In this solo podcast episode, the speaker argues that recognition is a vital leadership tool that drives engagement and fuels internal communications. Drawing on personal anecdotes—a client’s appreciative email after a rushed board paper and a handwritten thank‑you note from a bank town‑hall event—the speaker illustrates how authentic, timely appreciation creates a warm, motivating feeling. The core message is that recognition must be authentic and fair, delivered at the right moment, and consistently applied. Three practical recognition methods are presented: (1) In‑the‑moment thank‑you, which should include a clear reason for the praise; (2) Structured peer‑to‑peer recognition linked to organizational values, using tangible tools like postcards or digital platforms such as Workvivo to showcase examples of value‑living behavior; and (3) Annual recognition awards that act as an “icing on the cake,” gathering nominations from peers and leaders, generating a repository of stories for internal communications, and celebrating nominees with visual cues like helium balloons. The episode concludes with a call to embed daily recognition while leveraging these amplified celebrations to boost pride and excitement across the organization.
Chapters
Hello there. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about the power of recognition. It's a really, really powerful part of a leader's toolkit, a great driver of engagement, and a great feeder for internal communications as you start to uncover the stories of the things that are going on in your organization and celebrating and holding those things up for everybody to see. Why did that pop into my head today? Well, very simple. I got a call from a client the day before yesterday, late in the evening, in a bit of a fluster. We have to have a board paper written for the board by tomorrow lunchtime. Can you help? And of course the answer was yes. Dropped everything. We got the board paper written between us. We got it submitted in time and it was great. All good. I then got a one-line email from the client last night that pretty much said, thanks a million for dropping everything. Really appreciate your 'flexibility. It was a really good bit of work that we did. Thanks so much. Have a good evening.' And that left me on cloud nine for the rest of the evening. Just that idea that somebody appreciates and recognizes the work that I did on that particular day in that moment. And it kind of reminded me of something that happened back in my bank days when I was working internally in the bank and running a town hall for one of the, the senior leadership team. And it was an event format they hadn't used before. I'd suggest tested it, I'd really championed it, and they were going a wee bit out on a limb. It went really, really well, and I had to tidy up the room afterwards. And when I got back to my desk, there on my desk was just a piece of paper that had been taken from a printer or taken from the side of my desk, and a note scribbled just in a, in a marker that was there on my desk just saying, thanks so much, that event was brilliant, well done. And again, just leaves you with such a warm glow of a feeling. And it got me thinking, you know, and that was why really today for this post really to talk about recognition and that whole thought of what you can do to recognize the people that you work with, both up the way, down the way, and peer-to-peer. Now, for me, one of the core things about recognition is it needs to be authentic. It needs to come from the heart because people see through that in about 5 seconds. Any level of inauthenticity, people can see through that, and it takes away from what you were trying to achieve, which is that warm fuzzy feeling of a thank you. It also needs to be fair, and making sure that we're recognizing people at the right time in the right way and we're doing it consistently is really, really important. I was thinking about a number of different ways that recognition might pop up, and there were 3 that sprung to mind. The first of which is that whole idea of in-the-moment recognition, just what I would term a simple thank you. No process, no procedure, no systems. Just a simple in-the-moment thank you. Thanks for doing a great job. But actually, that's only the start. It needs to be a little more for me. It needs to be a thank you, yes, but it needs to be a why. Why am I thanking you? What was it you did that deserves the recognition? Because that recognizes that you've seen something specifically they did, and that's what you're recognizing. You're not just throwing out a general thank you. Thanks a million for your support on that project. It really helped to get it over the line. Thank you so much for helping on this piece work that we did for the client. They were absolutely over the moon with it, and it's really driven us forward as an organization. Whatever the reason is, give that reason and make sure that they understand why what they've done is brilliant. The second thought I had was around peer-to-peer, and this is something that happens all the time, but if we can put a little bit more structure on it, it takes it supersonic. And that structure is about trying to add in your values. How do you link recognition to values? And that whole idea, you know, we all have values, and, and organizations have a one team or a better together. They have a thinking different or an innovation value. They have an openness and honesty and creativity value. They have a customer-first value or an employee-first value. But what do they mean? We don't really know what they mean until we bring in the element of story, the element of example. And actually, from a recognition perspective, the recognition of somebody living that value in a way that's really brought it to life. So I remember back again when I was in the bank, we used to have postcards, 5 postcards, 5 values. And on the back of the postcard it just said, dear insert name from insert name, I'm recognizing you for this value because you did X, Y, and Z. Again, bringing back that whole idea of showing the person that what they did was really living the values. It was really powerful to be able to walk around the office and see these postcards sitting on people's desks, on their laptops, up on the wall of their desk. Or in the digital world, if you use some of the, some of the online engagement platforms like Workvivo, who sponsor the podcast, they can do that for you, where you can recognize somebody against a value. And it's really powerful because everybody gets to see it. The third thing then that has been really successful in my experience is that whole annual recognition awards, not as a standalone, but almost as the icing on the cake. We need to have recognition day to day woven into just how we do things around here. But that whole idea of an annual recognition awards can massively accelerate pride and excitement in an organization. The fact that you're going out and asking peers to nominate each other, asking peers to nominate their bosses or the people that work for them, is really powerful. And not only does that really, as I say, build that pride, but it also gives you a great big book of stories to use from an internal comms perspective. And of course, you get the benefit of having a big gala celebratory evening where you bring the best of the best into a room and you celebrate their success. Now, does that mean that you only celebrate success of the best of the best? No, you take the opportunity to celebrate what everybody has done. So every nominee gets something. Every nominee— and I've seen this done really well back in the days when we used to go to offices, remember that, where you walked in on a Monday morning or a Tuesday morning and each person nominated for an award had had a helium-filled balloon put beside their desk. Wow, wasn't that just a brilliant visualization of how much recognition there had been in the organization? It was a sight to see, and something like that can really help buoy people up, get them really excited, and just give them that extra bit of lift. That's it for this, uh, edition of BBC Shorts. Um, I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll be back again soon. Thanks for listening.
