Leading by Walking Around: The Power of Appreciating, Recognizing, and Encouraging Your Team

A cornerstone to leadership is observation and coaching. It cannot, and should not, always be about reports and metrics. Great leadership is founded in being people-first driven. Being where your team is and seeing how they are performing gives you the opportunity to understand their activities and behaviors from a fresh perspective. It unlocks so much potential, in you as a leader, but especially for team members. Management by walking around (MBWA) was first introduced as a leadership and management practice in Tom Peter’s 1982 In Search of Excellence. 1 It opened the eyes (literally) of executives everywhere to see that managers who left their desk and engaged with their team delivered consistently higher performance. Ken Blanchard highlighted the power of observations and leadership in the One-Minute Manager and catching people doing things right. You can only do that if you are where the team is.

I found a great definition of MBWA on the Mindtools website in the article Management By Wandering Around.

MBWA might imply an aimless meander around the office, but it's a deliberate and genuine strategy for staying abreast of people's work, interests, and ideas. It requires a range of skills, including active listening, observation, recognition, and appraisal.

MBWA is a critical element of leadership, in fact, from here out I will refer to it as Leading By Walking Around (LBWA) because I believe this is a cornerstone to successful team leadership. Having the advantage of seeing and experiencing how your team is performing allows for a more meaningful way to provide coaching and feedback. LBWA allows for three key elements of effective leadership, and you can remember these by asking yourself, “ARE you leading by walking around.” Let's look at those three pieces.

A

Appreciation When you are with your team, you can share your appreciation and gratitude for what they are doing. Being where they are provides endless specific examples to highlight their efforts and share what that means to you and the company. Taking the time to appreciate your employees shows that you value their contributions and that their efforts do not go unnoticed.

R

Recognition Beyond just appreciating the work, recognize the hard work and commitment that goes into their work. LBWA allows you to experience those efforts and thank them in a personal way for what they are doing. It allows for timeliness, ensuring that the employee also knows exactly what behaviors have led to the recognition they are receiving, encouraging more of those positive actions and outcomes. Leverage different forms of recognition to ensure the team and its members are highlighted in the most meaningful way.

E

Encouragement Everyone needs support and the feeling of being encouraged to move further forward. LBWA ensures that you can see the challenges the team faces, as well as the successes they are achieving. Encouragement is coaching. It is not just cheerleading. Encouragement takes many forms and can be about sharing ideas for a new approach, getting back up after suffering a setback, or being there to celebrate a success. It can be about challenging them to learn new things, take on new tasks, and strive for more than they believe possible. Encouragement is a strong element of effective leadership in any setting.

These three steps can help you and your team reach your goals, and more importantly, deliver consistent results. When you ARE leading by walking around, you are creating engagement, developing strong team members and leaders around you, and setting the team up with a recipe for long-term success. Plan your LBWA into your day, change up the times and the approach you take. As retail leaders, most of us find ourselves working near the team, but we must also be deliberate in the observations and providing the feedback that leads to sharing our appreciation, recognizing the accomplishments in real time, and encouraging everyone to reach the positive outcomes everyone wants.

How ARE you leading by walking around?

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Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

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1 The idea of "Managing by Walking Around" (MBWA) is often attributed to David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard (HP). Packard was known for his hands-on management style, and he believed in getting out of the office and spending time on the factory floor, where he could observe and interact with employees firsthand.