There may be some ties and analogies that are far-reaching here, but they seemed appropriate nonetheless.

I don’t know how many people have jobs that their bosses (including the CEO and COO) are frequently praising them and giving them shoutouts, but my guess is not a lot. Also having a job that their bosses are frequently and openly apologetic about things they have done or reactions they have had. Especially doing both of these in sincere but not overly emotional ways.

In one of my meetings today with my COO, CEO, and CIO, I ended up being the only one from our sales team on the call, and they decided that was as good a time as any to tell me that in their end of the quarter meeting they had been discussing employees at the company and my name had come up several times as someone who was really doing well in the job that I was put in.

This wasn’t putting others in the company down, but simply lifting up my efforts as an employee. I couldn’t quite express this to them, and I’m not overly emotional about this, but I realized afterward that I really needed that. Not because I felt under-appreciated, but actually because I felt like I had been underperforming over the last month especially.

I felt like I had done better in previous months in being a better proactive account manager but I had slipped up a lot recently.

The conversation and praise from my bosses really helped energize me and push me to want to be even better in the role that they had given me.

It may seem like a strange analogy, but I actually think this is really similar to the Christian walk. The Christian walk is not about performing well so that you can be accepted and have all these rewards. The Christian walk is about understanding the love that Christ already has for you before you ever do anything. In fact, it’s while you’re working against Him that he reaches out and helps you and encourages you.

While we aren’t doing anything, he saves us from eternal death, and that’s the reason that we do good works. Not because we have to do so to earn his love but because we are so thankful and feel so undeserving of his love that we want to do anything we can for him.

My job has much smaller implications that the creator of the universe loving me for who he has created me to be, even with all my mistakes, but they really are similar and it gives me a realization as to the power of positive reinforcement.

If you are a manager or boss somewhere, I encourage you to give to your employees an overabundance of encouragement and praise and see what they do with that. Of course if they’re not performing for months on end, conversations need to be had, but really celebrate every win your employees have. They might thank you for it verbally, but they’ll thank you for it inside.