At the end of the evening, I watched as one coach brought his female and male athletes together. Some had won their events, others had placed, and others did not. The young women and men did not win their overall championships, though they came in second and third, respectively.

It was clear they had wanted to do better. The coach rallied his team in the middle of the track, with their arms linked around one another, and talked about their journey through the season. He celebrated their accomplishments as individuals and as a team. After tears, hugs and laughter, the team walked away from this impressive display of coaching excited to train over the summer and head into the next season.

Just as teams and athletes lose and move on, we can learn valuable lessons from how coaches and athletes manage what some might consider failure. Not all teams can be the champions of their sport — there can only be one. Coaches routinely work with athletes to help them manage failure and rebound to be even better.

Here are some of the best tips I have gleaned from sports that can help employees (athletes) and managers (coaches) better manage setbacks and failures.

1. Clearly define success.Dictionaries define failure as a lack of success, but its true definition is personal and subjective. Amanda Scarborough, ESPN softball analyst and coach, stresses that coaches and managers must clearly define what constitutes success, mediocrity and failure. Lack of clarity from the coach about the ultimate goal sends conflicting messages and creates confusion and insecurity. Good coaches tell and show their players what they expect. Amanda also points out that winning the game may not be the only definition of success.

Similarly, business managers must clearly define success, failure and mediocrity and outline specific outcomes and directions. Just as coaches review winning plays and techniques, strong managers provide examples of successful projects and outcomes, and coach their employees to the desired outcomes. John Wooden, the famous basketball coach, once said that the journey (the practice) is better than the end (the game). Wooden’s philosophy was never to stress winning; he believed the outcomes would simply be a result of the team’s collective preparation.

2. Fail fast and move on. In his book “Players First,” University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari stresses the need for players to “fail fast” so they can learn from their mistakes, make corrections and move on. He explains that bouncing back faster leads to success faster. This advice also holds true in the business world. Gail Kelly, the CEO of Australia’s second‐largest bank, explains, “How are you going to learn and how are you going to innovate unless you fail? You need to fail fast, quickly, and then get up and off you go again.” Adapting to a rapidly‐changing world requires the ability to fail fast, make the necessary adjustments and move forward with confidence.

Managers can play a valuable role by helping their employees learn how to bounce back.Even successful companies embrace failures and figure out how to move past them proactively. The history of business has consistently shown the utility of failure a as springboard to success. Grey Advertising actively promotes the idea that one must try and often fail in order to succeed. On its company culture page, Grey highlights the quarterly Heroic Awards, noting that innovation occurs “by embracing the importance of trying, failing, dusting yourself off, and trying again.” The award serves as a strong symbol for employees to know that it is okay to be imperfect and to keep working toward success.

Similarly, in an October 2013 Forbes article, Halah Touryalai profiled the odyssey of the Domino’s pizza chain, which in 2009 put its CEO in a commercial to distinctively acknowledge that Domino’s pizza did not taste good. Patrick Doyle publicly apologized for Domino’s failure to deliver a quality product and promised to improve the recipe. This risky and honest move paid off. Domino’s 2013 revenue was $1.8 billion, it is growing faster than its competitors and opening more locations.

3. Recognize when to rally. Don Shula is the all-time winningest coach in the NFL. Spending 31 years as a pro football coach, he holds the record for most career wins and is the only coach to have had teams in six Super Bowls. Shula had a “24 hour rule,” a policy of looking forward instead of retreating from the loss. He allowed himself, his coaching staff and his players only 24 hours to celebrate a victory or wallow over a defeat. During those 24 hours, Shula encouraged them to feel their emotions of success or failure as deeply as they could. The next day, it was time to put their focus and energy into preparing for their next challenge.

Like the best coaches, managers should routinely stress to employees that everyone makes mistakes, and the sooner they accept this fact, the easier it will be to recover. As Margie Warrell noted in a recent article: “If you’ve made a mistake – whether taking the wrong job, or not delivering the right result, or simply not managing yourself or others as well as you’d have liked – the most important thing is never to let it define you.”

