Do you need to pause more often to celebrate?
Embarrassed by Success
A leader recently came to a coaching session feeling a bit awkward.
“I’m not sure what I want to work on today,” he admitted.
“No problem, shall we find a topic together?” our coach asked.
“Sure. Actually, things have been going really, really well,” the leader said, almost a bit embarrassed.
The team was performing well, they had been getting recognition from other leaders in the company, and people were feeling very positive.
“So shall we talk about recent wins as our topic,” our coach asked.
“We can do that? Sure!” the leader replied.
It hadn’t occurred to the leader that this was an acceptable way to use time. And that’s a fairly common blind spot for busy leaders. Priority usually goes to the next thing, the big goal, and the to-do list.
But what about the “done list”?
The Power of Reviewing Wins
Reviewing your wins isn’t just a feel-good break from doing your work. If you go into it with the right framing, it can be a powerful leadership practice that results in:
- Increased confidence
- Better awareness of strengths (yours and your team’s)
- Higher motivation
- Improved relationships
- Clearer focus
- (and more!)
So what is the right framing? We suggest this simple 2-question structure:
- What’s really working well?
- What’s the “secret sauce” that makes it work?
A list + analysis is more powerful than just the list by itself, because you see how your approach is yielding positive gains.
Why It Works
When researchers Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer analyzed more than 12,000 daily work diaries, they found something amazing but not too surprising: the times people felt best about their work was when they saw real progress, no matter how small (Amabile and Kramer, 2011).
But beyond the productivity and motivational gains, the main reason we’re recommending you take a few moments to celebrate (either individually or as a team) is that it connects you to a part of your humanity. Modern productivity culture pressures you to constantly do, and doesn’t just let you be.
Leaders are constantly facing the future. That’s what we might think leadership is: problem solving, fixing what’s broken, meeting future goals, and fulfilling potential. And it is. But it’s also about recognizing a real human did something special in the past.
Grounding yourself in that simple truth can make the rest of the work not only look different but feel different as well.
The 3Cs and Celebrating Wins
Using the 3Cs, you might be able to take this practice to a deeper level very quickly.
Curiosity
- What did I do well recently that hasn’t been recognized yet?
- How does my team find out what’s actually working, not just what needs fixing?
Courage
- What would it cost me to say “that was good work” and stop (for example, without adding a “but…”)?
- What is stopping me from pausing to celebrate wins more frequently?
- How willing am I to pause to focus on a win instead of rushing to the next problem?
- What am I avoiding by staying in problem-mode all the time?
Care
- Who on my team is overdue for specific recognition?
- Who on my team pulled off something remarkable that hasn’t been acknowledged?
- Where is my own habit of skipping wins teaching my team to skip theirs?
- Where am I neglecting to notice my own progress, not just everyone else’s?
There is a time and a place for problem-mode, but our experience has been that mode is far more natural for most leaders. We’re trying to balance the picture by making sure you’re not missing important data. But if you’re already good at this, hey! Celebrate that!
Whatever Happened to that Leader?
Remember the leader who accidentally stumbled into listing wins during a coaching session? By analyzing what was working well, he ended up designing new measurements of success that he could use as his focus shifted back to the future. One of them was:
- Number of times I get one of my team members in front of senior leadership to present their work.
That was a meaningful KPI (what we call a “driver,” actually) and would not have come to the surface without the stroll down victory avenue.
You’re a real person leading real people. The least you can do is say “good job” every so often.
Adaptive Leader Studio™
This is exactly the sort of exciting, deep work we do with leaders in our Adaptive Leader Studio™. If you’d like to make a fast and lasting change to flex your adaptivity, join us online or in person near you.
