ADAM (00:09)

Recognition is an essential aspect of a positive work culture. Yet it doesn't happen as often as we need it to or as you might think. In fact, there are several barriers that can prevent recognition from being effectively integrated into your team. Here are just a few of the most common barriers.

Humans spend about 40% of their day operating purely out of habit, and oftentimes teams simply don't have established routines or processes to support the habit of recognition. The act of recognition simply gets lost in the business of the day. Culture can also be a barrier to recognition, individual preferences and cultural reality shape how people prefer to be recognized.

So it's important to have a conversation about how each one of your employees likes to be recognized. What you prefer may not be what others would choose for themselves. Finally, managers themselves don't recognize their employees because sometimes it can just feel awkward or strange, right? Those awkward feelings can come from a lack of training and a lack of practice.

Maybe you don't know how to provide recognition. Glad you're watching this course today, or the skills that you do have stopped short. And they're more generic and they're not very effective. We're going to work on that together.

All of these factors can lead to skipping out on the moments that you could give positive recognition and feedback, which then contributes to a lack of engagement, and you potentially are eroding trust with your team by skipping out. So yes, there are several barriers that can prevent recognition from being an intentional, consistent practice. However, when we prioritize overcoming these barriers and implement effective recognition, we're more likely to have engaged teams, motivated teams in a positive work culture. The better we are at doing something, the more we do it.

And luckily, effective recognition can be practiced and improved.