I used this material as part of a management course about building an effective team. I used this alongside the module Building Rapport with Subordinates. This was very useful for managers to self-reflect on how they provide recognition to team members, and gave them food-for-thought about whether they 'neglect' staff members. I found it helped managers to consider the impact recognition has on team morale.

Found this exercise worked best with groups of people who were already quite well versed with giving and receiving feedback (most usually fairly experienced managers). It might also work if you’d already covered the basics of why, when, how in a previous session.

It also brought out in some groups dissatisfaction. For those working in environments where they didn’t feel they were getting any recognition – the first exercise proved difficult and they then wanted to have a ‘rant’. OK if you’re prepared to deal with this – and it certainly highlighted individual differences in the ‘need’ for recognition/strokes. That lead to an interesting discussion about TA hungers and strokes.

I think next time I use this, I will combine with some TA theory.