Episode 8: Recognition, Appreciation, & Gratitude at Work with Special Guest Erika Migliaccio

Decoding the Unicorn: The Podcast - Episode 8 - Recognition, Appreciation, & Gratitude in the Workplace with Special Guest Erika Migliaccio

In this episode, I sat down with the Founder & Principal Consultant at Upstream HR Strategies  Erika Migliaccio to explore the powerful trio of recognition, appreciation, and gratitude in the workplace. Why do so many formal recognition programs fall flat? The corporate world must do better!

Key Topics:

✅ What's the difference between recognition and appreciation? Why does this matter?

✅ A lot of companies have formal recognition programs yet most employees don't feel satisfied. There's clearly a disconnect. Why do so many leaders miss the mark?

✅ After assuming the job of Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld took the time to meet every UN employee personally. That amounted to about 4,000 people! Nowadays, we so often hear managers say, “Nope, I don’t have time.” What are some practical ways that leaders can create a real connection with their teams whether they are remote, hybrid, or fully in the office?

✅ How can leaders become more intentional about creating meaningful moments of appreciation?

✅ Appreciation, recognition, and psychological safety are intertwined. Dag was practicing concepts like workplace gratitude and psychological safety back in the 1950s! How does genuine recognition contribute to a culture where employees feel safe to speak up, take risks, and innovate?

✅ How can managers balance all of their competing components, e.g., strict deadlines, solid performance goals, great customer service, etc., and still ensure that recognition and gratitude don’t fall to the wayside?

✅ Many managers still assume that a paycheck is “enough” appreciation. How do you help leaders shift their mindset to see appreciation as a core part of effective leadership?

Links:

https://getgreetingsofgratitude.com/

https://upstreamhr.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/eamigliaccio/

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#WorkplaceGratitude #EmployeeRecognition #DagHammarskjöld   #AppreciationMatters #LeadershipDevelopment #HumanCenteredLeadership #PsychologicalSafety #TeamCulture #ModernLeadership  #DecodingTheUnicorn #IntrovertLeadership #WorkplaceWellbeing #LeadershipPodcast #QuietLeadership #GratefulWorkplaces #RecognitionVsAppreciation 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Recognition, appreciation, gratitude, workplace, employee engagement, psychological safety, leadership, employee retention, appreciation framework, employee appreciation, recognition programs, employee satisfaction, employee behavior, employee milestones, employee ideas.

 Welcome to the Decoding the Unicorn Podcast. Here's your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. Welcome to Episode 8 of Decoding the Unicorn the Podcast. In today's episode, I'll be joined by my guest, Erika Migliaccio, and we will discuss recognition, appreciation, and gratitude in the workplace, and why those concepts are so important. Have you ever had a boss that said your paycheck is your reward? I have doesn't feel very good, does it? And considering with inflation or maybe hyperinflation, at this point, your paycheck doesn't even go as far as it should. That doesn't feel like much of a reward. It doesn't feel very full of gratitude-y, does it? Then employers wonder why there's such high turnover rate in their companies. It's also important to remember that whenever dag assumed the secretary generalship, he went through the entire UN from the basement and the boiler room all the way up to the Secretariat on the 38th floor, and met every employee in person, something like 4000 people. It not only shows the importance of recognition in the workplace, but it also highlights that Dag as an introvert and an HSP was perfectly capable of demonstrating those things, so let's tune in. 

Some leaders talk about service. Dag Hammarskjöld lived it. To Dag, public service wasn't just a duty, it was an act of love. Decoding the Unicorn tells the story of a man who believed that leading with kindness and gratitude could change the world. It's an inspiring portrait of a leader who valued people, not politics. If you're looking for a book that honors the heart of leadership, discover Decoding the Unicorn on Amazon.com today.

 Erika gathered up her corporate experience and her courage to open a new door and formed upstream HR strategies in 2018 fueled by a fierce drive for delivering value and a passion for bringing out the best in others, Erika's vibrant energy is contagious. She is a spirited and innovative Human Resources executive with 25 years of executive HR leadership experience guiding large multinational teams through a variety of business cycles in both generalist and specialist roles, combining deep business acumen, creative courage and strategic vision, Erika shatters the bounds of traditional human resources and measures success by the value she delivers to the employees and businesses that she serves. She has an innovative approach, combined with perseverance, the willingness to push boundaries and heart just so important, it's driven significant business results, while inspiring and engaging employees, after seeing so many managers fail at making employees feel appreciated throughout her career at GE, Erika put her creativity to work and launched greetings of gratitude, a free Employee Appreciation app designed to eliminate every thanks for all you do from the workplace, while other employee appreciation apps give the users a blank text box and force them to find the words on their own greetings of gratitude offers users specific and sincere sayings to celebrate every workplace occasion and boost employee engagement with sincerity, not just stuff. Her professional career has taken her around the globe and back again. Over the years, she survived multiple corporate transformations with humor and fashion sense intact. She's currently living in upstate New York with her husband and best friend Sean and their two fur babies. Oh, love it. I love it. I love it. So Erika, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be with us.

