Appreciations

5		any number		Courage
minutes		people		Collaboration

When to use

To build a culture of appreciation within a team and make the team members feel valued. Helps with collaboration amongst team members.

What you need

Nothing

How to do this

In any meeting introduce this technique by saying you would like to provide a space for people to recognise and appreciate anyone who has helped them recently. Ask people to try to give personal appreciations to individuals rather than to the whole team.

Take the lead and give an example by appreciating someone, e.g. “John, I’d like to appreciate you for the courage you showed in today’s session by voicing your doubts about the new process.”

Then be quiet. If this is the first time the group does this, it may take some time for the first person to speak. Just hold the silence, someone will speak. Remember to allow about a minute of silence before closing this session as some people take longer to speak than others.

How we’ve used this

• We have also asked participants to write down an appreciation, and pass it to that person. These are in the Coach Toolkit.
• Start with a ball of string and say an appreciation, throw the ball to the person you appreciated, but keep holding the end. They now give an appreciation and throw the string to that person. At the end you can see a web of how everyone is interconnected and collaborate together.

Who shared this with us

Esther Derby and Diana Larsen.