I don't ever want to be recognized over the walkie. À sincere thankful does wonders for me.
Yes! It's so awkward! Like...do I acknowledge it? Am I actually supposed to pull my walkie out of my pocket and thank them for thanking me? Or say "yea, glad to help!" ??
I would feel so embarrassed/self-absorbed doing that. But
not acknowledging it seems equally problematic. Does that make it seem like I don't appreciate them taking notice of my hard work? Or maybe they'll assume I never heard it?
My TL refuses to participate in the recognition BS, but will often go out of his way to thank TMs one-on-one and be very specific about what he's thanking them for. I find this super valuable because it's actually shown me positive things about myself/my work ethic/etc that I never noticed before- stuff I just assumed everyone did or whatever. Nothing big, but just realizing "oh...huh...I never realized I did that- it was always just second nature to me...but apparently this is something people appreciate, so I'm gonna be even more intentional about doing that now!"
And yes- that BS of thanking entire teams?!??
STOP IT. Any leader who routinely does this should be ashamed. It's SO lazy and disingenuous. I get it- sometimes POG will plow their way through a major reset, or maybe backroom purged a bunch of aisles, or Flow pushed a massive truck while being a few TMs short...fine- give recognition...but to show up to EVERY freaking huddle and say "I just want to thank everyone. You guys are doing a really good job making the store look great, educating our guests, and making sales!" that's so gross! I can't think of a single TM who feels better after hearing something like that. In all honesty, I feel worse- blanket recognition is 100x worse than no recognition.
I prefer one-on-one recognition like I described above (keeps morale up, makes me feel useful, and also helps me figure out what my strengths are) so I actually really dislike being recognized in huddle, but it's strangely deflating to be in a huddle where an ETL throws out a totally crappy blanket recognition when you spent HOURS busting your ass/going totally out of your way to help them like 2 days earlier. Because that feels like an intentional oversight- like they just don't care about your effort. It's one thing to simply not give recognition- I never give recognition in huddles (but I do tell people directly and I also make sure to tell both their ETL/TL
and my ETL/TL (if we're not on the same team) because I think it's important that leadership knows when someone is going above and beyond) but it's another thing to take the time to throw out FAKE recognition when there's a lot of legit recognition to go around.
...but yea- despite typing a novel-length post about recognition, I really don't care about it. I'd rather have a leader who makes good decisions that keep all of us working efficiently than one who fawns over us all the time while setting us up for failure with their bad leadership.