Rewards

---

As a company leader and manager I've always considered it my duty to fight for, and give, rewards to my employees that are in proportion to their efforts and results. I found out about 10 years ago I had only part of the idea of what that meant and needed to understand better what folks really needed.

We were on a company boat outing on Lake Geneva in Lake Geneva, IL and a few guys on my staff had been drinking a little which helped relax their inhibitions a bit and speak their minds I think. They had been talking together about something and abruptly turned to me and said, "Hey Andy, can we ask you a tough question?" and then they started to posture a little by saying I might not like the question and I could, "say no to them" etc. I love those kinds of questions. They mean I'm about to learn something valuable and be challenged at the same time. I said yes immediately.

Their question totally took me off-guard. They said, "Why don't you ever say, 'Thank you' to us?" Wow! Really? The strange thing was, literally just a few days before I had gone through a knock-down, drag-out debate with my boss where I was fighting for percentage increases for my staff beyond what was approved for the company. These guys, by design, did not know any of that of course. It's something I do for them that I would expect my manager to be doing for me, and not something they should ever have to worry or even think about.

As I said, their question took me off-guard so I got defensive. My mistake. I told them I fight for them in ways they never see, etc. etc. to get them more money etc. etc. To that they responded, "We don't care about that, we just want to hear you say, 'Thank you' to us." Again, wow! Really? For a couple of seconds I got really angry. You mean all this struggle I'm going through for these guys is for nothing!? I can't believe I just told them what I do and they're not even thankfu... Oops. There it was. My very own "ah-ha" moment. Duh. So obvious and yet I was totally missing the mark. I struggled with that for several days. It caused me to re-look at a whole bunch of my management practices.

Remember to always say "Thank you" to the folks that follow or report to you. Many of them walk through fire and off cliffs for you and letting them know, with words directly out of your mouth, that you are thankful for what they do is an extremely important thing. Continue fighting for them, of course, but regularly tell them they are appreciated as well.

I say thank you a lot more these days. Those guys were 100% right.