What does it mean to be a human highlighter?
A human highlighter is simply a way to recognize people in your organization. Regardless of your role within your organization, it is very important to not only be aware and recognize efforts of your team but to amplify them. A human highlighter is one who continues to spotlight a person and/or people in your organization with their peers as well as to a larger audience.
Ways to Be A Human Highlighter
- Acknowledgement on social media.
- All staff email spotlighting the person and their accomplishment.
- Recognition at a meeting, board meeting, and/or staff meeting.
- Spotlight within your monthly newsletter.
Best Practices
Frequency/Consistency: timeline your year and determine the frequency on communicating highlighting your staff (once a week, month trimester, etc). After you determine your frequency of communication, I would advise you can and should continue to share and acknowledge moments and staff when the opportunity presents itself.
Team Communication: make sure this is not a a team of one person who determines whom you would like to highlight. Ensure you have various ways to obtain nominations and/or moments shared by staff and administrators. Additionally, leverage Twitter and/or Tweetdeck to passively/actively learn about experiences shared.
Be Purposeful: whether this is an initiative or not, I definitely would recommend be purposeful with your publications. For instance in the image above our teachers took time to collaborate and present virtually on an essential topic with our community. Their contribution was very important and provided a learning artifact that will last forever within our Parent University resource library.
Hansen's Link to Tech 