Integrating Celebration and Recognition into Daily Rhythm

Recently, I have noticed how our work meetings tend to focus on the negative. People really want to voice when they see things they do not like. It seems like there is something inside us that just expects things to go well. Not in terms of anticipating that it will go well, but that it should go well. So, when things are good, we kind of accept it as the way things should be. And when things go bad, it sticks in our craw, so to speak.

So, we focus on, find, and vocalize the negative. We want so badly to snap things back to what they should be. Our frustrations, annoyances, and grievances, therefore, get much of our time, attention, and voice.

Repeat After Me

The irony here is that we tend to repeat that which gets attention. Have you ever been in a conversation where something negative is brought up. And another person says, “Yeah, I agree, and…”, eventually leading to the familiar phenomena of “piling on”. Nothing is really addressed or solved, but it is somewhat cathartic. We like venting.

The next layer of this is we start to reward problem-seers. There is a validation to starting one of those long, winding, internally-reinforced conversations. I started that! I was the first to notice. And so, we want to be the first, or loudest, to notice the next thing.

We get into a cycle of seeing and acknowledging the negative. When this is really out of hand, people will sabotage and then blame-shift, creating negativity to be noticed. Or, subconsciously, they contribute to a culture of negativity, not realizing they are adding on to the very thing they are complaining about (anyone who has been in a culture of gossip knows what I am talking about here).

The Power of Gratitude

Our boss came to a meeting recently and challenged us to begin the meeting by celebrating the good things that happened recently. It was like our group came up for air for the first time in weeks.

((Side note: you know you are negative-obsessed when your observations about what is good contain a jab, an homage to what is bad. “This was good, which is so unlike our I.T. department”. “For once, we did this right”. Etc.))

These kinds of moments of recognition and celebration are rare in our organizations. We tend to focus our meetings on problem-solving, which requires problem noticing. 

What about problem-prevention?

Any organization, just like any person, is not operating at its best if it is not making recognition and celebration a part of its daily rhythm (not just a rare event to remind us we are doing okay).

Consider this: if the parameters of culture are determined by what we honor and what we shame, yet we spend a disproportionate amount of time considering what to shame, our culture will become defined by what we do not want to be rather than what we do want to be. Said another way, we may constantly discuss what we aren’t without ever knowing what we are.

And in the absence of honoring what is good, right, and true, we will sink into habitual confusion, chaos, and dysfunction.

How To

Recognition and celebration happen in a variety of ways. A gift (coffee, meals, awards) go a long way. So does a kind, celebratory word. A coworker told me, very casually, about how much she appreciated a meeting I led. It was about nine weeks ago and it still provides a lift when I think about it, an encouragement every time I sit down to plan the next meeting.

The thing is, we need recognition to become a habit. Not a series of rare, one-off events. We need it to become a daily practice, a way we see things, so that we are better postured to be who we want to be rather than just avoid what we don’t want to be. The void of the latter creates numbness/emptiness/apathy unless it is replaced by the former, which only happens with intention.