadership team as a whole.
A larger issue is that no clear expectations are set towards which employees can progress. My organization has many ever-changing ‘new initiatives’ that contribute to unclear expectations. I really appreciated K&P’s definition of values and goals: “Values mediate the path of action. Goals release the energy.” (p. 287) This immediately helped me realize one of my organization’s issues: our values are not clearly defined. Without clearly defined values, goals have no real direction. The leadership in my organization sets goals all the time. Frequently, the employees achieve those goals, but no one seems to fully understand the values driving those goals, including the leadership. If the leadership cannot fully define the values driving the goals, how can they recognize the merit of achieving those goals? The more I write, the more absurd it sounds. How can the leadership not be able to clearly define the values of the organization and that drive the goals? Has anyone else had this experience?
My last observation from this chapter is the importance of affording a leader the time to do their job well. Being a good leader requires time to spend with the people they lead. K&P outline key aspects of supplying meaningful employee recognition: Personalize the recognition by getting to know people on a personal level, find out what types of encouragement they prefer, establish trusting relationships, stop by and chat with them on a regular basis, etc. (292-304) All of the leaders in my organization have items on their plate other than managing employees. People are the most valuable resource of an organization, and require an incredible amount of time and energy to effectively lead. People in leadership positions frequently have other ‘jobs’ that compete for the one aspect of their job that should take precedent, but frequently does not.
Nick Deffley
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