It makes my day when:
- You hit reply and tell me something I wrote resonated and you found it valuable.
- You tell me you used one of my activities, suggestions, or sayings with your team, direct report, or someone else.
- You tell me you forwarded a Thought Partner to someone you felt might want to read its contents or you wanted to inspire.
- You tell me you subscribed someone you work with to our Thought Partner network.
I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear those types of comments. It feeds my soul and reassures me these Friday musings aren’t finding their way into a black hole of abyss. It fills my cup and it feels like sunshine.
Words have weight.
Words provide energy.
Words are free.
And a leader’s words have power. They have secret powers.
When you tell people they are doing a good job they become energized. It’s like you’ve plugged them into an outlet to refill their battery.
Yet sometimes we’re stingy with our praise for reasons unknown.
I was working with an SVP the other day and I told him I received extremely complimentary feedback from the company’s President about him, in particular, and a program we had just completed with leaders in his organization. He replied “Oh that’s nice to hear; we don’t do a lot of that among each other at our level. How nice.”
WHAT?!?!?!? (Imagine my lack of a poker face expression.)
Despite reaching great heights and milestones in our careers the “child” inside each of us still likes and wants to hear that we’ve done a good job.
We may fall into a trap that praise and words of encouragement are for novices or more junior people on the organizational chart, but that’s wrong. Whether you are a CEO, President, EVP, SVP, VP, etc….should matter not.
Praise and support at EVERY level – especially within peer groups at high levels is necessary.
Your words have weight, power, and energy. Don’t ration them out; they’re free and you can produce more at any time!
How many people (level agnostic) will you use your secret powers on today?
