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Curated insights shared with you to lead, build better teams, and do the little things that make a huge impact on performance.

I am a leadership and team development coach who believes that teams outlast and outperform when built from the bottom up.

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The goal is to inspire. No matter what type of team you lead or what type of team you are on.

Now onto Edition #13

Two Things You'll Hear Me Say About WINNING

You will often hear me say “Lower The Bar To Raise The Bar”

- And -

“Celebrating Wins” is not a leadership or recognition strategy

These two notions come from the same place.

It comes from the consistency with which I see leaders place too high of a bar on what a “win” can look like and approach recognizing their people through a fear of creating complacency.

Yet when you allow for your people to be seen for why their work matters, you set the table for… more wins!

It comes from the place that it is OKAY to recognize people on your team for small contributions, the effort before the result.

That it is OKAY for you to relinquish your hold on what you deem worthy of recognition, to give the members of the team you lead the gift of being seen or heard.

Lowering the bar on what you deem worthy of recognizing your people will raise the bar on what culture and engagement can look like for you.

It is more approachable than you think.

‘Recognition” and “Celebrating” do not have to come in large elaborate forms. They do not require a trophy or balloons and it does not require an appointment or a spot on the calendar.

Authenticity and spontaneity are often even more powerful than a scheduled event.

Does the desk-wide Pizza Friday after a “job well done” really get you walking in the door with a spring in your step on Monday morning?

Would you trade that slice of pepperoni for the senior person whom you haven’t spoken to in 2 mths to come over and spend 3 mins with you at any point in that week articulating to you that what you contribute leads to better outcomes for the group?

The group pizza gathering is a nice little event, and it ends a week off nicely, but a motivator, it is not and it’s just window dressing on true culture.

Celebrating Wins

Announcing that your group is going to start “Celebrating Wins” usually coincides with one of two things.

1) A new leader, looking to put his or her stamp on the team.
2) A new strategy, put forth by existing leadership, with a goal of addressing a need.

In either case, the goal is meant to be positive. It’s meant to motivate the group to be driven to “win” more.

But in most cases, it’s a flawed strategy.

To me, it signals either desperation or a lack of depth in the leader.

But wait, isn’t celebrating wins a good thing?

Winning is good. Celebrating wins is good and fun. Establishing it as a strategy can be flawed, depending on the leader.

Let’s dive in:

A NEW LEADER
With a new leader, they are looking to inspire and motivate through their fresh outlook.

• They want their first impression to be uplifting

• They may have received feedback that prior to your arrival, people haven’t felt appreciated.

• They have heard, and may even believe, that recognizing people for their contributions is important and winning or “wins” is what they have deemed as the bar that is set for recognition.

• They’ve heard others say it and it sounds like a good motivator.

• It felt good when their success was celebrated by leadership.

• They’re trying to send the right message

EXISTING LEADER
With an existing leader, the scenario is often the same each time, and the introduction of the strategy can be typical.
Reasons for announcing it:

• It usually comes from feedback they’ve received that morale or engagement is low.

• People don’t feel recognized

• They feel as though even when they do well, no one really cares or it’s never good enough.

• Motivation is wavering.

What is the intended impact?

• It’s the leader’s attempt to say “I hear you”

• It’s mean to be step in the right direction.

• it’s an effort to say go and win and we’ll recognize it.

The skeptic in me pictures this existing leader, who hasn’t gotten it right in the first place, coming to the group saying:

“Okay everyone is telling me you guys don’t feel like I appreciate you. So from now on, we’ll start celebrating wins. Everyone happy?? Okay back to work.”

Perhaps this grizzly approach lies on the far low end of the spectrum of reasonability, and most leaders want their people to be immersed in a great and thriving culture, they just haven’t appreciated (or learned) how.

But herein lies the problem.

This approach Is flawed because a win is typically solely defined by the leader.

If you already have an unreasonable or toxic leader who doesn’t place value on their people being connected through being seen, why would they suddenly feel an authentic urge to establish a lower bar for a win?

WHY IT MATTERS

People are not inherently motivated by a celebration.

