Recently, I was coaching Maggie*, a high-potential manager accountable for leading a large project team.  It’s a complex project and her team had faced considerable internal resistance to their mandate.  Suddenly, however; as a result of a presentation to key stakeholders, Maggie told me that the contribution of their project was being lauded well-beyond her own business unit.  Various senior influencers were stepping in to offer support and show keen interest.  She rushed on to talk about how the team needs to move to the next phase of the project. 

When I asked Maggie the simple question, “And how are you and your team celebrating this win?” she paused for a long time.  In her silence, she recognized that she hadn’t fully acknowledged what had transpired.  In fact, because her team was spread-out geographically, several of the members weren’t even aware of what had shifted.  The team hadn’t skipped a beat in working on their deliverables.  Maggie now saw that their momentum would be exponential if she were to take a few moments to share the impact of the presentation and how their hard work in laying the foundation had paid-off.

Celebrating achievements has been shown to have numerous benefits:

• reduces stress and reenergizes people
• motivates people to continue toward larger goals
• creates an opportunity to strengthen relationships
• allows people to step back and see the big picture
• fosters work/life balance

At the beginning of our coaching sessions, I encourage all of my clients to recount their WINS since our last discussion, or at a minimum to take written stock of these WINS ahead of our coaching time. In doing so, they develop the muscle of noticing what’s working well and being able to acknowledge these personal achievements.

Acknowledgement and celebration are ways of providing feedback to others and perhaps even more importantly—to ourselves. 
 

I recently had the opportunity to work with a team in the “forming” stage of development.  We talked about the insights they’ve gained from other successful teams in which they had been involved.  One participant wisely pointed out that in their post-audit “lessons learned” discussion for a major system installation, they had overlooked the opportunity to celebrate key milestones during the life of the project.  While the overall project was a success, they might have moved faster and with more positive energy had they acknowledged what was working well during the long, ten-month process.  By the end of the project some resentment had built-up and the team members felt taken for granted by the organization, in spite of having worked together well.

Based on her input, the new team promptly committed to establishing milestones for celebration in their project plan.  In the Code of Conduct they crafted, they also committed to have spontaneous celebrations for the small wins along the way.