Working towards achieving extraordinary things can be tiring at times. And whilst it is important for you to uphold your own perseverance - as a leader you carry the additional role of keeping your employees inspired and willing to continue on the long and challenging journey to success.
When your employees become exhausted, frustrated or uninspired along the way, encourage their hearts to carry on. Inspire them with courage to keep their hopes and determination alive.
How to Encourage your Employees Hearts
Encourage your employees hearts through recognising their contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence and celebrating the values and victories by creating a spirit of community.
Encourage Them to do Their Best
When expectations are high, people frequently step up to higher levels of performance. You can therefore contribute to bringing out the best in your employees by making sure they know what is expected of them and by encouraging them to do their best.
Give Personal Recognition
Seek out individual excellence, remarkable achievements as well as small breakthroughs that are meaningful for your employees’ development and recognise them. You can personalise your recognition by telling detailed stories that reinforce why they are being recognised - letting them know they are valued as unique individuals and that you have a personal interest in their accomplishments.
Create a Spirit of Community
Celebrating your values and victories as a team creates a heightened sense of community, belonging and inclusion. At the same time, it serves as a reminder to all that everyone benefits when great things occur and that there is enormous potential in accomplishing things together.
Be Personally Involved
Encouragement from one heart to the other can’t be delegated. It is up to you to identify when your employees are doing a good job, to look them in the eye and give your recognition. Get personally involved with your employees and you will know when to give special recognition and when they need reassurance or guidance to get through the tough parts of their job.
Your acts of encouragement will go a long way by upholding your employees hopes and determination to carry on pursuing success.
Get Started - Encourage the Heart of Your Employees
How can you start encouraging your employees’ hearts?
- Think of your employees - which one of them would really benefit from more recognition? And how could you personalise it?
- How frequently do you encourage the heart? How could you make it a habit to recognise individual excellence and celebrate values and victories with your employees?
- How personally involved are you with your employees? Think of one thing you could do to show them that you personally care about them as an individual as well as their work accomplishments.
Encourage your employees to do their best, recognise their accomplishments in a personal way, celebrate your values and victories by creating a spirit of community and get personally involved with your employees.
In order to achieve the extraordinary, your employees must have strong and committed hearts. When you offer them encouragement, you are in fact providing courage and strength to their hearts. This is exactly what they need to keep their spirits upright - for working towards future success can sometimes feel like a never ending journey. With encouraged hearts, you’ll find yourselves getting there sooner than you think.
Encouraging the Heart is one of the exemplary leadership practices of The Leadership Challenge®.
The Leadership Challenge® workshop is recognised worldwide as one of the most trusted models of leadership development.
