Have you ever found yourself struggling to find the words needed to recognize a fellow colleague for their contributions?

Or maybe you have the words, but you get stuck when putting together an effective story?

Fortunately, I have a simple hack to easily and effectively deliver recognition. It uses a technique that you have likely used in the past. I am talking about the STAR format.

STAR format for Recognition

Recall that the STAR format is a common interview technique that consists of 4 components:

• Situation: What was the challenge?
• Task: What needed to be done?
• Action: What was done?
• Result: What was the outcome?

The same format to make you shine in an interview is the same format that you can use for your teammates. Best of all, it is storytelling in a format that every listener can easily understand.

Here is an example:

[…] Anna took charge of the Operational Readiness Testing since its inception, unintentionally inherited the responsibility of testing for Business and Health teams, and owned the presentations to instill confidence in the overall Market Launch. Her constitution is exceptional — working 12+ hour days, consistently productive meetings with 40+ team members, and launching our brand new lines of business to submit in 100+ orders over 3 weeks. […] The cool part is that it took me less than a minute to write and it pays itself back many times over. It was also used to support a request for a larger-than-usual monetary award too.

Try it out!

In the next time that you want to send a thank-you card or nominate a teammate for a job well done, remember the STAR format as an aid to help you quickly create a recognition piece.

The best part about the STAR format is that it works very well in a live setting. You can easily deliver each part of the story — similarly to what you would deliver in an interview!