Building Teams Through Powerful Belief & Intention

In honor and in the spirit of Martin Luther King, I'd like to remind everyone that in all of the talk and at times the hype of what leadership means, it's first and foremost about satisfying our basic social and emotional needs. I, like many scientists and psychologists of our time am a firm believer in the validity in “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”. Abraham Maslow postulated that all people have 5 needs that they constantly strive to fulfill. From the last we seek to fulfill to the first they are:

1. Self-actualization
2. Esteem or Recognition
3. Love belongingness
4. Safety & security
5. Physiological

Maslow proposed that we constantly seek to fulfill these needs beginning with the physiological. We cannot move to the next need until the previous is fulfilled. For instance, if you were naked and dying of thirst in the desert and someone approached you and told you that you had won “the most valuable employee or player award” (Esteem), you would not care until your clothing, thirst and safety needs were taken care of.

One of our highest base needs is esteem. We all desire to know we are recognized and appreciated for who we are and what we bring to the table! If we do not get enough recognition to feel fulfilled we will act out trying to get that recognition. The acting out is not always helpful or productive but it’s an individual trying to fulfill a base need we all have!

How do we thoughtfully recognize teams and individuals to achieve maximum positive results? To recognize people effectively we must program ourselves as leaders to look for positive actions and results in addition to issues that must be resolved. In the professional arena that begins with observing your team members performance. Look for results that deserve to be recognized and rewarded. Then, publicly express appreciation of them for their effective results. Use their efforts as a standard for others to emulate and replicate to create a culture of positive organizational impact. To build these habits into an organizational force, make a list of the exemplary behaviors you have observed and the recognition you provided on those noteworthy occasions, and make that an intrinsic part of your organizational values and beliefs.

To begin to fulfill recognition needs more authentically and consistently, each team member should be recognized (if no more than a public thank you) a minimum of once every week (as long as they deserve a thank you) to create a habit of cultural success. If you have not recognized a team member in over a week, that should indicate either they need additional training and coaching, or that they may not be an ideal fit for your organization, or maybe you're just not looking for the positive results in that individual.

In order to provide special recognition effectively, we must first understand that recognition means different things for different individuals, and therefore what each employee likes or considers appropriate recognition for them.

You can begin by recording each team members name and their favorite form of special recognition to better understand the differentiation within your team and culture. Yes, you will need to have to have a meaningful talk with them (as quality leaders tend to do) to discover what inspires them. Once you do the basic work however, not only will your relationship with them be more positive because you’ve shown them that you care, it will then become easier to effectively recognize them so it motivates and inspires them to emulate those positive behaviors that earns them the recognition they so desire!

And through doing so, you gain loyalty and become respected and trusted - and their desire to help you when the opportunity presents itself...soars! Dr King spoke passionately and consistently in the final days of his life, about economic and social injustice, about poverty and about fairness in the way we view and treat one another. Leaders in the professional arena can honor and carry that message and mission through the culture they create and through treating everyone with honesty, dignity and respect.

This just one of the in-depth hacks we at the Team-builder Leadership Institute provide in our leadership and communications certification courses. Read our newest book - The Architect of Excellence to show you how to elevate the impact you have on the lives of those you lead - http://bit.ly/AOEAmazonStevenR - and visit us to see our certification programs in leadership excellence at: http://theteambuilderadrc.com/