In my last post on gratitude, I had a small line where I stated the need for showing “true and genuine gratitude for a job well done and progress being made.” That progress is what motivates us, and if we are not seeing the progress, we are likely to quit or pivot to early.
There is value in self-accountability, if we don’t own or own goals, no one else can make us reach them. That is the purpose of the 4-1-1 instrument I have shared before, adapted from The One Thing and Produktive. And we need to be comfortable with the fact that often times the progress we make is slower than we would like, or not getting the immediate results we want, but that progress is progress and we are therefore farther along today than we were yesterday.
As a leader, it is important to let people know specifically that you have seen their growth, or to remind them that growth has been made when they are becoming frustrated. There is little more disheartening than when a breakthrough at any level has been made, and it is not acknowledged by anyone. On the flip side, that recognition of growth keeps us moving forward and wanting more. In an "On Leadership" interview that Scott Miller from Franklin Covey had with Chris McChesney, Chris states "the number one driver of morale and engagement is whether a person feels like they're winning at something that matters." Progress is winning, and if the results of that progress are leading to tangible improvements than that matters.
There is a teacher I oversee that has high expectations for their students. When I first started working with this person, they were trying to get students to reach the expectations through stern comments and oftentimes demeaning rebukes. They were expecting the students to be able to recall material they had previously learned, so when a student would ask for help on previous content, the teacher would respond with something like, "you should have already learned this, so you will need to figure that out yourself." I asked them what they were trying to accomplish, and helped them re-frame their approach to pushing students and holding them accountable, but in a way that motivated them rather than shut them down.
The next time I observed this teacher, the growth was evident, and even in small ways. I remember noticing for the first time, that as the teacher would work to get the student to think about some prior knowledge to apply in the new situation, they would smile encouragingly. They would ask leading questions, give students a memory to attach their thinking to, and then celebrate with the student when the light bulb went on. Those changes, the smile as opposed to a stone face, the questions as opposed to the statement, was making a huge difference! I made sure to have a face to face conversation with the teacher as soon as we had the opportunity, told them the difference I saw this make in how the student responded to the challenge, and how I appreciated the teacher putting in the effort to make the modifications.
Soon the teacher would come to me to report further breakthroughs they were having, or improvements their students were making, and these brief positive interactions were the dopamine hits that kept fueling the desire to improve. The teacher was now getting the results they were trying so hard to get before, and was actually having more fun and seeing more growth than they previously ever had.
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