The leadership move your team won't forget.

CRE Success Principle: The day-to-day efforts that keep your business running often go unnoticed. When you take the time to recognise them, you build a culture of appreciation that shows how everyone's role matters.

I had a realisation during kindergarten drop-off a couple of weeks ago.

Seeing the care the educators took to set up a range of morning activities – even knowing many won’t be used by the kids – reminded me how often we take quiet effort for granted.

And it got me thinking about recognising the people we work with.

In episode 222 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership, we unpack how to show appreciation for your team – not just for what they do, but for who they are.

I am sharing a powerful move that will make your expressions of gratitude genuine and specific, so they really land.

I demonstrated this exercise at a client event, where I took the time to recognise each person’s superpower – something they’re exceptionally good at, backed by a real-life example.

It wasn’t just about pumping up everyone’s tyres…this superpower segment set the tone for deeper collaboration and stronger contributions from everyone in the room.

Whether you’re running a business, leading a team, or hosting an offsite event, I hope this episode gives you a simple but meaningful way to help people feel seen and valued.

Episode transcript:

 I've discovered a straightforward way that you can recognise, appreciate, and also express gratitude for the efforts of the people on your team.

Now, if you decide to do this, and I'm going to show you exactly how it's done, it will lead to your team members looking for more ways that they can make a difference to the performance of your business, and share their skills and knowledge with everyone else.

This is episode 222 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. Hello. Welcome to the show. I'm Darren Krakowiak. I really appreciate you joining us for another episode.

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So, in today's episode, I want to talk about the topic of recognition, appreciation, and gratitude. And I guess the idea for this topic was sparked by my daughter's kindergarten, because we are very fortunate that we send our daughter to a kindergarten that is the envy of a lot of my wife’s friend who when they hear about how great this kindergarten is they think “Wow, that sounds like a really amazing kindergarten.”

They've got tons of extracurricular activities and our lives revolve around this kinder because just this month there has been a working bee, a Mother's Day event, they did a cake stall on election day, there was an open day, pajama movie night, four different kids have had birthday parties, and all the kids are invited to each other's birthday parties. There's a mom's dinner night, and next month there's a dad's dinner night as well.

Now I'm not that involved in the kinder. I did attend a lot of those extracurricular events, but day to day, my wife typically does the drop off.

But occasionally, if I'm not busy between that sort of 08:30 or 09:30 time, I'll do the drop off occasionally, and it's a little bit of a special occasion when I do attend.

And you know, there's a lot of things to remember. There's the arrival sign-in sheet, there's the sunscreen checklist, there's the lunchbox, there's the water bottle, there's the school bag, all of that stuff, right?

But what blows me away when I drop Juna off at kinder, and it is like an hour window because it takes me some time to actually leave because she wants me to play all these different activities that the kinder educators have set up.

And this is where the recognition, the appreciation, and the gratitude come in. Because I'm just blown away by how committed these educators are.

They prepare so many different stations with various activities that are suitable for every different child's tastes.

So, there's drawing, there's painting, there's games, there's arts and crafts, there's sensory play. Not all of them get used every morning, but the kindergarten educators take the time to set up all these different stations for the benefit of the kids.

So, whether they decide to come inside and play, or whether they just go outside and go on the playground, there is something to keep them occupied until around 09:30, which is when they all come together as a group and start the kindergarten program.

And it just struck me that the amount of work that these kindergarten educators put in is maybe something that I should be recognising, expressing my appreciation and gratitude for.

And when I was thinking about that, I was thinking about, well, how is this related to how I help my clients and how I want to help you as a listener or viewer of this show.

And I want to give you a couple of tools now, some ways that you can recognise, appreciate, and show gratitude for your team for what they do, but also for who they are.

And recently I hosted nine of my clients for an intensive event, a masterminding event in Melbourne. We spent the afternoon together talking about our businesses and unpacking what we can do to help each other improve our businesses.

