When Celebrating Demotivates
Teams who don’t celebrate wins don’t appreciate gains, respect progress, or honor effort. But…
Teams who celebrate half-wins end up not winning at all.
I’m a huge fan of celebrating progress. But celebrate too soon, too frequently, or too much, and you end up not finishing.
Think how far you have to go – NOT
how far you’ve come – when projects are half done.
University of Chicago psychologists Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach studied the impact of focusing on how far you’ve come (to-date thinking) versus how far you have to go (to-go thinking)?
To-go thinking motivates finishing.
“Great Finishers force themselves to stay focused on the goal, and never congratulate themselves on a job half-done.” Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson in HBR: How to Become a Great Finisher. I asked Dr. Halvorson about her observation and she told me the story of Mr. 85%.
“I sometimes tell this story about my husband because it drives me crazy – I call him “Mr. 85%” because that’s about how much he does of any project around the house before he stops, pats himself on the back for getting that far, and wanders off to do something else. He is a little too pleased with himself for doing most of it, and he stops looking at the finish line.” (Shared with permission)
Application:
- Encourage to-go thinking. The next time you pat someone on the back for progress toward an incomplete goal, end with, “What’s next, or, How long before you’re done.”
- Ask, “How far do you have to go?”
- Don’t ask, “How much is done?”
- Define wins clearly so you know when to celebrate. Life is a journey but projects get done.
- Celebrate done-jobs.
I love encouraging people for their progress. But, to-go thinking helps people finish strong.
How can leaders motivate teams when projects are half done?
I asked for input on to-date vs. to-go thinking on Facebook. (5/7/2013)
Dr. Halvorson is co-author of the new book, “Focus.”
Personally, i’ve changed my thinking on this topic. As a strategist, our projects are always on benchmark and module modes, but the lesson has been to focus my work mates and family on celebrating small processes, done consistently. Helping each of our teams to recognize the value of their inputting small steps that create the large outcomes. When we celebrated benchmarks, too often the consistency, the character strengths of professionalism and the fair play boundaries were overtaken by “got the checkmark in the box for done.”
I want a culture of engaging excellence and each time we experience its ingredients at work, THAT is what I celebrate as well as the outcomes of the culmination of those efforts at the benchmarks.
When focusing on the value of meaningful processes is encouraged and celebrated on our teams, the product conveyor belt seems to almost flawlessly to project success mode.
As always, thought invoking post!
Thanks Dan!
Sweetie!
Thanks for sharing your experience. You added an interesting dimension to this topic. Celebrate the things that create excellence is the thing that I’m taking from your comment. Your approach goes hand in hand with giving great feedback. And we know how important great feedback is. You made me think! Thanks
In my world as a speaker/teacher/brand strategist…my role is often to create awareness, perspective, and identify skills that are needed or exist to support excellence. The repeatable outcomes are always based in repeating small skill processes into systems that can be multiplied and refined to expand success, both personally and professionally. Thanks Dan! ( I have to share, that it was already on my mind from another perspective at my personal journal at http://www.ajoyfulplace.com)
Thanks for adding extending the conversation with your website. Success to you.
Well if the dream is so big it is ridiculous to even think it can be done it takes care of that celebrating too early!
Me I am up to shifting the paradigm of reactive coercive termite treatments to the brilliance of choosing a preventative treatment!
It is a 5 billion dollar a year problem that will be solved. It is a no brainer, not rocket science! Trust me I am no rocket Scientologist!
Who would not choose to protect their biggest investment for 1.09 a day? “Oh no I am not gonna do that! I am going to wait till I have a 7000.00 issue in my crawl space and have 19.00 dollars a day for a year to pay “!!!
Which sounds smarter to you? Hehe
My motor runs cause like the child grabbing a starfish on the beach and tossing it in the ocean. Big bad smart dude waltzes up asks the child what they are doing. Child says helping these starfish. Big smart dude laughs and says you can’t possibly make a difference here. Child looks at this idiot, grabs a starfish, tosses it into the water and says, ” made a difference to that one”!!!
I am helping one homeowner at a time! That us my story and I am sticking to it!!!!!
I will persist till I succeed!!
SP Out!
