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Seen@Work: The Podcast is hosted by Natalia Eileen and features the efforts of human capital professionals around the United States and showcases how they are helping their fellow employees feel "seen at work."
Strong leaders are intentional leaders. How intentional are you? Hey, everyone. It's Natalia Eileen here with Scene at Work, excited to be bringing back weekly wisdoms, which are ten to fifteen minute video clips where I share information about how you can make your workplace culture more conducive to people feeling seen at work and therefore more engaged, more productive, more interested in staying and thriving within your workplace. One of the ways that I like to support leaders with creating a culture where people feel seen is by developing different ways to incorporate intention into their leadership toolkit.
Natalia Eileen:How can you be intentional about creating that culture? Well, one of the ways you can be intentional is by incorporating different frameworks that form habits in your leadership. I created a leadership framework that's all about how to be intentional when giving recognition to the people around you. Let's talk about how to make recognition a leadership habit and therefore an intentional part of your practice. This recognition habit rests on something I like to call the earned expected matrix.
Natalia Eileen:It looks something like this. On one quadrant, we have expected and earned. On the other quadrant, we have not expected and earned. On the other quadrant, we have not earned, expected. And then on the last quadrant, have not earned, not expected.
Natalia Eileen:You know how matrices work. We want to spend some time explaining how you can turn this into a leadership habit. I want to go through what each of these quadrants mean and suggest that you consider building this into your regular process for assessing how well you are paying attention to the employees around you. Let's start with the first quadrant and talk about what it means to have expected and earned recognition. Expected and earned recognition includes acknowledgment and celebration offered for the big milestones your team members or peers accomplished, particularly those that have become ritually recognized.
Natalia Eileen:When I talk to folks about how important it is to do recognition within their companies, this is often the quadrant or the type of recognition that is most regularly practiced. These are those award ceremonies at the end of the year or the regular instances where people are acknowledged, teams are acknowledged for a major launch that they've completed, a major service that they've offered. And those are great. Those are awesome. They have a place on this matrix, and hopefully, you populate that portion of the matrix with some great opportunities to recognize your employees.
Natalia Eileen:But what I find most powerful about this matrix is that it offers you a way to think about your recognition in a way that is completely varied. Unearned and unexpected is the quadrant where we talk recognition that is marked on the calendar as taking place no matter how an individual or a team prefers. We're not honoring bad performance, but we're also saying that because you're here, you have these exciting little expected opportunities of recognition. What's a good example of this? Maybe someone has an anniversary at your company.
Natalia Eileen:And every anniversary, they get a little swag trinket that says, hey, we're happy you've been here for two years. Thanks for being a great contributor to this company. That is something that is potentially expected because they see that other folks are getting that lovely little trinket when they reach that milestone of being there a certain number of years, but it's also something that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with their performance. As long as they're there, they get that treat. Another example of that could be an annual retreat where everyone is invited to go to this annual retreat at a lovely location where you celebrate what you've done and talk about what you plan to do the following year.
Natalia Eileen:This is not necessarily earned because maybe you're not saying that only top performers have to go to that event, but it's also expected, and people know that it's coming. It's great to have a few of these kinds of recognition options within your workplace as well. That way, people know that no matter what, they could expect to get recognized at these particular intervals just for being there within the organization. Those are the first two, and they are both expect let's talk about the other two quadrants. The next quadrant is a fun one because it's the earned and unexpected quadrant.
Natalia Eileen:Moments where someone has done great work, but there's no formal or anticipated moment of recognition ahead, that's where those belong on this matrix. You'll want to think about instances where maybe someone is doing awesome work. They're not expecting anything formal or anything ritual to happen to recognize that work, but you recognize it anyway. Maybe it's that small Post it note with a note of thanks that you leave on their desk. Maybe it's a little package that you send to their house with their favorite snack.
Natalia Eileen:Something like that where they have earned this recognition because they're doing great work and you wanna make sure that you're very specific about what they've done to earn this recognition, but they're not expecting it. And it can make them feel really special that you're paying attention to all that they're doing. Let's talk about the last quadrant, which is just as important and sometimes the quadrant that gets the least love. Unearned and unexpected. These are gestures of appreciation that come out of nowhere and aren't tied to any specific achievement.
Natalia Eileen:So I have here in this image, if you're watching the video that I've posted, a picture of a donut. Maybe you bring in donuts or bagels in the morning, and no one expected it. But, hey. How nice. We have breakfast this morning or a sweet treat to grab throughout the day.
Natalia Eileen:These are unexpected, unearned instances. We're not saying that they're unearned because people don't deserve them. They're doing terrible work. We're saying that they're not necessarily doing anything big or amazing or anything that you can point to to say that that's why they're getting this recognition. They're just getting recognition because they are there, and they are contributing their time and their effort every day working within your organization.
Natalia Eileen:So unearned and unexpected recognition goes in that quadrant. Over the course of a quarter, you'll want to take time to plot how you're doing in terms of recognizing those around you, your team below you, your peers around you, maybe even checking in with some folks above you and giving them a sense that you're noticing what they're doing and how they're contributing to your workplace. If you take time every quarter or every month to plot the instances of recognition across this matrix, you might find that you are looking for ways to acknowledge people in a way that you haven't before. I've written an entire article outlining this matrix, outlining how you can turn it into a leadership habit. This is something that I have found has helped several people that I've coached and worked with, and it's one of the habits and suggestions we incorporate in our inclusive leadership training for people at all levels.
Natalia Eileen:What's also exciting is that we've created an entire guide that step by step outlines how you can leverage the matrix to turn this into a regular habit for yourself, and you can disseminate it to folks around you to also help them feel encouraged to recognize others. This particular guide also includes 40 recognition ideas, assorted by quadrant, so that you can get some fresh ideas for how you can help your people feel seen at work and more engaged as a result. As I mentioned, this is part of our offerings for one of our most popular workshops, which is our inclusive leadership workshop. Scene at Work has 15 workshops for you to choose from. And for all of these, we have up to eight hours of content.
Natalia Eileen:So it's up to you if you want to do sixty minutes, ninety minutes, two hours, four hours, a half day, a full day in person, virtual for any of these. And the matrix is just one of the many frameworks that we leverage to help people develop practical tools day to day for creating a more inclusive workplace culture, one where people feel seen and engaged and ready to do their best work. Feel free to reach out to us if you'd like to work with us at scene@work.comslashconsultation. You can also just keep listening along and watching us on social media. I'm excited to be back here with these weekly wisdoms every Wednesday morning at 9AM.
Natalia Eileen:In addition to being here on YouTube and on LinkedIn, We have these streamed on the podcast every Wednesday morning as well. So if you wanna follow along via audio, you can at c network the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, like on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. That's it for now. Until next time, see you next Wednesday morning for another Weekly Wisdom.