Leadership that Encourages the Heart

The most effective leaders “encourage the heart” including cheering and rewarding successes, promoting staff appreciation, and building community spirit. In their book The Leadership Challenge:  How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner highlight this as one of five key leadership practices. Encouraging the heart has many aspects including:

• acting with positive energy

• acknowledging small victories

• validating staff experiences

• supporting staff development

• building supportive relationships with staff

• being accessible (including “wandering around the office”)

• communicating “thank you”

• having fun at work and ensuring others do as well.

It also includes what Ken Blanchard calls, “catching people doing something right.” The best leaders also use various strategies to express appreciation to staff, such as verbal praise, shout outs, handwritten notes, awards, gift cards, swag, rewarding successes with a day off (or letting staff leave early), and staff retreats.

For further thought:  Are you committed to positive personal behaviors that encourage the heart in your workplace? Are you so focused on results that you lose touch with the process of building up your people so that they can help achieve them?  List three specific things you could do in the next 30 days that would help build a workplace culture that encourages the heart.