If I hear you right, you’re saying, do what you can where you are with what you have. Keep persisting
Also, the message I get from SP’s post is that small wins deserve to be celebrated as much as big wins. If we wait to celebrate until someone hits a home run, we’re going to have to put up with a lot of strike-outs while we wait. But if we celebrate the singles and doubles, we have more chances to motivate and to provide positive feeback — AND before too long those base hits add up to a score!
Well said!!!
I Concur!
SP Out!
I’ve always thought in terms of milestones on big projects. We clearly outline where we are, what’s the next big goal, and how far to completion. We should have mini-celebrations, but nothing that presents a false satisfaction.
I’ve always been a celebrate small wins/progress guy. What the research is showing me is be careful with celebrations of half-way points. When I read the research it challenged me. That’s why I reached out to Dr. Halvorson to discuss it. I think I’ve been too eager to celebrate progress as a tool that motivates. What I’m learning is celebrating progress may not motivate when it’s done at half-way points, for example. Challenging to my assumptions.
Dan, great topic and thoughts – (compulsive confession – I have been guilty of a few ‘85%’ projects myself.)
I try to break a large project into several components, each with clear goals – when we hit those marks, we celebrate that portion of the project and refocus on the next.
For me it is like climbing stairs – I’m not going to be completely happy until I get to the top, but I do celebrate each step I take.
Thank you for your continued leadership and guidance,
Best regards,
Carl
@SparktheAction
Confession heard… 🙂 Many leaders are great at starting but not at finishing. That’s why I think this observation about celebrations is so important.
I think we should celebrate more but it seems like we should choose our celebrations carefully. Thanks for sharing your insights
The research contradicts my thinking and practice as well. I’ll have to give this one more thought. In our environment the small victories are very important in getting us to the ultimate goal.
Sometimes the “what’s next” people drive me crazy because I feel they don’t celebrate enough. However, after some thought, I concluded that those who keep their eye on the final goal do better than those who look back and pat themselves on the back for their progress.
Lets face it…a celebration is a backward facing activity.
Thanks Dan, Your topic highlights another “invisible’ stumbling block to making a great productive team of people. I agree, keeping the focus on the end product keeps things moving forward rather than pausing to savor how far we have come. We want to really celebrate wins over celebrating steady progress. Both are important but I’m always careful not to confuse the two.
Too often I find myself staring at the “employee-of-the-month” boards at many big box stores. The idea and good intention was there in the beginning. I’m afraid by “over-highlighting” employees every month the reward is watered down and missing the real goal of providing thanks and praise for exceptional employees. I’m sure some of these people are contributing real value and innovation to their organization. Sadly by institutionalizing these celebrations they have lost their programmatic effectiveness and sincerity. My $0.02
Thanks Thomas. I would have been more uncomfortable with your comment a few days ago. I’m nodding today. Having said that, I’m still a huge fan of celebrating, honoring, and thanking. It creates positive environments. I have lots to think about…thanks for sharing your insights.
I agree with Colby Morris. Each milestone should have some type of mini-celebration. Granted, some milestones take longer to accomplish than others; however, the mini-celebration should denote a major accomplishment or milestone. An analogy to this would be a mother celebrating each trimester and finally the birth of this wonderful miracle, which we call child. This birth represents project completion, your baby. I just cannot think of any other project as more important than this one and the encouragement needed along the way. If we can imprint the sense of creating something whether than building something; I believe with mini-celebrations we can complete any project from start to finish.
I don’t want to give up on the mini-celebrations too…however, I’m challenged by the research. Running may illustrate the importance of looking forward rather than congratulating ourselves on how far we’ve come. I always look to the top of the hill ahead of me rather than the foot of the hill behind me.
Question/Challenge for Dan and Leadership Freak Followers:
I lead a group of analysts and subject matter experts (there are 10 of us); but we almost never work as a team on our projects — we serve in key roles on projects as team members with people from other clients/user areas. Projects that are sponsored or underwritten by executives in other areas besides ours.
The challenge I face is how to celebrate wins in a departmental setting where we rarely work as a team; and the “wins” we get are often more a luck of the draw — based on projects we are assigned/selected to work on with people we have no influence over — than anything else.