4. Taking yourself out of the game altogether can be costly. Coaches stress that players need to have the courage to take the big shot, to reach for the prize instead of giving in to failure. Research shows that task-focused thinking after failure leads to improved performance. Self-talk that focuses on correcting errors and attaining goals will motivate you to keep trying and move on from a setback. The fear of failure can prevent employees from trying new things and achieving their personal best, so managers can help make it safe for employees to fail by emphasizing that failure does not define them, and by alleviating their self‐doubt by encouraging them to try again. As Michael Jordan said, “I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But, I can’t accept not trying.”

Managers must recognize that in business, as in sports, failure is possible and frequent. What happens afterward is what is important. I offer you these words to live by from coach Tom Krause, the co-author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul”: “There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.”

Christine M. Riordan, PhD, is the 10th president of Adelphi University in New York. Her writing focuses on diversity and inclusion, leadership effectiveness, and career success. Follow her on Twitter at @Chris_M_Riordan.

In the movie Remember the Titans, Coach Herman Boone takes his high school football team to the battleground of Gettysburg. Having inherited a fractured and divided squad, Coach Boone implores the players to “take a lesson from the dead. If we don’t come together, right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were.” Coach Boone then establishes the primacy of an important team virtue: “I don’t care if you like each other right now, but you will respect each other.”

In every workplace and on every team, all people have the innate desire to feel appreciated and valued by others. Like Coach Boone, leaders of teams — and team members themselves — should work to foster a culture of value and appreciation.

High performing teams have well-defined goals, systems of accountability, clear roles and responsibilities, and open communication. Just as importantly, teams that foster cohesion with a sense of appreciation and gratitude among the team members maximize performance on a number of dimensions. Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, authors of the Wisdom of Teams, define a high-performing team in part by members’ strong personal commitment to the growth and success of each team member and of the team as a whole.

Research on gratitude and appreciation demonstrates that when employees feel valued, they have high job satisfaction, are willing to work longer hours, engage in productive relationships with co-workers and supervisors, are motivated to do their best, and work towards achieving the company’s goals. Google, which sits atop many best-places-to-work lists, fosters feelings of employee value through an open culture that promotes employee input, routinely rewards and recognizes performance, and encourages personal growth. In a recent interview, CEO Larry Page stated, “My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society.”

And consider the consequences of not fostering a culture of gratitude: A study of over 1,700 employees conducted in 2012 by the American Psychological Association (APA) indicated that more than half of all employees intended to search for new jobs because they felt underappreciated and undervalued.

Several recent articles point out the importance of saying “thank you” and giving specific praise to employees when earned in genuine, honest, and heartfelt ways. Mark Gaston’s blog on How to Give a Meaningful Thank-you is full of great advice such as sharing with employees how their contributions had personal significance for the leader and team.

In addition to these very important gestures of thanks, recent research suggests that a leader can enhance a culture of gratitude in the following ways.

1. Help others develop. Interestingly, the APA study indicated that 70% of employees feel valued at work when they have opportunities for growth and development. While promotion opportunities within companies may sometimes be limited, you can still invest in team members’ professional development through training, assignment to new and interesting projects, participation on task forces, and exposure to new and interesting different areas through cross-training. Employees frequently have skills that extend beyond the position for which the company hired them. Additionally, they typically grow their skills over time. Leveraging these broad skill sets can lead to greater engagement and satisfaction.
2. Involve employees. Team members feel valued when they have an opportunity to take part in decision-making, problem-solving, and to use their skills to benefit the organization. A 2012 study by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) showed the importance of employees’ opportunities to use skills and abilities, with 63% of respondents listing the ability to use their skills as the top driver of their job satisfaction.
3. Support camaraderie and collegiality. I conducted a study many years ago on the positive benefits of friendship in the workplace. Camaraderie in the workplace can lead to greater job satisfaction and commitment to the organization and doing a job well. Leaders should foster collegiality, help to eliminate toxic and dysfunctional team behaviors, and create opportunities for team members other than on work projects. At Google, the games/toys the company provides allow for entertaining and informal interactions among colleagues. These positive and fun feelings carry over when the colleagues work on projects together. The SHRM study in 2012 found employees’ relationships with their co-workers was the second highest factor related to their connection and commitment to the organization. Team leaders may also consider using social contracts, explicit agreements on how team members interact, to help shape positive behaviors within their teams.

Taking the time and effort to create a culture that values and appreciates the diversity and similarity within a team can reap great rewards in terms of performance and satisfaction of the entire team. At the end of the day, this principle is really very simple: we all want to feel valued and appreciated. So, in addition to overt recognition to employees, use a variety of ways to build a culture of gratitude.

