Throughout my career, I found it necessary to regularly reward my staff. These rewards are not just the normal commissions, bonuses and monetary compensation, but making special recognition for little actions which make big differences. As little as a word of congratulations or thanks, especially in a team meeting, or a small inexpensive gift, possibly with some personal meaning. I would try to keep away from standard corporate gifts as these distract from the real recognition.
In my MBA thesis (written many, many moons ago), I wrote about examples of working in foreign countries where there are many different cultures to manage, and the complexities that come with intercultural dynamics. That was during the time that I was working and living in Singapore, with responsibilities for about 10 diverse countries throughout S.E.Asia. One of the most important observations was what I termed as "escalated empowerment" methodology. This is simply the process of giving more and more responsibility to my staff, step by step, and carefully observing to make sure that they are comfortable and able to handle it, and then repeating. Now this might smack of the Peter Principle, but it does not need to go to the level of finding one's level of incompetence. It is more of finding a person's comfort zone, which may also require organizational modifications if the team players are not well fit into an incorrectly crafted organizational hierarchy.
To this day, I have former staff members and colleagues recognizing the merits of my process, and they often tell me how they employ the same methods. Back to the subject of rewards, here is some interesting background case study materials to read.
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