I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.

So your work focuses on helping leaders build high performing teams through appreciation. Can you start out by explaining the key differences? If you see that there are any between recognition and appreciation?

I think there are. I think there are major differences, and I think it's really important for leaders, especially, to understand the distinction. So the way that I think about it, and that I like to explain it, is recognition is about showing gratitude for the things that people do. And a lot of times, that's what they deliver for your business. They're bringing value to your business. Appreciation, on the other hand, is more about showing gratitude for who that person is, and it's about celebrating the unique gifts that they bring to your team. I also like to say that recognition, I think, is an action, and appreciation is more of a feeling, and I think that when we fail to. Recognize that distinction. That's when we tend to see a lot of this disconnect that we're feeling between companies and managers and employees, where the company and the managers feel like they're doing a great job with appreciation and recognition, and employees are shaking their head and not agreeing.

Yeah, absolutely. And many companies have some sort of formal recognition program, yet, according to a recent survey that was performed by Sirato Consulting, only 51% of employees say that they're satisfied with how they're recognized for a job well done. So there's clearly the disconnect, and why do you think that so many leaders are missing that mark.

Yeah, and you know what, I think is important too. 51% of employees aren't satisfied, but it's actually causing them to vote with their feet also. And so when you when you look at people who have left a job or left a company, and you ask them why, almost 80% of them will tell you that lack of appreciation was one of the major drivers in their decision to leave. And I think it all ties back to this difference between recognition and appreciation. And a lot of companies invest all this money into fancy recognition platforms that have like, flashy awards or bonuses tied to them, but that's only one of the major drivers of appreciation, right? So I like to look at four drivers of appreciation, recognition for performance is one of them, but it's just one of them. The second thing that I think is often overlooked is behaviors. It's the way that people are acting in the workplace that they are demonstrating your company values. And a lot of times there's no tangible outcome, but it's you know, your willingness, Sara as an example, to go help someone who's new to the company. And there's no benefit to you, and there's really no tangible outcome, right? It's just your willingness to behave with a certain value. I think milestones are another important category, and helping people celebrate either their personal milestones or their professional milestones, just to make them feel that you understand who they are as an entire person, not just who they are at work. And then the fourth category for me is, I like to call it voice and ideas. And I think this one we we tend to overlook as well, and this is about, you know, welcoming someone to debate with you, asking for their opinion before you make a decision, or even from a leadership perspective, dangerous words, right? But inviting someone to dissent upward. And I think when you when you combine all four of those things, you can have an incredibly powerful appreciation or gratitude platform. But so many companies focus just on the recognition piece, and when recognition focuses on performance, and that tends to be above and beyond performance. How many times a year do you think people get that? How many times a year am I gonna do something that is so wonderful that I'm gonna get an award for it? Maybe one or two, if I'm lucky, right? And so like, what about the other 363 days? So I think it's, you know, the system itself is kind of set up to fail. We have managers believing that, you know, everything rests within this recognition platform, but that's only one of the things that they should be doing. I also found through this whole process that only 14% of companies train their managers on the difference between recognition and appreciation and how to do it? Well, I think that came from the five languages of appreciation book, by the way.

I'm so intrigued by everything that you just said, and I want to tell the story that after assuming the job of UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld took the time to meet every un employee personally. Now that amounted to about 4000 people. Nowadays, we hear managers say things like, Nope, I don't have the time, even though they may not even have a staff that's half or even worth of that. Nope, I don't have the time. So in your experience, what are some practical ways that leaders can create a real connection with their teams, whether they're fully remote, they're hybrid, or they're completely in the office.

