The Competitive Advantage

The Gallup Organization, a research and consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., promotes peer recognition with its Drop in a Bucket program. At Gallup, each time a worker offers compliments on a teammate’s performance, the person offering praise receives a “drop” in his or her “bucket,” symbolizing that person’s capacity to support teammates positively. Team members with the most drops receive special recognition at the annual company awards event.

Strategy: Establish your own peer recognition system. Whenever teammates receive positive recognition from a team member, have them e-mail you, including the team member’s name and the words “Peer Recognition” in the subject line. Then you can honor those people who recognize and praise their peers most often.

Time-saving tip: Create an online “Peer Recognition” folder to file all those e-mails. Sort by subject to determine very quickly who is offering the most praise to teammates.

—Adapted from “Going for the Gold,” Sales and Marketing Management, Julia Chang, www.salesandmarketing.com.