One habit that can limit an executive's success is failing to give proper
recognition to others. In withholding your recognition of another person's
contribution to a team's success, you are not only sowing injustice and
treating people unfairly, but you are depriving people of the emotional
payoff that comes with success. They cannot reveal in the success or accept
congratulations when you have chocked off that option. Instead, they feel
forgotten, ignored, pushed to the side. And they resent you for it. If you
really want to tick people off, ignore their contributions.

In depriving people of recognition, you are depriving them of closure. And
we all need closure in any interpersonal transaction. Closure comes in many
forms-- from the emotional complexity of paying our last respects to loved
ones to something as pro forma as saying, "You're welcome" when someone else
says, "Thank you." Either way, we look for closure.

Recognition is all about closure. It's the beautiful ribbon wrapped around
the precious gift of success you and your team have created. When you fail
to provide that recognition, you cheapen the gift. You have the success but
none of the afterglow.

This happens at work and at home.

In training programmes, I ask participants, "How many of you think you need to
do a better job of recognizing others for their great work?" without eight out of
ten people raise their hands.

When I ask them why they fail at recognition, the answers say more about the
people responding than the people not recognized. "I just got too busy," "I
just expected everyone to do great work," "I never realized how important it
was to them," "I was never recognized for my work--why should they be?"

Note the constant use of the first person singular pronoun. It's a hallmark
of successful people; they become great achievers because of their intense
focus on themselves. My career, my performance, my progress, my needs. But
there's a difference between being an achiever and a leader. Successful
people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves
to others.

One of my clients taught me a wonderful technique for improving in the area
of providing recognition.

1. He first made a list of all the important groups of people in his life
(friends, family, direct reports, customers, etc.)

2. He then wrote down the names of every important person in each group.

3. Twice a week, on Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon, he reviewed the
list of names and asked himself, "Did someone on this page do something that
I should recognize?"

4. If the answer was "yes" he gave them some very quick recognition, either
by phone, email, voice mail or a note. If the answer was "no" he did
nothing. He didn't want to be a phony.

Within one year this executive's reputation for providing positive recognition
improved from poor to excellent. He was amazed at how little time this took.

Of all the interpersonal slights we make in our professional or private lives,
not providing recognition is one of those that endures most deeply in the minds
of the slighted.