Appreciation is one of things you can do to other people for free. It gives spirit and motivation to them which can bright their life. It is one of keys to a good workplace environment.

I have friends who are complaining on how unappreciative their peers or bosses are. This made me reflect to myself on how do I feel with my peers and bosses. I am really fortunate to have a very supportive peers and bosses, which makes myself in a very comfort zone.

How do I define a good peers and bosses?

First of all, they have to respect your position. For instance, in my workplace, I most of the time come to office after 9AM because I am avoiding rush hour on train. I commute between Depok to Jakarta, which takes about one hour and half. The commuter in the morning is definitely tough for me, so I save some energy by travel to office slightly after rush hour. In turns, I also go home from office after 6PM, after Maghrib, for the same reason and to make up the regular time I have to present at office. Luckily, working as a consultant has no strict working hour. I only have to come early if I have an appointment, such as meeting, and my peers and bosses understand my position as a citizen of suburban area.

But ultimately, your workplace environment must support and give positive feedback to what you do. I got an interesting boss. He is a partner already in the firm. Although I am still in the lowest level of the food chain (that’s what people call about organization structure), my boss often appoint me for critical duty, from preparing critical material to presenting in front of important stakeholders. He develops me by giving constructive feedback and increasing my responsibility as the time progresses.

This builds my confidence and motivates me to deliver more and as best as I can. I try to learn as many as I can from him. Many of my jobs at the firm basically new for me. I learned by working directly and used my critical thinking to gain new knowledge. I also do not hesitate to force myself to perform well to not let him disappointed of my work. This is important to maintain the expectation, as this generally increasing over time.

Some of my friends told me that their bosses was not appreciative. They did not receive proper feedback and motivation. When they did something wrong, they received anger instead of positive input to improve them. Basically their boss was not a people developer. They did not care of their subordinates but to utilize them to his/her own motives. This demotivated them to perform better, eventually leave the company for better opportunity.

This is something that every employer should note: maintain your employees with proper attitude and respect. Your employees are your business’ backbone, not merely your android that you can order and scrap. I tried to maintain such attitude towards my peers, especially those who are working under my supervision. I don’t say that I successfully manage that, because at some part, I also failed to develop someone.

The hardest part is when you have to give positive feedback upon a poor work performance. It is very tricky on how to keep respect and motivation of your team member while telling that his/her work is wrong, or does not meet your expectation. Truthfully I am still lacking on this part, which brought me to just let that person do whatever he wanted and I did not give any more critical task on him. He did not seem to worry anyway. But this is actually wrong.

There are many things that we have to learn on how to develop people in our environment. It is a complex task as each person has his/her own personality and behavior. We have to understand and behave accordingly to show mutual respect and appreciation.