Remote team building activity
The power of recognition: increase employee happiness through this appreciation workshop
A collaborative way to share praise between team members
When was the last time you stopped the daily grind and recognised the great work of your colleagues? Well, then it’s about time. Psychological safety is a key pillar for successful teams. Recognizing each other is a great way to build trust. This workshop creates the space for team members to give and receive praise for specific situations & actions.
Outcome — amplify positive behaviours
After this 1h workshop, your face muscles will hurt from all the smiling. Folks will walk away with a confidence booster. They will also know what things they should do more of. It’s a great amplifier of any behaviours that are helpful to the team.
Who can run this workshop?
Everyone that works in a team can run this workshop. You don’t need to work in a specific industry or job. I recently ran it with our VMware Tanzu Labs leadership team with 10 participants. And with our whole team across Europe with 30 participants. You might want to tweak the length or the way you run it based on the number of participants. 30 participants: not likely to praise everyone more than once. 5 participants: likely to get through all sticky notes.
How to run the workshop
The concept is simple: people write nice things about each other on sticky notes.
Agenda
⇢ 5 min: explain how it works
⇢10 min: silent writing
⇢45 min: walking through the sticky notes
Prep-work
Skip the prep work using this Miro Template. Here is how to prepare manually: set up a digital whiteboard that is accessible for each participant. Design little hearts with sticky notes & add headlines for the behaviours you’d like to praise — or perhaps your organization’s values. For example “model good behaviour” or “serve our customers”. This workshop is equally impactful when held in person. Prepare a large whiteboard with headlines. Provide plenty of sticky notes and sharpies.
During the workshop
Every person writes their name and then the recipient’s name on a sticky note, followed by what they’d like to appreciate. Write as many notes for as many people as you want – in any category you like. After 10 minutes of silent writing, start to share out the sticky notes. Let the authors add their personal stories. Set a 1 — 2 min timer per sticky note.
Pro-tip
If you fear you might not get through all stickies: prepare a list of participants and mark who was appreciated to ensure that everyone is mentioned. This also ensures that high-performers aren’t getting all the attention.
Considerations
This workshop can be very powerful in a good way. We run it quarterly with our team. However, it can feel fake if the general psychological safety in your team isn’t great. It’s also not a magical solution that will solve your team’s challenges. Continue to do the hard work to make your place a good place to work at. If you’re just starting to think about your team’s health, I’d encourage you to learn about the value of weekly retrospectives and how to run them.
How do you go about sharing appreciation within your team? I’d love the next version of this workshop to incorporate your feedback. Find me on LinkedIn.
A big thanks to Aly Blenkin, Ellie Ereira and Erin Cobb, who ran this format for the first time with our team. And to Andrea Nagel, who inspired me to share this template through her recent webinar Learn to build and retain development teams. And Dale Owen, who continuously innovates how we help our teams feel more psychologically safe.