Christine M. Riordan, PhD, is the 10th president of Adelphi University in New York. Her writing focuses on diversity and inclusion, leadership effectiveness, and career success. Follow her on Twitter at @Chris_M_Riordan.​

Value creation is the raison d’être of any business entity. How do you accurately assess the value of a company? What dimensions are the most important for determining company value? How do you calculate a company’s long-term prospects for success?

Many analysts use a broad definition of value creation, and they include in it the calculation financial factors (e.g. financial statement analysis, cash flow, profit), internal capabilities (e.g. ability to innovate, leadership, people, brand reputation, customer base) and future potential of the company (e.g. growth, revenue forecasts, risk assessment).

Similar assessments can be made of the value created by employees.

Analysts often cite Mutar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola, as a leader who has created significant value for the company. Under his leadership, the stock has risen over 50%. As importantly, Kent set the foundation for future growth and relevance by creating a culture that emphasizes collaboration, innovation, and global expansion.

Whether a front-line employee or a senior leader, you should ask: “What is the value you personally create for your company?”

Dimensions included

Similar to company valuation, we use many dimensions to gauge the value created by an employee. Results and goal accomplishment are clearly important in the eyes of many within organizations.

But, the value created by employees also includes internal capabilities such as expertise, helpfulness to others, vigilance on behalf of the company’s interests, engagement, ability to inspire esprit de corps among others, innovation, customer service, ability to build trust, leadership, and positive change facilitation.

Capabilities related to employees’ future value, such as leadership potential, ability to change and learning agility, are also important.

Detractors

Additionally, certain behaviors often detract from your perceived value. Specifically, employees need to consider whether they are costing the company money as a result of an inability to develop new skills in response to a changing environment, an inability to form good relationships with co-workers and customers, or a propensity to engage in unethical or destructive behaviors. These become your liabilities.

Researchers have shown that costs associated with training, coaching, facilitation, employee morale issues, and potential lawsuits due to negative behaviors are high.

An executive within a consulting firm shared that one of her employees was simply brilliant and an expert in systems design. But he lacked interpersonal skills, rejected calls for diversity among employees, and alienated teammates by screaming at them. Ultimately, the executive deemed the employee’s liabilities to be greater than any assets he brought to the company.

Assess the total picture

In any situation, you should ask what assets and liabilities you bring. The value created by these assets (or lost because of any liabilities) will vary with the culture and needs of the company. And your value may actually change over time within the same company. Not all companies view assets similarly, nor do they view liabilities in the same way.

Additionally, most people keep track of and over-emphasize, the importance of their own assets and downplay, or ignore, their liabilities. Such a strategy is dangerous because you may not realize the negative impact of your liabilities on the value you hoped to create. Research also indicates that supervisors more easily recall negative behaviors than positive behaviors. As a result, others within an organization may put more emphasis on or recall your liabilities more than you do.

As you move throughout your career, ask yourself, “What is the impact I bring?” Because at the end of the day, success within a company is really about the value you create and defines your raison d’être within an organization.

Christine M. Riordan, PhD, is the 10th president of Adelphi University in New York. Her writing focuses on diversity and inclusion, leadership effectiveness, and career success. Follow her on Twitter at @Chris_M_Riordan.

by Christine M. Riordan, Ph.D.

This post was first published in theglasshammer.com on December 17, 2014

“One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.” Lewis Carroll

How do you actively back, encourage, and support the people you work with – whether you are a boss, co-worker, or subordinate?

Social psychologists call behaviors we engage in to help others at work – prosocial behaviors. These types of behaviors include having a genuine concern for the rights and welfare of others, feeling and expressing empathy, or doing things – simply put – that benefit other people.

Research has long shown that people who receive helpful and supportive behavior from others at work profit in ways such as higher performance, greater self-worth, an enhanced sense of belonging, lower stress, and an increased sense of well-being.Additionally, a 2014 study in the Journal of Vocational Behavior demonstrated that employees’ perceptions of a supportive work climate by both supervisors and co-workers led to greater employee organizational commitment, engagement, performance, and reduced turnover. Not only are supervisor-employee relationships important, but so are the behaviors among co-workers.

