“Catch someone doing something right,” Ken Blanchard.
Organizations benefit from team members being more kind to each other. In workplaces where acts of kindness become the norm, the spillover effects can multiply fast. When people receive an act of kindness, they pay it back and not just to the same person, but often to someone entirely new according to an article in the HBR. This leads to a culture of generosity in an organization.
In this bite-sized episode we share with you how finance professionals can encourage more opportunities to give compliments to improve the impact and influence they make at work.
Full Transcript
[00:00:00] Andrew: hi everyone. And welcome to this week’s Monday Memo. Now for a lot of us this past year, most of the management advice is focused on how to sustain productivity during the pandemic. Particularly when some of us view our productivity as being in back-to-back zoom meetings how many you can fish in a day, how many emails we responded to.
[00:00:25] And even for those of us who are perhaps parents of being able to shuttle our kids to and from activities or school without being too long away from our desks. Nope. There’s nothing in there about delivering valued outcomes for our business partners or our customers, employees or even enhancing maybe our digital capabilities, communication skills.
[00:00:49] Seeking out those chants and counters we used to have with colleagues. I remember those in office hallways or at water coolers or even taking the time to attend conferences in person. They didn’t, they’ve not existed or even go to virtual conferences where we can understand the latest things that are going on and make new connections with peers in finance
[00:01:13] and it got me thinking, because I was able to have lunch with a colleague last week. I’ll be outdoors in the good old Irish climate and it was the first time I think we’d had one. I want to say 18 months and always got me thinking how many alts of us out there, when was the last time we had those casual coffees or conversations with colleagues, with peers and to share our experiences and foster again, those connections we used to have because it’s those sort of connections that organizations rely on for us to be more engaged in our work and accounting and finance.
[00:01:48] And before, you said you’ve heard it all before. Or even oh, that’s much more difficult now because we were most, I challenged that and I challenge it. And maybe by starting with maybe let’s appreciate again, what are the benefits of trying to foster such connections and engagement in accounting and finance? If you think about it It’s helpful to colleagues.
[00:02:07] It boosts their self-esteem and not just their self-esteem, but also according to researchers, the esteem of the receiver to give her as well as the receiver, it improves employee wellbeing and reputation for again, give them receiver. And also it’s meant to reduce employee burnout and absenteeism as well.
[00:02:26] Forgive her. And it was actually some research in the Harvard business review that apparently these acts of kindness gives the better returns or benefits to the givers. More certain the receivers. I didn’t know that apparently it’s called hedonic benefits and it comes back to there being a key ingredient of all of our wellbeing that has been sorely lacking perhaps this last 18 months.
[00:02:54] And it plays a huge role in social connection. And the authors actually found that giving compliments in gendered a stronger connection, social connection, then receiving compliments because giving them encourage people to focus more on the other person. Sure. Receiving a comment feels great, but making a thoughtful, genuine compliment requires us to think about.
[00:03:19] So one else, their mental state, the behaviors they’ve demonstrated personality, thoughts, feelings thinking about other people is often a precondition to feeling connected to them in some sort of way. And the way they authors talk about compliments, is there like a social glue? They had hearts, connections, positivity, and relationships, and making us all happier.
[00:03:43] Given that’s all the benefits and that’s the science behind it. How can you implement this knowledge now into your roles? Okay. It really comes back down to giving genuine compliments. And it reminds me of something Dale Carona. He used to say in his book, how to win friends and influence people, which is be hard to in your praise and not probation.
[00:04:04] And it doesn’t say be false are used. Deceiving are deceptive, flattery. It’s it’s hearty. It’s gotta be genuine. It’s got to be specific. And that means calling out the impact, the other person’s behaviors or approach has genuinely made on something or someone else. There’s gotta be action and results.
[00:04:24] It also needs to be tailored to the receiver. So let’s say it’s your manager, who’s done something and compliment them. It’s thank you for investing the time to teach me how to understand that performance dashboard and use it because. Now I understand how the numbers fit together. I can interpret it better as for others now on saving you time having to do it or whatever.
[00:04:46] If it’s a teammate, I enjoyed your presentation today, the insight you provided, and I’ve also heard many other people say that they appreciate hearing your perspective as well. And you should definitely do it more often. That’s another good one or four. If you’re a leader, perhaps when your teammates.
[00:05:02] Love your creativity on that, the way you design that calculator and put your own time into it really helps that business case template that we’ve been developing speeds up times complete. So it’s easier for the users, our business partners, and also makes it an easier job for our fellow team members, because they have to ask the best questions.
[00:05:21] So you can do this by catching people, doing something right. And calling them out on it. I wish I did that more for my kids, but that’s the joys of being a parent as well as a finance professional, that there’s always room for improvement, but we need to remember that praise is not flattery and flattery results in resentments or comprehends most at all times be sincere and honest.
[00:05:42] Just before we start wrapping up, there was something else. I think it was called kindness rounds. It came up in one of the guest mender interviews where finance leaders in their team meetings was setting aside time during virtual meetings, zoom meetings where our team members were free to acknowledge each other’s works.
[00:06:02] What they were doing was putting aside a few minutes each week. And it was just, they were using it to boost morale connection, particularly after those that were fully remote. And again, I think that’s something that could be applied maybe in the hybrid environment or even an in-person meetings could be a bit uncomfortable, but just having an opportunity for people to call out and catch all those doing things right during the week. And talk about. And that’s why we bring guest mentors onto to strengthen the numbers show because they’re sharing with us. What’s keeping them excited about what’s going on at the moment what’s working.
[00:06:36] What’s not their hard won lessons at things for us to avoid. It gives us a chance to maybe try some things out that we hadn’t thought about and those interviews go out every Thursday and again, really appreciate the guest mentors in investing their time and sharing those with us. And also likewise, yourselves, this show keeps growing week over week. So we don’t do any advertising means you guys must be recommending it to your friends and colleagues really appreciate when you do that.
[00:07:05] And as always, we’re actually available on the major platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Spotify. So loads of ways to connect. And benefit from the insights of the gas mentors we have on the show.
[00:07:17] So I think that’s enough for me this week. Just want to say thanks again for tuning in and have a great week ahead. Stay safe.
[00:07:24] Look after yourselves and let’s keep on building our strength in the numbers.
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