Issue 05: What most leaders get wrong about recognition
Published 23 days ago • 4 min read
Leadership + teams + the space between
Most leaders wait for something to happen before they look. That waiting is costing more than you think, on both sides of the table.
Recognition is so much more than a pat on the back.
I've watched leaders spend years genuinely believing they were doing it well, remembering birthdays, posting shout-outs, writing thoughtful reviews, while the people on their teams quietly recalibrated what they were willing to bring.
The gestures were thoughtful and well-received, but gestures and practice are not the same thing, and most leaders have never been taught the difference.
There are 2 ways recognition shows up in organizations.
The first is transactional: something good happens, you respond to it. A project lands, a quarter closes, a client renews. You say something, send something, post something. That response is not nothing. It is, however, reactive, and reactive recognition has a ceiling because it only ever confirms what someone already did rather than illuminating what they're capable of next.
The second way is harder to develop, rarely modelled, and almost never taught. It starts before anything has happened at all. I shared a version of this thinking on LinkedIn last week. The responses were precise in a way that told me this has been sitting with a lot of people for a long time.
Emad summarized this beautifully in only 2 sentences. Reactive recognition is not without value, but it operates on the past. Recognition-as-practice operates on potential, and that requires a fundamentally different quality of attention.
What observation actually looks like
Recognition-as-practice begins with a question most managers are genuinely too busy to ask: how does this person think? Not what are they delivering, not where are the gaps, but what do they reach for without being asked, and what strength are they carrying around that nobody has yet had the presence of mind to name?
That quality of observation is what is overlooked and most important. When you see something in someone clearly enough to articulate it, you can begin to build conditions that match what you see. The stretch you give someone becomes less about coverage and more about signal.
It communicates, in the plainest possible terms: I see something in you that you may not fully see in yourself yet, and I am going to build toward it deliberately rather than wait for it to announce itself. THAT is the meaningful distinction between managing people and actually developing them.
Kelly's framing reorients recognition away from praise and toward provision. You're not simply acknowledging what someone did; you're actively creating the conditions for what they could become.
That shift alone changes the entire texture of a manager-employee relationship.
"When we started, I felt like I was using 10% of my abilities. Now I'm finally being recognized for what I can bring to the team." — A leader, 3 months into a S.P.A.R.K. cohort program
That leader had been showing up consistently, performing well, probably exceeding expectations on paper for 11 YEARS! Yet still felt, in the most fundamental sense, unseen. Their manager was waiting for something worth noticing rather than looking for what was already there.
What gets lost in the waiting
Talented people spend years in roles where their output is visible, and their potential is entirely invisible. They don't always leave loudly. More often, they recalibrate quietly over months, gradually shrinking the portion of themselves they bring to work until it approximates the portion that actually gets acknowledged. By the time that pattern registers as a retention problem, the real loss has already occurred.
Laura's point is the one that should make every senior leader uncomfortable. When recognition is absent or purely reactive, it doesn't show up on the P&L.
It shows up as a People problem, which means it becomes someone else's problem to solve. By the time it lands on someone's desk, the leaders closest to the work have already moved on.
Deciding to see people clearly is harder than it sounds, because it creates an obligation. Once you see what someone is capable of, you are accountable for it. You can't unsee it, and you can't keep assigning them work that falls short of it without knowing exactly what you're doing. That accountability is precisely why most recognition stays transactional. Transactional is easier to manage.
MOST IMPORTANTLY: This runs in both directions
Recognition-as-practice is not only a senior leader's responsibility. Each one of you reading this is sitting in 2 seats simultaneously. You have people on your team who need you to see them with the same intentionality this piece is describing. You also have a contribution of your own that deserves to be visible.
What I mean is that some of the work of making your value legible belongs to you. Documenting what you do well, understanding how you're wired, and being able to name your own contribution clearly are not acts of ego. They are acts of professional self-awareness, and they matter as much as any technical skill you bring to the role.
Putting recognition into practice
This isn't about redesigning your 1:1 template or adding a standing agenda item. It's about shifting what you're paying attention to in the conversations you are already having.
If you lead a team: What has someone reached for lately that nobody assigned them? What are they carrying that hasn't been named yet? When did you last give someone a stretch that matched what you actually see in them, rather than what the role required? If they left tomorrow, what would you say at the farewell that you've never once said directly to them?
If you are on a team: What do you do well that your organization has no language for yet? When did you last name your own contribution clearly, not in a performance review, but in an ordinary conversation? Who on your team is carrying something you haven't acknowledged, and what would it mean to them if you did?
The leaders who get this right have simply decided (and it is a decision) that seeing people clearly is part of the job, not a reward dispensed when results are strong. That decision changes the texture of how a team shows up, and it changes what a team is ultimately willing to bring.
Get your ticket for June 2nd to join the conversation here!
A tool worth knowing: Career Capital
This issue is about leaders learning to see what their people are capable of. Career Capital is the other side of that same conversation. It's a platform that helps professionals document their own contributions so that great work doesn't quietly disappear into the pace of the year.
