This is a guest post by Adrian M
ansfield who is International Associate Director for the recruitment firm Jonathan Lee.
In my very humble opinion in today’s world of full inboxes, heavy schedules and tight deadlines we just don’t celebrate wins of any size anywhere near enough and that’s a problem.
For a start, a win you fail to celebrate when it happens will be lost forever in the day-to-day grind of it all so your world, and the world of your team becomes, well, grey. People just plod on trying to “get through it all”. Meh!
Worse still, over time we just lose the habit of celebration which we often recognise and then try to rectify with one “big hit” celebratory event and we all know how much “fun” they can be!
So what can you do? The answer is insanely simple: start celebrating the small wins right now! Rebuild the habit and just see what happens to the morale of your team.
A slap on the back or a short public announcement of a success (with clapping of course) costs nothing. Find a budget and you can do more from buying cream cakes (or fruit for the health-nuts) to a few drinks after work or meal out. Occasionally we used to have “office feasts” where people brought in food on a Friday and we all shared it during a communal (and extended) lunch.
You can also use the same strategy when celebrating yourself after you score a win or achieve a personal objective. When I started in recruitment I set myself a goal and a timescale that if I achieved it I’d treat myself with a Breitling watch which cost the equivalent of a month’s salary. Well, I still wear that watch today and it still means as much to me now as it did the day I bought it.
So supposing you were to start celebrating the small wins what’s likely to happen?
Well in my experience you’ll see a lift in morale, increased motivation and a team that feels appreciated. In short, it’s so much more fun and we all know that happy workers are more productive workers.
I firmly believe celebrating wins is a plan with no drawbacks and these days there aren’t many of those!
Thanks Mike, unfortunately it is so easy to forget about the small things that make all the difference to the people who make the company a success
You are so right Carl. It’s weird really. We all accept that team motivation is a major priority for productivity and staff retention and yet so many of us (me included I’m afraid) overlook it under the shadow of “business as usual” but the solution is easy and has a zero cost to it!!!!!!!