And then we all went to the MCG in a corporate box to watch a game that Carlton actually won. It was Carlton vs. St. Kilda. I picked the right game. We go and watch Carlton and I've seen them lose one too many times this year.

Now, at the start of the event, I went around the table and I spoke about each of my clients' superpowers.

So, this is something that they're especially good at, where I can point to an example that illustrates how they are especially good at that thing.

So, I might say that this person is very good at difficult conversations. And then I will describe a situation where they have confronted, dealt with a situation and that has led to a positive result.

And by taking the time to do this, I'm recognising each of my clients individually and I'm acknowledging them as individuals.

I'm showing them that I appreciate the value that they bring to the group and also what they can give to others in the group, which gives others the opportunity to benefit from that superpower, which they may not have otherwise realised existed.

I am showing them that I'm grateful for them as clients and for their contributions to the group. And it hopefully reminds them that they are an important contributor to the success of the event, which raises their confidence to provide insights and feedback where they can.

Because no one is smarter than all of us. And the real purpose of the event was to harness the collective knowledge of everyone in the room for the benefit of everyone’s business.

So, you can try this exercise if you are going to have an offsite meeting where you want everyone to contribute, try going around the room at the start of the event and just recognising each person as an individual, calling out their superpower, calling out something that they've done, which has been exceptionally good in recent times, and build up their confidence.

It helps others recognise the contribution that they can make, and also highlights to the individual that what they have to contribute is important.

In terms of how to execute this, just make sure that you have a good think about each person's superpower, not just a surface-level thing.

Get deep, have a really good think about what makes them an important contributor to the business and a worthwhile person to have at the table.

Maybe prepare your remarks beforehand so you don't forget everyone's superpower. Right? Identify what it is and then maybe think about one example that you can point to as you go through around the table and mention everyone's name.

And I would just say that you use this tool on special occasions, right? This is not something you do every week, and that's what makes it meaningful.

The fact that it's a special occasion or a special event, and you are taking the time to recognise everyone as individuals by calling something out – perhaps something that they're aware of that they're good at, or maybe they feel like it's something that they're good at, but they don't realise how good they are, and maybe they didn't know that you'd recognised it.

So that exercise, I think, works really well for events offsites, when you're bringing people together.

Like I said, I used it at the start of the intensity before we went into a masterminding exercise, but you don't have to wait for special occasions to show appreciation of your people.

I think you've always got the opportunity to highlight actions that are aligned with your values and with your culture.

And I've recently gone through an exercise with a few of my clients to identify what their core values are. And the funny thing is that for clients that have already identified a set of core values for the business, their true core values are not always consistent with what's written down as the values. So that's just a little sidebar.

But highlighting when people are acting in accordance with our values, with the stated values of the business, that's something that you can always do.

I think we could always recognise the effort that goes into many parts of the process of whether it's client acquisition and delivery, or the backup house functions.

So, again, like with the kindergarten, the day-to-day, they are setting up all of that sensory play. They're setting up all of those different activities. You see it happening, but have you actually stopped and recognised the effort?

And of course, you might know some of the process of the steps that go into prospecting for business serving clients, and also keeping the business running. But you may not always, I guess, appreciate the level of care that goes into it by the individual.

And I think when you're going to express gratitude, my tip is to do it in a genuine and specific way.

So, it's sort of like when you give a compliment, right? Don't give a compliment that you don't mean, look for something that you actually do appreciate, that you do believe is exceptional, and then talk about that because the authenticity of what you have to say will come through in what you are expressing, and it will therefore be more likely to land more meaningfully.

So really, that's our episode for today, recognition, appreciation, and gratitude. It's something which I think maybe we take for granted, or we don't do enough, or we feel like we're doing but perhaps we're not doing it in a specific way, in a meaningful way.

And sometimes it's appropriate to actually do that with other people, seeing what it is that you are saying in a group situation to really call out the collective knowledge that you have in the business.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening. I'll speak to you soon.