Thanks for jumping in. I’ve always been a find something to celebrate guy. (Despite this post …which challenges me)
I like celebrating effort as well as accomplishment. Learning what I recently learned, perhaps the timing is important. Save the celebration for the end…keep talking what’s next along the way.
In reality I’m a huge fan of both… great job and what’s next. I used to think it important to separate those activities. Now I see the importance of keeping them together. (Except when it comes to celebrating the final win. In that case don’t say “what’s next.” Just savor the victory)
Hey Scott, Scott here.
Y’all all work for the same company? Their win even if not your project is still a win for the company, right?
Ok not in the same company? Same state? Your state wins!!! Celebrate that!!!
Same country? Celebrate country winning!!!! Same planet?
Point is there is no separation and humans live lives of quiet desperation. Any reason to mini-celebrate or ridiculously-celebrate anyone for any reason will most likely brighten their day!! So why not????
At the end if your day, at the end of your last breath u found the good in one person a day and told them about it….how could that be detrimental to you or them in anyway???
I Concur!!!
SP Out!!
Loved this one and totally hit the nail with how I feel with how my husband does things around the house and it drives me crazy 🙂
So I guess it’s best to pat hubby on the back and then say, how long before you’re going to be done?
I think the part about clearly defining what success means is very important. In nonprofit work, I find a lot of leaders who look to the mission as “the end” – ending hunger, reforming education. It’s like that coach that had you do 30 pushups, and as you hit 29 said “OK, five more!” it can be very demotivating to never get to finish something, or to never celebrate accomplishments because they are never enough.
KaChing! YOu’re hitting on one of my pet peeves. And one of the reasons I’m thinking hard about how to celebrate progress and still remain finish-line focuses. Thanks
Dan, What I find amazing about this blog of yours is that your initial stimulus material is matched in significance and thought provocation by the conversations (responses) that follow. I get just as much from the responses as I do from your post. Thanks.
A fundamental human nature question is “how am I doing?” and I’m reading that there are both short term and long term answers there.
I get that the Progress Principle (Amabile and Kramer) is intrinsically motivating .. but maybe that’s more a short term recognition thing…. via a simple informal conversation with an individual team member.
Reaching milestones/ how far we’ve come and how far to go, is more long term formal celebration with the team member and possibly the whole team.
Is this yet another example of Drucker’s Cult of Efficiency …. where once we get a great idea we ramp it up until we are doing it so efficiently that we lose sight of the reason we started it in the first place?
The other related aspect that I’d love you to look at is “enough”…. how do we know when it’s time to stop?
Maybe it’s less about “celebrations” and more about sincere, gracious acknowledgement. I’ve found working across multiple world cultures, especially those from the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia, that a celebration is often received MUCH differently than an acknowledgement, and while it intends to be positive, the celebration at the wrong moment does indeed send a bad message. If we acknowledge graciously and sincerely along the way, I believe we’re getting ourselves and our teams closer to that genuine celebration at the end of the total project.
Dan,
Great article and great discussion.
In my former professional life I was in professional baseball and in my role as a leadership and workplace communication coach I come across this issue with clients a lot.
When the discussion comes up I always talk about understanding the difference between “means” objectives and “ends” objectives. They are confused way too much.
In athletics, let’s say Major League Baseball for example, the ends goal is to win the World Series. It takes many little victories along the way to get there. With each victory comes a mini-celebration at the end. It’s short, sweet and appreciation to contributors goes all around and then the focus moves to tomorrow’s game.
Inside the game, whether a team is winning or losing, when a player hits a home run or gets a big hit, there are little acknowledgements and congratulations along the way (e.g., the 3rd base coach shakes the hand of the homerun hitter as he rounds 3rd base, the on-deck hitter gives a high-five when he crosses home plate, and glad hands come out when he gets back to the dugout).
Everyone knows that is one ‘means” goal achieved towards the objective of winning the game!
Nothing wrong with celebrating and acknowledging the achievements along the way as long as the focus is on the ultimate “ends” objectives of winning that championship.
Organizations need to do a better job of getting everyone to understand and buy-in to a “Championship Game Vision.”
I wrote a white report on this, if anyone is interested in reading about it called, “The 3 Strategies of Champion Organizations and Teams!” It’s available as a free download at:
http://www.WorkplaceCommunicationExpert.com/3-champion-strategies