30 Days to a Happy Employee : How a Simple Program of Acknowledgment Can Build Trust and Loyalty at Work

Rating:
Summary: Required reading for corporate leaders.
Review: As the President of a new technology consulting company, I am excited to have this method for enhancing and strengthening relationships through the process of acknowledgement! The information, examples, and step-by-step approach contained in this book make it required reading for anyone in corporate leadership and anyone that would like to strengthen personal relationships at work, at home, or in community service. "30 Days To A Happy Employee" will go on my bookshelf between "7 Habits" and "Who Moved My Cheese." I purchased a copy of "30 Days" for each of my customer's Presidents, and for all the partners in my company!

Many thanks to Dottie Gandy!

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring!
Review: I picked up Ms. Gandy's book last night on my way home from work and read it from cover to cover before I ever made it to bed. Once I started, I was hooked. As a new manager for a nonprofit agency, I am concerned with starting off on the right foot. Our agency recently lost several employees and I know that morale was a factor for at least one of them. I want to do what I can to retain the employees we do have and to attract good candidates for our open positions. I believe Ms. Gandy hit the nail on the head when she identified acknowledgment as the key factor in job satisfaction. I know that is true for myself and I am sure it is for my employees, as well. In fact I accepted this position because the director, during my interview, did such a wonderful job of acknowledging my own skills. It's one thing to know something and another thing alltogether to put it into practice. While I've always known the power of acknowledgement, I've never been quite sure how to practice it on a regular basis to improve my work relationships. Ms. Gandy's book gives a simple formula for making ascknowledgment a habit. I can't wait to using it on Monday!

Rating:
Summary: Pick up a simple habit, and promote trust and harmony
Review: Trust and acceptance are the most important tenets of human relations and teamwork. Most self-help books suggest ways to build trust and learn to accept others despite their faults and weaknesses. However, most require you to change, and shed some of your negativity. I know how gruesome that is! To trust another requires fully accepting the other, transcending your own tendencies to criticize, judge, and inadvertently notice others' faults. How can we really help ourselves and others change and improve? This book provides the answer.

Another gospel for building trust and acceptance is to extend and express love unconditionally! Is it easy to overlook others' faults and weaknesses in order to let our love flow to them? How can we transcend our judgments to support their endeavor unhindered? This book has paved a way for us.

In the corporate setting, where performance assessment (even 360 degree evaluation) is the norm, and 'employee development' an important goal, we often resort to 'constructive criticism' -- identify weaknesses (guised as areas for improvement) and create training and developmental plans. How well does the process work? Wouldn't the employees perform far better if we were to highlight their strengths, and give them credit for, and the freedom to exploit, their own capabilities, dreams and desires? This book confirms that notion, and has suggested a practical approach.

A 30 year corporate veteran, Dottie Gandy in her book "30 Days to a Happy Employee" has given a simple and practical, yet profound formula to overcome our interpersonal barriers, to transcend our tendencies to be critical and judgmental, in fact to build a habit of seeing goodness in others. Deliberate and sincere acknowledgement of goodness in those we deal with easily builds trust, acceptance and human rapport, as well as inspires others to perform par excellence, promotes harmony and loyalty, which in turn result in higher productivity, lower turnover, and healthy team environment.

This book has laid out a step-by-step process of acknowledgment for 30 days in order to develop the 'habit of acknowledgment'. Knowing the challenge involved and anticipating inevitable psychological barriers, the author has offered strategies to overcome any tendency to give up half way through, and complete the 30-day process. I call this 30-day acknowledgment process a magic formula for human development. If I form the habit of looking for, and acknowledging on purpose, goodness in others, the very act will breed goodness in myself. This is a proactive and constructive approach as opposed to negative-elimination approaches that require shedding a bad habit, or ignoring faults, or making an improvement, and the like.

You can apply the 30-day acknowledgment process to yourself, to your family members and friends, to your colleagues at work, to your subordinates and superiors. As you acknowledge traits of goodness in your 'subject', this reinforces their own belief in themselves, and because the spark came from a significant other, it generates trust and loyalty. And, finally, your 'habit of acknowledgment' will easily connect you with others.

I strongly recommend this book as a practical treatise on developing human relations and on letting the human potential bloom at work, at home, and in society at large.