A celebration is a natural response to a positive outcome. It’s not a driving factor in motivating.

When you play a sport, do you work hard in practice on Tuesday because you’ll have a raging party if you beat your rival on Saturday? Or is your driving force typically the win itself? Seeing your opponent lose!

In the workplace, do you work hard on a project on Tuesday because if your client buys your product in the pitch on Friday it’ll be celebrated?

For most people, being seen for the work on Tuesday is the “win”. Their contribution to the process having an impact on the outcome is what motivates them. Affirming it, and “celebrating” that effort sends more meaningful and consistent signals than waiting around for a possible win.

Would you deny knowing the holy grail of what can make your team incredible?

What if I challenged you to sit down and relinquish all views on what makes people “soft” or alleviate your fears of instilling a lack of motivation?

What if you sat down with each member of your team and asked them how they define a win in their role?

What if, in that conversation, you challenged each person to go even lower, and to not try and impress you.

What if by creating a trusting place to share their own definition of a win, you dug up the fact that Melissa lost her nanny 6 weeks ago and she’s had to arrange for childcare on the Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays that she’s in the office and that it’s been a huge challenge because finding someone she can trust with her two kids under 5 has been excruciatingly hard. So for her, coming in and continuing to produce at the level that she has produced when things were “okay” is a HUGE win.

Up til now, Melissa hasn’t heard from any manager or leader because client budgets have been on hold, it’s been harder and harder to land deals, and so the much-needed “WIN” seems farther away.

And what if instead of waiting on your own definition of a WIN, you walked by her desk next week and said “Melissa, how are things at home? I want you to know that I appreciate you being here and I know it can be hard, but your work matters so much to this team and we couldn’t do it without you”.

 
In Andrew Huberman’s most recent Huberman Lab podcast How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset (included below) he dives deep into studies done by Claudia Miller, and the queen of the “Growth Mindset” Carol Dweck.

Full disclosure I have my own opinions on the use/overuse of “Growth Mindset” as something that can just easily be clicked into place. but that is for another time.

The study’s abstract showed that praise for effort in kids resulted in a deeper connection to motivation and effort, than did praise for excellence in outcomes.

Huberman, as he does, provides a useful construct to help us deliver this. He correctly points out that feedback for things like intelligence and skill were typically delivered with labels. “Smart, good, skilled” whereas effort feedback was tied to verbs.

If you think about it he’s right.

“I loved your effort in that drill we just did, it was noticed”. vs. “Nice shot.”

“It looks like you put a lot of thought and hard work into this presentation, I think the client will notice that”. Vs. “Excellent sales deck.”

In fact celebrating the little things along the way actually releases dopamine in the brain, the feel-good chemical.

If you lose, what do you have?

When the little things are shared together, it brings a group closer.

If you recognize the small bits of effort, being specific in your praise of their contribution to the process that leads to the outcome, then that big WIN becomes more likely and more frequent.

The good news is, you can celebrate both!

And you can do it Together!

Where To From Here?

What are 3 things you can do starting today to help implement this into your team’s culture?

You do not have to be a leader to do so.

1.  Don’t dangle the carrot, instead, feed your people.
   
   If the carrot dangles too high, will anyone ever eat?
   
   Give notice to the individual contributions of members of your team - even if it’s your peers. Don’t wait for an outcome.
   
   Look for the small things.
   
   Start putting into practice this weekend when ordering something from someone behind a counter. Look for a little thing they did and thank them for it. Even just ask them their name and say thank you with their name.
   

2. Ask people what a win looks like in their role - not for the team.
   Create safety in their answer.
   
   Thank them for sharing.
   
   Challenge them to go LOWER in their definition.
   
   Look for that holy grail that helps you understand their own motivation.
   

3. Self Report.
   What is your standard for a win?
   
   Can you lower the bar a little?

   
   Can you identify individual wins that when recognized, and each person feels more connected and more motivated will elevate the total group to build a foundation to reach the big win?
   
   Are your fears valid?

Lower The Bar To Raise The Bar!

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