Yeah, so I was thinking about this, and, you know, I think if we're talking about a leader of an organization, so take Dag as an example, an organization of 4000 employees, it is a one in a million leader who's going to make an attempt to meet all of them? Right? Like that is outstanding behavior, and we can't expect all the leaders to do that. What we can expect leaders of large organizations to do is to recognize that appreciation is going to come from an employee's direct manager for the most part. Employee engagement is driven 70. Percent of employee engagement is driven by the employees direct one on one relationship with their supervisor. So if I'm sitting up here as a leader of a large organization, and I have, you know, direct reports, who have direct reports, who have direct reports, I think the most important thing I could do is set clear expectations that that I expect anybody who is a people leader to make this a big part of what they do. They are responsible for making people feel seen, valued and heard, not just a couple times a year when they do something outstanding, but throughout the year, and then train those managers on all of these things that we're talking about that only 14% of them get trained on. Overhaul your recognition system. Create opportunities for people to give little bits and pieces of appreciation in between those big recognition moments. Invest in tools to help those managers understand how employees like to be appreciated, because it's not universal, and there's so many tools out there. So I've mentioned the five languages of appreciation already, that one's my favorite. I wish that companies would give people a five languages assessment as part of their onboarding process, so that their manager knows, does this person really prefer words of appreciation or quality time or acts of service, or gifts. Gifts, by the way, is, universally and globally, the least powerful appreciation. It is significant, right? I think I want to say only four to 5% of the population usually has gifts as their number one appreciation driver. And by the way, back to the system is broken. If you think about the recognition systems, what do they have? Gift cards, bonuses, right? Swag, all those things are gifts. And so once again, the system is broken. But I think if we're talking about what, just any manager, let's just take a manager of a one layer team. I'm Erica, and I have six direct reports. What can I do? You know, I think that there are so many things that we can do in our standard operating rhythm that aren't going to add more time to the calendar giving positive feedback in your one on ones, holding employee round tables every once in a while and asking for their ideas, asking your direct reports to weigh in on a decision that you could be making, taking five minutes in your team meetings to celebrate people's milestones. There are so many things you can do to incorporate these ideas into your existing operating rhythm without adding more time to your calendar. 

That's very well said, Very well said. And you shared some data with me that really highlighted how most leaders underestimate the power of their words and actions, and what you just said about gifts and gift cards really brings that home, because so many managers think, well, I'll just hand you a $5 gift card so that you can go get coffee, which, with inflation, you're probably not even going to be able to get that cup of coffee with that $5 gift card anymore. And they just think, Well, that's good enough, like my words won't matter as much as a $5 Starbucks card and think, but wait a minute, like your words do matter. So how do you think that leaders can become more intentional about creating those meaningful moments of appreciation?

Yeah, this one is, is interesting to me too, because, you know, I think managers do overestimate. You know what they're doing, and most managers think they do a pretty good job, but 82% of employees disagree so. And I think a lot of it, again, it ties back to recognition versus appreciation. They might be doing those recognition moments, the $5 gift card putting someone's name up on the slide at the town hall meeting, but they're missing those small moments of appreciation throughout the year and when they are doing it, I don't think they're necessarily taking advantage and doing it well. So I actually created a framework to help managers remember and understand what really makes appreciation meaningful. And I call it must M, U, S, T, and I say that if you're going to show appreciation, it must be so the M is in the moment, the U is unforgettable, the S is specific, and the T is tailored. So in the moment means I'm not waiting two weeks, or like one leader that I used to work with who would wait till the end of the year and then give every employee on his team a bonus with this laundry list of things by that time they thought he had forgotten about it already, and like the moment was gone, the U is unforgettable. And for me. What makes something unforgettable is an emotional connection. It's about creating a memorable moment, and it means if I just leave a $5 gift card on your desk, that's just a transaction. If I send you a $5 gift card or leave a $5 gift card on your desk and have a conversation with you and say exactly what you did well and why it was done well and how much I appreciate it and the impact that you had. That's a moment that you're going to remember right whether it was a $5 gift card or a $500 gift card, you're going to remember my words more than anything else. So making sure that there's emotion, and I think you know, when we think of kind of the hierarchy of communications, where you can use your voice and where people can see you, of course you're going to be able to express that emotion better. So face to face is the best. A video call is second. A voice call might be third. I do encourage managers sometimes, especially if they're in remote environments like don't send someone a text message or an email. Open up your phone and do a video message and send them that instead, because at least you're using your voice and they can hear and feel your emotion the specific, again, it's what they did when they did it, why it was great. And this is where I say you've got to avoid. This is my biggest pet peeve. Be thanks for all you do have to avoid. Thanks for all you do. It's just it comes across as insincere and patronizing, you know. And thanks for all you do was actually my inspiration for creating greetings of gratitude, because I worked with an amazing leader who overused that term, and I would see people after he said it, turn their backs and roll their eyes and say, Do you even know what I do? And so all this well intentioned work was completely meaning meaningless. And that's actually what inspired me to build the app. And then tailored is all about what I call the platinum rule. What's meaningful to you might not be meaningful to somebody else. And so if I lead with the golden rule, I might miss the mark. You have to lead with the platinum rule and understand what kind of appreciation matters to Sara, and then I give you that not what matters to me. I might like words of appreciation. You might like quality time. So I think again, the five languages, disc, you know, other tools like that, where you understand someone's personality or their drivers to someone like public or private recognition, you're gonna have to know the person in order to do that well, so it's in the moment, unforgettable, specific and tailored. 