In short, we all have the ability to make a positive (or negative) difference for others in the workplace. So, what are some common supportive and helping behaviors that have the most benefit for others?

• Treat Others with Dignity and Respect. In her book, Dignity, Harvard Professor Donna Hicks notes that we all need to treat people fairly and justly. Hicks goes on to suggest that it is important for us to make others feel physically and psychologically safe – free of concern about being shamed, excluded, or humiliated and that people can feel free to speak without fear of retribution. Tony Schwartz, CEO and President of the Energy Project, comments that “great leaders understand that how they make people feel, day in and day out, has a profound influence on how they perform.” While these supportive behaviors sound so simple, a study in 2013 found that workplace rudeness was on the rise. Authors Christine Porath, Professor at Georgetown, and Christine Pearson, Professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management said that rudeness in the workplace is rampant. Porath and Pearson polled workers over a 14-year period, and found that 98 percent of respondents reported experiencing rudeness and that over 50 percent of the respondents said they were treated rudely at least once a week. The behaviors included overt nastiness, intentional undermining, ignoring their opinions, among others. Research has also shown that workplace incivility is related to reduced satisfaction with the job, supervisor, and coworkers, lower intention to stay, decreased daily happiness, and decreased longer-term mental and physical health.
• Support Others’ Strengths and Weaknesses. Another recent study showed that CEO’s, who are more empathetic and appreciative of others’ strengths and weaknesses, create positive impacts for both their employees and organizations. It is important for all of us to celebrate others for their hard work and contributions and it is equally important to accept that everyone has weaknesses and makes mistakes. In an interview with Harvard Business Review, CEO of Hotels.com, David Roche, noted that you must be tolerant of the diversity of weaknesses in your employees. He goes on to explain that within their company culture, they look beyond the shortcomings of employees because doing so accepts them in their totality and allows their strengths to shine. Moreover, it creates an integrative, broad-minded, and inclusive environment.
• Take Ownership. When we help others because we want to, and not because we have to, we put more time into building a high quality relationship and a greater sense of closeness to them. Others also receive more value from us when we ask them how we may be of the most help. Indeed, studies have shown that recipients of gifts benefit more when the givers ask them what they need or want. Furthermore, when we hold ourselves accountable for our own actions – we also create value for others. During a talk at UCLA, Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, stated, “Our mission statement about treating people with respect and dignity is not just words but a creed we live by every day. You can’t expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don’t exceed the employees’ expectations of management. That’s the contract.”

While we have the capacity to support others daily through our actions and words, research has also shown that when we help others, we benefit as well.

• Broadens Our Perspective. When we focus on other people, we change our perspective. We move away from a focus on ourselves – our own needs and motives – to consider the pressures, stresses, needs, and welfare of others. A great deal of social psychological research has shown that when we take another person’s perspective – try to see the world through their eyes – many benefits ensue. The results include increased liking and greater compassion, improved social interactions, better decisions, and less prejudice towards others who differ from us.
• Makes Us Happier. Additionally, the more we focus on contributing in meaningful ways to other people’s lives, the more our own happiness hinges on theirs. According to one study, the trait most strongly associated with long-term increases in life satisfaction is, in fact, a persistent commitment to pursuing altruistic goals. That is, the more we focus on compassionate action, on helping others, the happier we tend to feel in the end. What’s more, according to another study, altruism not only correlates with an increase in happiness but also actually causes it. Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky conducted a study in which students performed five acts of kindness per week over six weeks. The students who engaged in their own acts of kindness reported a significant increase in their levels of happiness relative to a control group of students who performed no acts of kindness.
• Improves our Health. Stephen Post, physician and author of Altruism and Health, writes that prosocial acts link to fewer symptoms of depression, lower stress, greater psychological well-being, and greater longevity for the giver. Physicians have indeed found that the body doles out feel-good chemicals such as dopamine, which has a soothing effect. In 1988, Allen Luks called this physical response to helping a “helpers high.” Luks surveyed thousands of volunteers across the United States and found that people who helped other people reported better health than peers did, and many claimed that this health improvement began when they started to volunteer. Helpers reported a physical sensation associated with helping; half reported that they experienced a “high” feeling, 43 percent felt stronger and more energetic, 28 percent felt warm, 22 percent felt calmer and less depressed, 21 percent experienced greater feelings of self-worth, and 13 percent experienced fewer aches and pains.

