Self-confident and motivated employees will perform their job better and produce superior results. This just makes sense, right?

You can increase the self-confidence and motivation of employees by applying this simple technique. But it does take conscious awareness and knowledge of each employee.

The technique is to verbally recognize a trait that someone is using to produce a behaviour that generates a result. For example, Susan is a customer service representative and you hear her dealing with a client on the phone who is upset, and she applies great listening skills and empathy to calm the client down. This saves the company from losing the client to the competition.  You realize that the quality or trait that drives the behaviour is Susan‘s interest in people and her ability to quickly nurture a relationship and win their trust.

By verbally recognizing and pointing out this to Susan, you touch her in a deep way and get her to better understand herself and her qualities. This will increase her self-confidence and motivation and make her want to use this trait more often. By continuously using a strength you get better and better at it, just like a pro athlete or musician.

To apply this technique, you might say to Susan, I see how well you handled the irate client by apply good listening skills and showing empathy. This seems to have saved us the customer and shows your quality of caring for people and building relationships. Great job; keep it up!

This technique can be applied to any position and again all it takes is for you to be conscious and observant of people’s behaviour. Of course, you could just recognize the behaviour that produced the result but when you actually link it to a natural quality and strength of the person they are deeply touched and it increases their own self knowledge.

I suggest that for each employee you write down their key qualities that seem natural to them. Next to each quality write down a related behavior and then think of how this affects their performance and contributes to the company. Then look for opportunities to observe those behaviors in action and recognize them using this technique.

Even though the technique is quite simple it does take practice and to be conscious to observe people and look for opportunities to recognize them.

Perhaps start with one employee and make a conscious effort to become aware of their qualities and strengths and their behaviours and look for an opportunity to recognize that.

You will quickly see them light up from the feedback and become more confident in themselves. This will elevate you from a manager to a highly skilled leader just by applying this one technique. It will also make you highly respected by your employees and build trust with them. This will help you retain your top performers while boosting employee performance and engagement.