Build a culture of appreciation!

There have been many lessons learned from working in a pandemic context, one of them is that people need to work in more human environments, establish connections with those who work, feel valued and appreciated, working motivated is a great challenge.

From my role as an external advisor, I had the opportunity to accompany this teamwork, which was made up of four professionals from various disciplines. They were setting up a comprehensive consulting venture and felt that their contributions were not valued by their co-workers. Undertaking remotely and in a context of isolation makes it difficult to visualize and recognize the efforts and contributions of your colleagues.

To help them solve this problem, I facilitated a session for team members to acknowledge and thank their teammates with Kudo Cards.

“Teamwork can only come about as a result of people’s individual contributions to that team.”- Jurgen Appelo

The objective of the practice is to generate a space to give thanks among the team members for all their contributions and for the efforts made towards the contribution of the project and for the work carried out.

The dynamic consists of generating that much-needed space to say “Thank you!”, to recognize the effort, contributions, and team learning. As the venture was starting remotely, I created a virtual Kudo Wall in Miro, each of the team members had a space with their photo and name.

The steps we followed were:

1. Explain what the dynamic consists of.

2. Each of the team members would deliver the kudos they wanted to give to each one of their teammates.

3. After to delivered the kudos, each of the team members could talk about the kudos they gave to their teammates and add words of thanks at the team level.

4. We closed the session with a space of thanks in general at the team level.

As a facilitator, I learned that it is of great importance to dedicate a space to say thanks, every day we live with our colleagues and we ignore or overlook such significant things as effort, cooperation, and teamwork. I also learned that the positive impact it generates on people is very high, it gives meaning to their work, it encourages them to continue working in a good way, they have a better work experience and this generates a healthy work environment in teams and organizations.

The team learned that it is important to give recognition to their colleagues, they learned what value each one brings to the project and the appreciation of others for their work and to working together. They also learned that it is very important that they can maintain a collaborative culture, based on values and gratitude.

What I would do the same way when facilitate Kudo Cards is to generate the space for the team to verbally express its appreciation to their teammates and the team, this allowed the team to connect, feel valued, and empathize.

The result that is generated in the team was the increased level of well-being when working together, the gratitude and recognition among peers would be a practice for the development of their work culture of this enterprise.

I recommend that you try different ways to enhance this experience with your team, such as physical or virtual blackboards where you can see the kudos that are delivered, or make these recognitions tangible through small gifts, but that these awards do not become the objective of This practice, the purpose of it is to promote recognition of the effort of colleagues.

I invite you to experiment with Kudo Cards and build a culture of gratitude!

Related posts:

Thinking about friendship, my mind began to draw my beloved Villa Borghese, yes, a close friend of mine, to whom I have revealed my sweetest secrets, my overflowing passions, my imaginary stories, my…

Setting boundaries is key to creating a loving relationship in which your needs are met, you feel respected and valued, you feel a strong sense of self-love, and you feel safe.

Il nostro codice etico racchiude tutti i principi in cui crediamo noi di WWG. Questi capisaldi comportamentali sono condivisi e vengono applicati da tutti i nostri collaboratori. Ognuno di noi…