Organizations should be doing three things: meeting, acting, and celebrating. But, we tend to spend 60% of our time meeting (frequently in useless, counterproductive meetings where everyone doodles and avoids eye contact), 35% acting, and only 5% celebrating. What a pity!
Celebration is not just about fun, its about meaning, it’s about how you process what you experience. A funeral can be a celebration of one someone’s life. A team dinner can be a celebration of a successful project. Even if you suffered a loss or challenge on a project, you make emotional sense and meaning making through celebrations. It’s also not about reaffirming the ego for a job well done, it’s about honoring values.
On the flipside, sometimes success leads us not to celebrate. Success brings with it a whole new set of challenges, distracting us from focusing on what we accomplished, and why, as we become anxious about why may lie ahead and what others expect us to accomplish.
In my career coaching with clients, one process I use is to ask them what are the top 5 accomplishments that they are most proud of (not what their parents or friends are proud of). What is interesting is that many of these accomplishments are rarely celebrated and spoken about. Instead, many young leaders tend to harp on their weaknesses and focus on them to become mediocre at a bunch of things rather than excellent at a few. Focus on your superpower and celebrate it! And when you don’t succeed, celebrate your learnings. We constantly meet and act and without celebration, we stay stuck in routine rather than rejuvenating our energy. So take time for team dinners, mid-week cookie runs or after-work happy hours. You’ve worked hard – take pride in what you do!
