Growing up watching football with my Dad, a lifetime football coach, all I ever wanted to do was be a football star. Football is a sport that requires mental toughness, physical strength, and speed. I was fortunate enough to have 2 of those to make for a decent ballplayer.
When I first started training for football by lifting weights, I was 15 years old. My parents wouldn’t let me start any younger than that. They thought it might stunt my growth in the long run. But when I was finally allowed to lift weights, it was on!
I loved lifting weights and being able to compare myself to my peers. I also began to notice a change in my body, I started to see progress. Celebrating progress drove me to want to work even harder in the weight room.
The Need to Meet our Needs
As a company, it’s easy to get into the routine of showing up, clocking in, eating lunch, clocking out, and hitting repeat. There’s no excitement, there’s no celebration, there’s no real drive to want to go to work. We just do it for a paycheck.
Some of the second highest needs we have, according to Maslow’s Hierarchy, are achievement and self esteem. Some of the top needs are creativity, spontaneity, and problem-solving. We long for each of these to be met after our basic physiological and safety needs have been taken care of.
In any company, there should be some clear cut goals, or maybe a vision, or even a mission statement. Something that is the driver of the business. If it’s a good one, it’s measurable. It doesn’t necessarily matter what that goal is, it matters that you have something for people to work towards.
Now take that boring, clock-in/clock-out example and infuse it with some spontaneous celebration of progress towards your company mission! At that point you are praising your team’s achievements. This should be accompanied by telling them how proud you are of their work, which builds their self-esteem. On the way to that celebration they more than likely had to solve problems and use their creative powers to get that job done.
Now that the team knows that they are doing good things because their achievements have been recognized, this builds their confidence and this will get them excited to accomplish that big goal.
Intrinsic Motivation
Sports are amazing developers for children and I know that when I have kids someday, I will encourage them to play sports of some kind. I learned how to interact socially with diverse groups of people, I learned to compete, and I learned what it was like to come together for a common goal.
I also learned what it was like to push myself and not rely solely on the competition of others to drive me to work hard. Early on I realized that not everyone held themselves to the standard I did.
Learning to delay gratification for something you really want is a lost art. Sport makes you come to grips with the fact that the work you put in today won’t be realized until the season starts. Which, in some cases, could be months away. And even then it’s not guaranteed.
So you learn to celebrate the little stuff. For a 15 year meat-head football player, it’s getting that first vein that pops out of your bicep.
Don’t Celebrate Your Day Job
Now some people might take this advice to the extreme. This is not permission to rip your shirt off after every sale or do a touchdown dance after every customer service case is closed.
Celebrating what you are expected to do is frivolous. And if you get used to hearing, “Great Job!” every time you do something right, you may not want to do anything unless you are rewarded.
It’s kinda like giving every kid a trophy, even if they didn’t win. The celebration of mediocrity is rampant in today’s culture and that’s one of the reasons we had the whole 99%’er ordeal happen in 2011.
Instead, celebrate the milestones of your work. When a salesperson closes her biggest sale, make a big deal out of it. When a customer service rep handles more cases in a day than anyone has, celebrate his achievement. Or when your company makes a big leap forward, stop to take a minute and celebrate that little win.
Staying on Track
In a positive work environment, it’s hard not to like what you do. One way to keep things positive is to always keep the company mission, vision, or major goal in front of everyone and show them progress. Working for a common goal brings people together.
If you have a goal to do $1,000,000 in revenue, make an announcement when you hit every $100,000 marker on the way to remind people how close you are getting. This will show them that their daily work is being realized, even if they cannot see it. If gratification is delayed too much, people may begin to lose hope.
Seeing that progress helps us stay focused on what we are trying to accomplish. Seeing that we are just one step closer with every milestone is the best way to stay focused on a big goal that isn’t going to be realized in the immediate short-term.
If not, we tend to forget why we are sacrificing so much. It can be quite disheartening for someone to set their sights high and be let down when they don’t realize their goal.
But if we are measuring and celebrating progress, we know how far we have come and we can enjoy the journey instead of creating a “make or break” atmosphere for our objectives. And when that pressure comes off, people will perform better every step of the way.
So whether it’s finding that first vein in your bicep or celebrating your first $100,000 in sales, be sure to look out for the milestones of the journey. Make that path exciting and your people will work as hard as ever to be sure it’s realized.
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How do you celebrate progress on the way to your goals?
Have a great week!
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