I love your work!

Team appreciation workshop

Recognition is one of the strongest drivers for happy teams. When was the last time you stopped the daily grind and recognised the great work of your colleagues? Well, then it’s about time. This workshop creates the space for team members to give and receive praise for specific situations & actions.

Outcome

After this 1h workshop, your face muscles will hurt from all the smiling. Folks will walk away with a confidence booster. They will also know what things they should do more of. It's a great amplifier of any behaviours that are helpful to the team.

Who can run it?

Everyone that works in a team can run this workshop. You don't need to work in a specific industry or job. You might want to tweak the length or the way you run it to your participant's number. 30 participants: not likely to praise everyone more than once. 5 participants: likely to get through all sticky notes.

Agenda

⇢ 5 min: explain how it works

⇢ 10 min: silent writing

⇢ 45 min: walking through the sticky notes

How to run the workshop

Before: adapt the headlines to reflect the behaviours you'd like to praise. During: every person writes their name and then the recipient's name on a sticky note, followed by what they'd like to appreciate. Write as many notes for as many people as you want – in any category you like. After 10 minutes of silent writing, start to share-out the sticky notes. Let the authors add their personal stories. Set a 1 - 2 min timer per sticky note.

Pro-tip: If you fear you might not get through all stickies: prepare a list of participants & mark who was appreciated to ensure that everyone is mentioned.

Considerations

This workshop can be very powerful in a good way. However, it can feel fake if the general psychological safety in your team isn’t great. It’s also not a magical solution that will solve your team’s challenges. Continue to do the hard work to make your place a good place to work at.

Contributors

A big thanks to Aly Blenkin, Ellie Ereira and Erin Cobb, who ran this format for the first time with our team. Andrea Nagel, who inspired me to share this template through her recent webinar Learn to build and retain development teams. And Dale Owen, who continuously innovates how we help our teams feel more psychologically safe.