That's excellent, absolutely excellent. Such, such good information we're getting today. Wow. Something else that I want to bring up is that appreciation, recognition and then psychological safety, I believe, are intertwined. And Dag was practicing these concepts like workplace gratitude and psychological safety all the way back in the 1950s which I think just kind of shows even more how ahead of his time that he was. So how do you think that genuine recognition contributes to an overall culture where employees feel like it's safe to speak up, it's safe to take a risk. It's safe to be an innovator.

I really think this one when I go back to those four categories, performance, behaviors, milestones, ideas, the connection here is in that last one. It's in the ideas. And I don't know, have you ever heard the theory of the iceberg theory?

No, but I want to. Please tell me.

It's a great theory, and it's not just a theory. It's based on research that was done many years ago. But you know the whole Iceberg Theory that there's so much below the surface that you don't see? Well, the research went and looked at what percent of problems are known and visible at different levels of the organization. And so at the frontline employee level, 100% of the problems are visible. People can see what's happening and what's going well and what's not going well. But as you rise up the organizational hierarchy, when you get to the very top levels of leadership, that percentage drops to, and this is, this is crazy, almost unbelievably crazy, 4% 4% right? So that's the iceberg of ignorance. And the only way that leaders are going to find out what those problems are is if they get themselves connected to the front line. Now this is a second part of the problem, and a lot of this I actually got from Karen hurt and David dye, who wrote a book called courageous cultures, which I also love. 82% of employees have ideas to improve. Business, but almost half of them say they don't speak up all the time, like they'll only speak up half the time. And a third of employees say that their ideas are ignored so they don't share them, right? And so I say this is, I think, the most important part of appreciation when it comes to psychological safety is when leaders truly invest and take the time to instigate debate on their teams, to welcome that dissent, to make space for ideas, to ask an employee to weigh in when they're making a decision, or empower employees to chase that crazy idea without fear of failure, that is going to amp up those feelings of appreciation in the employees and fuel that psychological safety. So I think there's a lot of untapped potential in looking at ideas as a major driver of appreciation and engagement and psychological safety.

Makes sense. You've worked with leaders who had to navigate these high pressure environments, which is another area of synergy, I think, for this podcast, because dag would go into literal war zones and refugee camps, he had to juggle Cold War politics and try to literally prevent world war three. How can managers balance all of these competing components, right? So they may have strict deadlines, they may have these solid performance goals, great customer service that needs to be delivered, and so on, but then still ensure that recognition and gratitude don't fall to the wayside?

The two most common, I'm going to call them excuses that I hear are, number one, I don't have the budget. Number two, I don't have the time. I think, you know, the budget thing is, we just talked about this. It's really not the big awards and the things that have money tied to them that people remember and that make them feel appreciated. It costs nothing to call someone and express gratitude for a behavior. It costs nothing to mention someone just bought a new home in the team meeting and have the team applaud for them. It costs nothing to ask someone what their opinion is on a decision you're making, right? It costs nothing to do these things. So when people say, I don't have the budget, I don't accept that. And in fact, if they don't have a budget for a recognition platform, greetings of gratitude is free. We made it completely free so you don't have one go, use that in your company, and your you and your employees can send these little text message words of affirmation cards to each other all day long, at no cost. So we wipe out that excuse. And I think time is similar, right? It really doesn't take a lot of time. Number One appreciation can be very, very quick. It can literally be two sentences that I say to you as we're closing a meeting. It could be I call you in between meetings and say something, right? It can be very, very simple and short, as long as it's must. It happens in the moment. It's unforgettable. It's specific, and it's tailored to your preferences. It's going to be memorable for you. And then I go back to what I said before about incorporating things into your existing operating rhythm. Most managers have one on ones with their direct reports. Make sure you're giving at least one piece of positive feedback in every single one of those. Most managers are having team meetings. Make sure you make time for celebrating milestones in those meetings, call people out in the moment, carve out time in your meetings to ask employees, what would you decide if you were in my shoes, none of these things require more time. It's just about building a different agenda and maybe prioritizing things a little bit differently. But in my mind, time and budget, neither of them are a good excuse

