Show gratitude - Let’s give each other awards & recommendations!
I was recently in an interview where I could tell I was losing the person I was talking to. You know the feeling, like, let’s just call the whole thing off now to save us both the time.
One thing they asked is if I have any stories of a time I’ve received an award… well, no. I mean I don’t like have a trophy case, I’ve given awards when I did some political stuff, and received group accolades… but nothing at work.
The thing is, all awards are made up.
Someone decides it’s nice or profitable (or both! Look at that employee satisfaction rate!) to award someone with something. People bet on sports, and have Oscar pools and office competition gets exciting. If you’re in sales I bet you have an award (or, a watch!).
I did at one point think I was a contender for an award. I used it as a carrot for me to keep working hard. In the end the ‘award’ went to everyone/nobody after a hard year. I was mad. Not just for me but for the other people who worked hard and could use an award story. I was mad because it had gone to 5 people and 4 were men in engineering / product / sales and 1 woman who was the office manager. You see the problem. So they said, it will go to a woman next! And it didn’t. I actually don’t know who got it next, I left before another year passed.
Did I really stay for an award? No, but I internalized it as an excuse to work harder without telling anyone. I should have been trying to get a promotion, bringing my accomplishments to every 1x1 with my manager. I wanted recognition, not just for me but also for the other women I saw working hard every day.
So why don’t we just make up some awards!?
While I was feeling sorry for myself I started to think about how I could give out ‘awards’ to people who deserved them. A little something to put on their resume and LinkedIn to share with potential employers. Then I remembered that it takes tops 5 minutes to write a LinkedIn recommendation of someone! I started a monthly zoom where women got together to write LinkedIn endorsements, we focused on 1-2 people per month but the more the merrier. I’ve even learned to ask for them, and to give them out when people are transitioning out of roles where we worked together.
I now have 13 recommendations and have given 27!
I mean… look that this confidence booster —
Aplomb! The best.
You don’t need to get an award from a company to be seen, the recommendations of your colleagues who are on the ground with you every day mean so much because they are from people who know what your actual day to day is like. They see your results but also they see your effort and your empathy and your creativity.
I miss this person!
While I was writing this post a friend recommend someone on LinkedIn and then shared their recommendation on their feed because they felt so strongly about it. That’s the spirit I’m talking about! Host a zoom party to recommend colleagues, choose someone who has done something above and beyond and rally a few recommendations for them. So next time they can say, you know there was one ‘Employee of the whatever’ award once but it means a lot more to me that my coworkers have taken the time to endorse me!
