Encourage the Heart

~~Accomplishing extraordinary things in organizations is hard work. To keep hope and determination alive, leaders recognize contributions that individuals make. In every winning team, the members need to share in the rewards of their efforts, so leaders celebrate accomplishments. They make people feel like heroes.
 

The climb to the top is arduous and long; people can become exhausted, frustrated, and disenchanted. They’re often tempted to give up. Genuine acts of caring uplift the spirits and draw people forward. 

Student leaders Encourage the Heart by recognizing contributions and celebrating values and victories.

Exemplary leaders set high standards and have high expectations of their organizations. Leaders also expect the best of people and create self-fulfilling prophecies about how ordinary people can produce extraordinary results. By paying attention, offering encouragement, personalizing appreciation, and maintaining a positive outlook, student leaders stimulate, rekindle, and focus people’s energies.

 “I felt that many of my coworkers probably felt as underappreciated and poorly respected as I did,” Ken Campos told us, but he explained that, as a shift supervisor, he could help to turn around this attitude. “I would constantly extol and commend them for their actions, and more important, I tried to make it clear that we were making a difference as a team. I looked for ways to make our work fun, and whenever anyone did something special, we all stopped to give that person a high-five or a chorus of ‘way-to-go’ chants.”

Part of the leader’s job is to show appreciation for people’s contributions and to create a climate of celebration. Encouragement can come from dramatic gestures or simple actions. In the cases we collected, there were thousands of examples of individual recognition and group celebration—including marching bands, ringing bells, T-shirts, note cards, and personal thank-you’s. Leaders know that, in a winning team, the members need to share in the rewards of their efforts. Public celebrations let everyone know that “We’re all in this together.”

Yet recognition and celebration aren’t simply about fun and games. Neither are they about pretentious ceremonies designed to create some phony sense of camaraderie. Encouragement is a curiously serious business. By celebrating people’s accomplishments visibly and in group settings, leaders create and sustain team spirit; by basing celebrations on the accomplishment of key values and milestones, they sustain people’s focus. Encouraging the Heart is how leaders visibly and behaviorally link rewards with performance and behavior with cherished values. Leaders know that celebrations and rituals, when done with authenticity and from the heart, build a strong sense of collective identity and community spirit that can carry a group through turbulent and difficult times. Caring is at the heart of leadership.