Last week I was with Compassion’s IT leadership at an offsite meeting at a local conference center. We had a lot to discuss and a lot of future planning to do. This was a beautiful and peaceful setting and one that was quite conducive to the task that lay ahead. There was a young man who was working with their facilities staff, we will call him “Tom”. We met Tom at lunch on our first day. He came over to our table and began to ask if we were with Compassion International. Tom was a little hard to understand, and it was clear that he had special needs.

Once Tom confirmed that we were with Compassion, he began to ask if we remembered him.

Tom: “You remember, you were there.”
Us: “Sorry Tom, I don’t remember.”
Tom: “Yes you do, you remember?”
Us: “No, sorry…I don’t remember.”
Tom: “Yes you do, it was on the stage. You were there. You remember.”

I must admit, it was tempting after about 5 minutes to simply tell Tom that we remembered, just to move off of the topic, but that was not true and although we did not really understand, we still respected Tom and wanted to understand where he was coming from. After 15 minutes or so, the back story became clear.

It turns out that when Tom was a teenager (he is in his 20′s now) he had an opportunity to work at Compassion International as a part of our facilities staff. I imagine it was helping out with building maintenance, fixing things, cleaning things, etc. and basically putting Tom’s skills and abilities to good use. The defining moment of the work that Tom had done was in a recognition ceremony in which Tom was recognized on the stage in front of a large audience and given an award for his contribution (the “award”, it turns out, was a coffee mug). Yet, something as simple as a “Thank you” and a coffee mug is an event that this young man will never, ever forget. And he believes that you will never forget either.

Every one of us craves this type of recognition. It can be big or small, but we all need it. Take some time to today to recognize and encourage someone around you for what they have done, no matter how small. They need it much more than you know (and more than they realize).

Tags: Emotional, encouragement, recognition

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