Related Posts
More Posts
What do u prefer

Additional Posts in People Managers
Any books suggestions?
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
What do u prefer

Any books suggestions?
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Download the Fishbowl app to unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
Copy and paste embed code on your site

Scan your QR code to download
Fishbowl app on your mobile

Hmm, yeah, I don't think picking favorites is the right way to think of it. I'd frame it as celebrating wins - highlight milestones and achievements that deserve it. I'd go so far to say that you don't have to always name names.
As long as the process is fair and more or less transparent, awarding top performers is good. If the scoring system is obvious, and everyone would have had a chance to be on top, it's just a good old-fashioned competition. Where things can turn sour is when someone is rewarded and it's not really clear why. And that's when suspicions of favoritism can turn everything upside down.
Frame as celebrating wins, showing what good looks like, or similar. I’ve found that it’s very hard to be prescriptive about telling people what is expected to meet or exceed the bar when there are many different ways to do that. Some people like to see examples to show this raises the bar, and these are the reasons why.
Make the praise that goes with the award specific, precise, and descriptive of a behavior you’d like to see more of the team doing.
Make a similar point to recognize people at different levels of expertise when they do good things beyond what is expected at their level.
It should absolutely NOT be used to pick “favorites”, but to recognize performance beyond and above the expected for the individual’s role.
I also want to point out that the referenced article very specifically says that recognition should be based on performance, with clear communication of the behavior being rewarded, to avoid disenfranchising employees through perceived favoritism. It also explicitly states that it shouldn’t be anyone’s goal to be their manager’s “favorite”, rather that they should seek to do their job and do it well.
So the base question OP asked in this post is misaligned even with the article they linked.