The only time we ask for endorsements from our colleagues is when changing jobs. Or for a good make up of our LinkedIn profile. And we don’t always ask it from people we necessarily worked with directly, but mostly from people we bonded with. So we’re not really asking for an endorsement, we’re asking for a favor. And not from a work colleague, but from a friend.
I believe the reason behind this process is not that we’re afraid people couldn’t say good things about us or that we can’t turn to people that don’t really owe us something. It’s just that most of us don’t have the culture of mutual acknowledgement. We’re not accustomed to give recognition to our colleagues, because we all expect it from our managers or people we look up to. And that’s almost never a person who’s at the same level as you are.
But people are fundamentally social, they like to work in teams and relate to other people. So giving each other credit for our achievements or constructive feedback on our mistakes should be a habit. In order to be happy, all employees need to feel appreciated. That’s why having a positive and collaborative internal atmosphere is a critical issue. Not investing a good amount of interest in your employees wellbeing could lead to the valuable people leaving the company.
There are several methods that a manager could employ for encouraging a cross-promotion between colleagues. Implementing a gamification system with dedicated badges for offering feedback on each other’s activities or similar incentives is one of them.
The internal knowledge sharing software we built with Quandora allows not only to vote for a question or answer someone else uploads, but most importantly gives access to everyone’s expertise. We are not always aware of all our colleague’s professional aptitudes until we see them reply to matters that we didn’t know until that moment they’re proficient at. Enabling a collaborative system inside your company has many perks and one of them is exactly recognition and implicitly authentic endorsement practices.
Happy Knowledge Sharing!
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