14th May 2008
Giving Credit, Taking Credit
Psychology Today has an interesting article on how we all live on credit, one way or another, and not the financial kind:
Certainly credit can be in the form of tangible reward, whether unexpected bonus, surprise vacation, or plum new assignment. But credit is also highly sought after when it stands alone, in the form of a public e-mail, an open compliment, or—simply, quietly—specific praise from the boss for a great idea or a job superbly executed. You can’t pay your mortgage with that credit, but we still hunger for it. In that universal desire, we are all puppies, and credit is the scratch behind the ears that gets us wagging.
As you rise in a company, the author claims, you may receive less credit (Is this true? I’m thinking I’ve frequently seen the opposite). Ideas tend to rise without a definite source in a company (This is definitely true, though sometimes I think the source has been deliberately removed).
There is also specific advice for those of us who work with credit snatchers, and those of us who simply work with others:
I’m copying this, this morning, to give to our church treasurer, whose many contributions have been invisible to some of our leadership lately! She doesn’t toot her own horn, but you would have thought her contributions would have spoken for themselves. Unfortunately, even well-meaning leaders overlook people sometimes.
That’s a nice idea! I think it’s especially important in volunteer organizations (or partial volunteer organizations) to acknowledge credit. Though we all often forget.