So take the challenge – ask yourself how you can create moments that matter for others by providing help, encouragement, and support – and, at the end of the day, it is likely to help you as well.

Christine Riordan, Ph.D. is the president of Adelphi University, and she’s renowned for her commitment to diversity, inclusion, leadership development, and team performance.

Have you ever thought about the value that you personally create on a daily basis for others through recognition? Recognition is essentially the positive feedback that lets employees know we value and appreciate them whether we are their boss or their co-worker. To have the greatest impact in the workplace, recognition should reinforce and encourage work that advances employee, department and/or organizational goals and values. It also should be genuine and personal.

Often we think about recognition as the formal programs implemented by companies to reward employees for good performance. While these formal programs are effective motivators, we each have the ability to make a positive difference and create value for others on a daily basis through informal recognition.

At its root, recognition starts with us, as the givers, wanting to provide a positive environment for our colleagues through our own actions, attitude, and words. Social psychologists often refer to this positive stance as a concern for the rights, feelings, and welfare of other people. Behaviors often include feeling empathy and concern for others and behaving in ways to recognize and praise other people.

Research has long shown that recipients of such positive behavior and recognition benefit in such ways as higher performance, greater self-worth, an enhanced sense of belonging, lower stress, and an increased sense of well-being. Furthermore, when our motivations to recognize others derive from our own volition rather than from obligation, we create greater value for the recipients through a better quality of behaviors from us and a greater sense of closeness to us.

In his research, University of Virginia Professor Edward Hess found that many high-performing leaders shared the characteristics of being people-centric, valuing service to others, and believing they had a duty of stewardship to others. Hess noted that common behaviors among these leaders included treating people with dignity, helping them with projects, providing constructive feedback, not interrupting, listening intently, smiling, saying please and thank you, acknowledging individuals’ contributions, and accepting mistakes from others, and admitting their own mistakes.

These leaders also did not engage in negative counter behaviors that devalued others such as abusing, humiliating, excluding, or otherwise diminishing people through words and actions.

Research has also suggested that not only do bosses and leaders have a strong influence through recognition, but so can co-workers. Studies have found that co-worker recognition contributes strongly to feelings of group cohesiveness and job satisfaction.

In an era characterized by harsh economic realities, 24/7 work demands, rapid change, and increased levels of stress in all areas of our lives, it has never been more important for leaders to think about their employees and for co-workers to think about each other. A 2012 study by the Society for Human Resource Management found that while 51 percent of supervisors felt they did a good job recognizing their employees, only 17 percent of the employees at the same organizations felt that their supervisors did a good job recognizing them.

A main contributor to employees leaving organizations is not feeling valued and appreciated. A study of over 1,700 employees conducted in 2012 by the American Psychological Association (APA) indicated that more than half of all employees intended to search for new jobs because they felt underappreciated and undervalued.

Why is employee recognition seemingly so scarce? Often, people don’t know how to provide recognition effectively or they think narrowly about how to provide the recognition. Additionally, sometimes personal jealously or fear gets in the way–thinking that recognizing someone else may diminish one’s own contribution and value. Recognition also takes thought, time, and effort.

Everyone wants others to appreciate them, their work, and their efforts no matter what level in the organization. Moreover, most people enjoy being valued every day. We all have the capacity to create value for others daily through our actions and words and the power to make others feel important and appreciated. Frequent recognition sends a strong message that we value the relationship with others and that they are important to the organization and us.

Start today, and ask yourself, how can I create value for those that I work with by recognizing their contributions? Perhaps the answer is as simple as saying thank you, writing a note of appreciation, telling someone they have done a good job on a task, including them in a project, asking them for their input, providing personal development, training, and cross-training opportunities, and having them attend professional meetings. You can also create value for others by providing a word of encouragement after a mistake or failure, helping and supporting them with a difficult situation, or keeping your commitments that you made to them. Employees want leaders who have their best interests at heart – in good and bad situations and who encourage and support them.

As Voltaire said, “Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”

Christine M. Riordan, PhD, is the 10th president of Adelphi University in New York. Her writing focuses on diversity and inclusion, leadership effectiveness, and career success. Follow her on Twitter at @Chris_M_Riordan.​