When we had our first child, my mother dragged around an album of baby pictures in her handbag for months. Apparently it was her “brag book” and all the grandmothers have them.
It got me thinking. Could the brag book concept work outside the world of the doting grandmother?
The next day, I went back to the office with a nice big chalkboard. I stuck it on the wall and called a meeting of all staff for the next day.
“This is the brag board,” I told my team.
“Every week we are going to gather around it and stick up a great piece of feedback we’ve received.”
Seven years later, the brag board is still going, although I must say its contents have changed. As well as old-fashioned letters, we have printouts of tweets and Facebook posts, blog entries, transcripts of phone messages and even the odd copy of an SMS message.
What we love most is when one of these bits of correspondence mentions a staff member by name – praising a staff member in this way has a really positive effect on the whole team.
So thanks Mum for the great idea.
Get it done – today!
