Recognition That Lands

Recognition isn’t balloons and pizza. It’s a manager noticing something specific and saying it out loud, soon, in a way that makes the person want to do it again. That’s it. Still, most places miss.

Specific over generic

“Thanks for covering the late shift” is nice. “You stepped in at 6:10, learned the new labeler in five minutes, and kept pick errors at zero—that saved us two returns” is motivating. People want to be seen for what they did, not just that they did “good.”

Public and private

I aim for one public thank-you per shift or per day. Keep it short. Put it where the team actually looks: the morning huddle, the Everyone feed, the kitchen whiteboard. Then I aim for one private note a week to someone who wouldn’t normally be in the spotlight. “You might not know this about yourself, but you calm the room when it gets loud. Thank you.”

Tie it to values—but not slogans

If your value is “own the outcome,” say how this action embodied that. Don’t turn it into a poster. Make it human: “Owning the outcome looked like staying with the customer until they could log in, even though the queue was long. That was leadership.”

Fairness matters

The quickest way to ruin recognition is to make it feel like a popularity contest. Keep a simple tracker: who got called out publicly, who got a private note, who trained someone, who solved a system problem. Look for patterns. Spread the light.

Use stories

The “story of the week” beats a leaderboard. One paragraph about a moment where someone showed judgment, heart, or grit. It travels farther than points. People repeat stories. Stories set norms.

Low-budget, high-signal ideas

• The Prime Shift: person who embodied the focus gets first pick of next week’s shift or project.

• The Problem-Solver Pin: a literal pin or sticker people pass to the next solver.

• The Five-Minute Feature: one person tells a 5-minute story in Friday huddle—what they learned fixing something. Teach + recognize at once.

Don’t over-engineer it

If recognition requires three systems and an approvals chain, you’ll do it monthly and it’ll feel staged. Keep it close to the work. Keep it frequent. Keep it honest.

Watch the energy

Done right, recognition raises the room’s energy without making anyone roll their eyes. If you’re getting eye rolls, stop. Ask the team what kind of recognition feels real. Then do that.

When people feel seen for specific, timely contributions, they bring more of those contributions. That’s the point.