The thing that got me through the workout I despise

Most of us find it easy to praise our “top performers”—the overachieving employees, prized students, and dutiful children—but we struggle to consistently affirm those who aren't quite as easy to lead.

Here's the problem: when we fail to provide consistent recognition to our middle-of-the-road and struggling performers, their efforts and results only deteriorate further.

In this week's video, I challenge you to keep a log for one week. Track the number of times you provide both positive and constructive feedback to every single employee. Then consider...

• How does your ratio look?

• Where are the gaps?

• What intentional shifts could you make?

Experiment with some thoughtful adjustments to increase the intentionality and frequency of affirmation provided to all employees, then track the impact. I can almost guarantee you'll see a spike in motivation and performance as a result.

• Read the video transcript

  Today I'm going to tell you how to get maximum effort out of every employee on your team, because that's every leader's dream, right? You want every employee to show up each day ready to give their all to the work that you are leading. But it doesn't always happen, does it?

  So recently I was completing what we call our benchmark workout at the gym. So at my gym, every couple of months, we get to complete this benchmark workout where we are completing the same number of reps in a set period of time. It's the same sequence of exercises so that we can track our progress. It's just a you versus you situation. You know how many rounds you completed last time, and you are pushing yourself to complete even more rounds this time. And I love a good workout, but I hate this workout because I know I'm so internally competitive with myself that I know I'm going to push myself to the extreme to try to beat what I had the time before.

  And so just last week I was doing it and of course, started out as quickly as I could and I was fading pretty quickly. My legs were super tired that day. You know, every burpee, every rep was just feeling so hard. And I was starting to lose some steam. And we were over halfway through and my friend Nicole, who works out with me, she was close by and she could see that I was starting to kind of slow down a little. And just in one little moment she said, “You've got this friend.”

  And it was just that statement right there that I needed. I needed some positive affirmation from somebody to say, guess what? I see you. You can do this. I believe in you. And of course, my coaches were giving me that affirmation along the way as well. But there was just something about that comment right then that sparked in me some new energy to push through and beat my record from the time before.

  Now here is, here's the point. Your employees need the same thing. Your employees need specific positive recognition from you, leaders. Some of us do this more naturally than others, but the truth is, we don't grow out of needing this positive affirmation from our leaders once we leave school. It continues through our lives. And here's what I see happen most often.

  As managers, we are really good at praising the top performers on our team. We struggle to do it intentionally with the rest of the employees. The the lower performers are maybe getting more frequent feedback, constructive feedback from us. The middle performers are not hearing much from us, and all of a sudden we're only giving this positive affirmation to five or 10% of our employees.

  Every single employee on your team needs to hear what they are doing well, and I promise when you recognize it, what gets recognized gets repeated.

  Research tells us that the highest performing teams see a ratio of about five positive affirmations for every one piece of constructive feedback. What is your ratio right now for every single employee?

  I want you to actually keep track over the next week or two of how many times do you give a specific piece of positive affirmation to every single employee? And I want you to strive to be giving that positive feedback to every employee and see what happens. See if they are able to muster up enough energy to do those extra burpees to push through. Give that positive affirmation.

  Be intentional, be authentic about it, and see what happens to the levels of effort on your team.