John Hersey Leadership Blog

Contagious leadership is a style that is taught through example, and there are big opportunities out there, in very simple and everyday activities, to shape and strengthen it within yourself and others in your company.

Here we offer you 5 significant ways in which you can celebrate all kinds of success, big or small, in a meaningful and open manner to make contagious leadership stick within your organization:

Go public

Recognizing people for their good work is always effective no matter how it is done; however, if done in a public way, it will produce a massive impact, and its value will last longer.  

Do it immediately

The most important thing for an employee is to celebrate his or her successes.  The sooner you praise their achievements, the bigger the impact this will produce on them and on everyone else within the company.  

On the contrary, the longer you wait, the more the person will grasp that you are being insincere in your spotlighting, involved recognition, and vibrant communication efforts.

Be precise

Don’t just come out and say, “Well done, Amy!”  Specify what was it that the person did that was so outstanding, special, and worthy of praise. 

For example, something along the lines of, “You did an amazing job solving the situation, Amy.  The customers truly felt tended to and are very excited about working with us again in the near future.  This kind of response is what will get us far ahead.  Thank you for caring so much”, would work wonders.

Focus on the strengths

If you want to take someone down and annul every possibility of taking advantage of that person’s qualities, nag them incessantly by pointing out what’s being done wrong or is missing.

In contrast, if you are truly committed to excellence and to seeing the positive in everyone and in everything, focus on the strengths people have and on how you can potentiate them in benefit of your company and that person’s life.

Announce all accomplishments

Any successful action, no matter how small, is a good excuse to celebrate.

Celebrate good habits and qualities, instead of celebrating numbers:

>Send handwritten “God job!” notes regularly to your employees’ homes.  You have no idea how such a note from the CEO will make an employee feel.  Everyone will know about it in less than 24 hours.                                               

Give this a try:  Take a pen right now and spend 10 minutes handwriting five praising notes for five people in your team.  Tell them why you value them, and be specific. 

Next week, write one note per day; the following week, write two daily notes, and start paying attention to what happens and how things begin to change. 

Even without feedback, you will see the difference.    

> Honor even the smallest accomplishment, and involve the highest levels of the organization in the celebration.

>Establish a ‘Contagious Leader of the Month’ program.  Everyone votes, and the winner gets to participate in a contagious leadership lunch with the CEO.

>Create a ‘Contagious Leadership Wall of Fame’, showing pictures of all these leaders doing what they do best and  with a legend explaining why each one of them is being honored in such a way.  

There are endless ways to celebrate success.  A good leadership speaker can guide you in the process of discovering what works best for your company; nevertheless, it is just a matter of envisioning your organization and getting creative; it is all about having lots of fun and becoming highly productive.

Related posts:

1. Resumes are a Thing of the Past Yes, it is no longer enough to see someone’s resume...
2. Contagious Leadership Tip # 6 — How We Will We have an epidemic of people beginning a conversation...
3. What Can I Do? 5 Ways to Lessen Your Leader’s Workload In any successful business, a good leader will have invested...
4. How to Undertake Permission Mentoring Successfully Permission mentoring is the habit of ripening aspiring contagious leaders. ...
5. Hand Write It to Show How Much You Care Outstanding leadership is now manifesting through one of the oldest...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Behavior, Branding, Coaching, Commitment, Culture.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.