Farewells and Funerals

I sometimes feel that as human beings, we respect the dead more than the living. One of the customs in any religion is to use rituals and traditions to pay homage to the deceased. But for these rituals and traditions, I wonder how we would have treated the dead. I recently had to attend a couple of funeral services. I saw relatives and friends of the departed soul come forward to deliver the eulogy, to shower praises on the person who laid there inanimate, in the coffin. While those eulogies came with appreciation and good memories about the dead person, the chats and the murmurs also kept coming around:

“He was a good human being, and that’s why God took him early.”

“She is blessed that she had seen many generations before God took her.”

“He was a drunkard but a god-fearing man.” 

“He was rude to his family but a gentleman to the outside world.”

I sat there thinking, why now? Why were those good words not spoken earlier when the person was alive and kicking? 

I like to draw a parallel here; something that happens in organizations during the farewell of an employee. I don’t want to equate farewells to funerals. But you could see team members and friends come forward to share their experiences with this employee and shower praise and appreciation on their last day of work. Many would have felt, why were those good words not spoken earlier while the employee was with the Organization? If this person was so good, why wouldn’t they retain this employee? Why is it that we appreciate and recognize people only during their last days in the Organization? 

 At work, how often do we appreciate the person or the being of our team members? How many times have we said these to a fellow worker?

“You are a good person.”

” I am happy that you are in my team.”

” You seem to be good with people and looks like they love being with you.”

Not many times. Isn’t it? We mostly appreciate and criticize the work done or the behaviour of the team members and may have said the following:

“The report you made is great.” 

“I loved your presentation. You made us proud.”

“You could have structured the report in a better way.”

“I see you not collaborating with our team.”  

Providing positive or negative feedback on a task or behaviour is always recommended. However, appreciation or criticism directed towards a person or being is even more powerful and can build or break relationships, respectively.  

Many managers find the skill of providing negative feedback difficult during appraisal discussions. They would shy away and may not engage in those difficult conversations, leading to assumptions and serious repercussions during communication of performance ratings. The reason could be that managers consider giving feedback to their team members as a one-time affair during appraisals. They should realize that feedback and recognition should always be a continuous process running throughout the year. Nowadays, most HR management systems come with the Continuous Feedback feature to manage performance. To effectively use this feature, leaders should focus on training their managers on giving feedback and the rest of the employees on receiving feedback. 

The onus is on the leaders to create an environment that helps in articulating transparent and open feedback within teams. Appreciations directed towards a person and positive or negative feedback on tasks and behaviours would help transform any workplace into a harmonious and performance-driven environment. 

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