Appreciation has two definitions. Both relevant to what we are trying to do with our Support team at GitBook.
First, it is the recognition and enjoyment of the good qualities of someone or something.
Second, it is the full understanding of a situation.
When was the last time you recognized the impact someone had? Either to the company, your team or yourself?
Did you understand what it took for them to excel?
These are some of the questions we asked in Support. And we decided to do something about it.
Every week each team at GitBook needs to post things other teams will find interesting. We share those in a common internal document. Using GitBook of course. We then meet every Tuesday morning and we go over what we posted.
In Support, we encourage folks to pay attention to what others are doing. Then take a note whenever they spot something someone did that helped in some way. Maybe it is about a project. Something that helped the company. The team. Maybe someone went out of their way to help us.
We make an effort to spot those bits and share them in the weekly meeting.
Appreciation and feeling grateful boosts morale. It’s what people are craving for. Recognition. It is so easy to do that. And it goes such a long way. Why don’t we do more of it?
It is important to express genuine appreciation. We should not feel compelled to share a shoutout just for the sake of it. If we don’t have anything to share it is okay. If we have, the words must come from the bottom of our hearts ❤️. If not, it will show.
Whether we share anything or not, we should develop a habit. A habit of noticing what others do. When we only focus on what we do, we can’t find opportunities to appreciate what others do.
GitBook is a remote first company. Here are some places people can pay attention to:
- Slack conversations
- Issues (we use Linear)
- Video chats (we use Zoom and Around)
- GitBook Spaces (where we keep our internal knowledge base and external documentation)
- Our Helpdesk (where we talk with customers)
- GitHub (where our Engineering work happens)
- Many more places and tools other folks are using
Here are some ways to say thank you:
- Reach out to someone in person in a DM / or Email / or even consider asking them to jump to a quick video chat and tell them face to face.
- Share it with their team if they are from another team or with your team.
- Share it with the whole company.
- Tell their manager.
TL;DR
- Be grateful
- Notice how others help
- Express your appreciation about it and to them
- Watch the morale and motivation skyrocket
Here’s what I am doing
At Workbrew, I help our customers succeed, while working on docs, fixing bugs, and developing internal tools. At Amignosis, I pour my heart and skill into crafting slowly brewed software, one thoughtful line at a time. I am craftsman in a world of complexity and low-quality solutions. I am a shoemaker. I take the time to create simple, timeless software built to last. Check what I am doing now and talk to me.