Rewards and recognition

The ability to reward and recognize is an important skill in management. How you go about doing that depends on your team and your organizational culture. If your organization doesn’t already have reward and recognition built into their culture or their budgets, it may be time to get creative. There have been many times in my career where I reached into my own pocket and bought my team lunch or brought coffee or candy bars, and even let my team go early on a Friday if they had worked hard that week meeting a deadline. It’s not that you are creating an expectation that every time they work hard they will get something. You don’t want a team demotivated because they aren’t rewarded the way they think they should be every single time. Setting good expectations and SMART goals and then sticking to your side of the bargain is a good...