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Whether you work from a C-suite office or a cubicle, genuine encouragement from leaders and peers can significantly boost your mood and productivity. Jordan Montgomery—a bestselling author, performance coach, and speaker—will discuss the art of encouragement at the upcoming Elevate Your Leadership and Your Team 2025 event hosted by Baton Rouge Business Report on Feb. 19 at the Healing Place Arena.
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Jordan Montgomery will join Charlotte Gamble at Elevate Your Leadership and Your Team hosted by Business Report on February 19 at Healing Place Arena. Get details and tickets.
Inspired by his bestselling book, The Art of Encouragement: How to Lead Teams, Spread Love and Serve from the Heart, Montgomery will explain why encouragement is vital for building strong teams and how to implement authentic encouraging practices at your business. Business Report sat down with Montgomery ahead of the event to get an advance peek at some of his insights.
We’re all equipped to deliver encouragement.
Encouragement is not a style. It’s a choice. Some people think, ‘Well, I’m not a super encouraging person or that’s not my style to share warm, fuzzy words.’ I see that with a lot of men specifically. I want to challenge that. We all understand the language of encouragement and everyone can speak it. We just have to be intentional.
Encouragement attracts—and retains—talent.
The art of encouragement is really important if you want to retain great people in your culture. If you want to build a great culture, stand out and recruit top talent, you have to have a real thoughtful strategy about how you make people feel known, seen, valued and understood. If you encourage people, you help them to feel appreciated and they’re far more likely to stay at a company.
You can overcome the barriers.
Part of it is not slowing down to consider the impact that encouragement has or assuming that people already know how we feel. The cost of under-communicating is more significant than the cost of over-communicating. I’d rather have people be annoyed with how many times I appreciate them than wonder if I care. People sometimes worry that it might be awkward because they’re going out of their way to share what’s on their hearts. I don’t think most companies and people are sharing enough appreciation and encouragement, which means when you do it, it will probably feel abnormal and a little unique and different.
Two easy ways to make your team feel appreciated and encouraged in the workplace.
Encourage the who over the do. We live in a culture that makes a really big deal out of what people do and not a big enough deal about who people are. It’s not that the results aren’t important. Results are very important. As leaders, we have to get really good at encouraging not just the results but the choices, the decisions, the character and the values of the people responsible for leading and impacting.
Be specific in how you encourage.
So many of us are quick to say, “Good job.” Instead, I could say “I appreciate you because X, Y, and Z.” When you’re specific, you’re a lot more believable and it comes across as much more authentic. If you’re being sincere, genuine and authentic, the specifics should come out.