Here, here, I love it. So I want to share with you that I once had a boss whenever I was still on the corporate hamster wheel, so to speak, I once had a boss who told me unironically. Now I want to be very clear with all the listeners and all of the viewers, this person wasn't joking around. They weren't cutting up. They told me, unironically, your paycheck is your reward, and if that's not good enough, there's the door. And I sat there like, whoa, holy smokes. So not surprisingly, I'm sure to tell everyone that company is not even in business anymore, and with an attitude like that, who could really be surprised how I guess I would, I guess I would ask it like this, how many managers do you think that there still are who assume that your paycheck is, quote, enough appreciation, like the fact that you're getting it bi weekly is enough, and you should probably just sit down and enjoy that paycheck, which doesn't go as far as it does anymore with inflation. How do you help those leaders shift their mind? Mindset so that they see that appreciation and gratitude are core parts of being a good people manager.

Yeah, so Sara, unfortunately, I don't think your experience is that uncommon. In fact, I just posted something on LinkedIn last week, and I started it with a story of a manager who told me, word for word, I don't need to tell my team that I appreciate them. They know it. And I was like, Oh no, right. So I do think there are plenty of managers out there who who believe this, and when I run into someone who really is resistant. I have a little trick that I use. So I will ask them to recall a time in their career where they felt like they were at the top of their game. They were firing on all cylinders. They did the best work of their career, and they had fun doing it. So I get them to kind of, you know, evoke that emotion. Think of that time, and then I asked them about what was happening around them at that time. Who did you work for? You know, who was that leader? What did that leader do to contribute to your success during this period of time? And nine times out of 10, they come back with these stories about this amazing leader who empowered them, who asked for their ideas, who celebrated them. And so then I'll remind them that, listen, that's what brought out the best in you. If you want to bring out the best performance in your direct reports, you have to give them the same thing that you received. So you always have to make the business case in business, and there is a strong one here. There really is a strong link between appreciation and engagement and performance and business performance, not just individual performance. I think you just have to help the leader discover that for themselves. And a lot of times, using their own personal history and their emotion as an example, is a little bit of a fast track to together. 

Good. So tell us what's next on the horizon for you, and then also, if listeners want to connect with you, if they maybe want to learn more about your services or tune into that app that we've talked about in this episode, how should they go about doing it?

Yeah, absolutely. So greetings of gratitude is on the App Store and it's on Google Play. If you search for greetings of gratitude, you will find it, and like I said, it is free. There are hundreds and hundreds of very specific greetings of appreciation that you can pick, you can customize and you can text message. You can send it in a teams chat. You can email them to someone. You can print it out and hand it to someone. So that is out there for free. In terms of what's next on the horizon, we're doing a couple exciting things. Number one, we're starting to create custom collections of greetings of gratitude. So if a company does like readings of gratitude, but they want something that's more tailored towards maybe their company values and their branding and their logo on it, we're doing that as well. There is a fee for those of course, but I can tell you that it is a fraction of the price of any of the other big, fancy platforms that are out there. The other thing we're doing to fill this gap, and I mentioned only 14% of managers get training on this, we've created a virtual, self paced training course on the power of appreciation and really teaching leaders how to go about doing this well, so that you are inspiring people to bring their very best every day. You're making people feel seen, valued and heard. So we do have that course available to again, it's a very, very reasonable price. You can buy one seat, you can buy 10 you can put all your leaders through it, or you can just sign up for yourself. And then, in terms of connecting with me, I love to connect with people on LinkedIn. I put content out there a couple of times a week on this topic. This is my favorite, but also just more broadly, on leadership. And then upstreamhr.com is our company website and greetings of gratitude, excellent.

Well, I appreciate you taking time out of your day to join us. This has been a fantastic episode, and I thank you so much for all of your insights. 

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