Today’s blog post is another video strategy – this time #11 – in our series on tips to lead remote teams. Today’s pointer is to make a deliberate effort to give your staff positive feedback.
Make a deliberate effort to give your staff positive feedback
It’s very important to praise ALL your employees. Praise is a huge motivator and is highly effective at keeping team morale and productivity high. But when it comes to offering praise and positive feedback, your off-site employees are usually the forgotten ones. See, most leaders offer feedback and praise in a very informal way: usually it comes to mind when you see the employee in the office – at the water cooler, or at the photocopier. You see the employee, and you remember to thank them for staying late to solve a problem, or congratulate them on a great presentation to the senior management team. But because employees in your remote teams don’t have the opportunity to bump into you, they don’t always come to mind. In order to make sure that they receive praise and positive feedback, you have to put in a deliberate effort.
Don’t forget to implement Merge’s S-S-T rule
This is also where Merge’s S-S-T rule comes into play. S-S-T stands for Specific, Sincere and Timely. Make sure your praise is specific, not general. Sincere is self-explanatory. Timely means within 24 hours of you finding out about whatever it is you are praising or giving positive feedback on. The 24-hour window is important. Because if you don’t do it within 24 hours, it won’t happen at all. You’re busy, it is will slip your mind, and even though you have the best of intentions, you won’t get around to it. So treat the 24-hour window as a hard deadline. The actual positive feedback doesn’t have to be fancy – a quick phone call, a brief voice mail or even an e-mail works wonders. But DO IT.
I’d love your thoughts on today’s tip? Do you find that you’re good about giving positive feedback to your remote team employees if you don’t see them? Or does out of sight inadvertently also become out of mind? Please share your thoughts by commenting below.
If you haven’t had a chance to watch some of the earlier strategies in this series, follow these links below:
- Strategy #10: Have weekly structured one-on-one meetings with your staff
- Strategy #9: For team meetings, have all your staff join virtually
- Strategy #8: Reject a “them” versus “us” mentality
- Or just access them all here: Leading Hybrid and Virtual Teams Video Series