The remarkable power of the right recognition

The great basketball coach John Wooden, who holds the record for winning the most NCAA championships, was known for his meticulous approach to teaching every element of the game, even seemingly minor tasks.

At the beginning of each season, Coach Wooden showed his players how to properly put on their socks and shoes. Now, his players had been putting on socks and shoes to play basketball long before they came to college and surely they knew how to perform this simple chore. But along with showing them the proper way (and there is a proper way) he also told them why it was important. In this case, Coach Wooden told them the proper method would keep their feet healthy and free of blisters and that was important because players couldn’t perform at their best if their feet hurt. Finally, Coach Wooden’s training accentuated the behavior he was looking for by a phrase his players heard frequently:

“Like this,” he would say.

Coach Wooden’s approach to building a successful basketball team was to reinforce the behaviors he wanted and then tell them why those behaviors led to success – in this case, winning championships.

What impact can Coach Wooden’s approach to success have in the world of business? Specifically, does recognizing behaviors the organization views as important have a bottom-line impact?

Is “like this” a competitive differentiator?

We recently conducted a novel study with a global retailer. For several years the retailer has offered opportunities for managers and peers to post recognitions on an online portal hosted by BI WORLDWIDE. To conduct our study, we analyzed the results of recognitions from two different regions of the chain for which we had business results, specifically store sales and customer service ratings.