Ep 9 - Why Celebrating Wins and Setbacks is so Important

Power Up Your Team Podcast

Welcome to episode 9 of PowerUpYourTeam podcast where we talk about celebrating wins AND setbacks.

You are focused on your business and barely have a moment to catch a breath once a big business milestone is accomplished. You are immediately setting your eyes on the next one.

That’s what I used to do. I was laser focused on execution and results. I was blessed to have leadership teams who always reminded me of a critical responsibility: CELEBRATE

You may ask “Why would I celebrate a setback?”

The truth is … There are golden nuggets in everything that happens in your business – good or bad.

More importantly, you can leverage any setbacks strategically to drive the long-term success of your business.

Here are 4 reasons why celebrating wins and misses with your team are so important:

1. Creates Excitement

People spend a significant amount of their time working in your business and you expect them to contribute to your success. Make their experience enjoyable by acknowledging their efforts.

Get your team together to celebrate a big contract you just won.

Reflect with you team on what made this deal come together. Maybe it’s the great collaboration between sales and operations, or, a key insight into the competitive landscape from your business partner.

And, pull your team together to celebrate that new account you didn’t win but everyone worked so hard on.

Reflect on what caused the loss. What can you learn from it? Maybe your pricing was too high or you were lacking a key capability that you realize you need to implement.

Both, results from your success and learnings from your setback are worth celebrating.

In times, where many people are working remotely, you can celebrate in a virtual meeting and raffle off a family dinner for a couple of employees in their home town. Your employees will get the message of appreciation.

2. Provide Psychological Safety

You signal that it’s ok to make a mistake and that it’s not ok to sweep problems under the rug. You create an environment where your team is encouraged and not afraid of raising issues. They are motivated to contribute their experience and creativity to change things for the better.

A couple of weeks after I had stepped into a new leadership role, I found hundreds and hundreds of returned mail envelopes in our file cabinets. I had found one reason why our customers weren’t paying invoices on time.

“Wow”, I thought, “If that’s the culture I inherited, what other problems might be hiding out there?”

We fixed that particular issue and put a formal continuous improvement program in place. We celebrated issues raised, new ideas and improvements made with equal enthusiasm. Over time, we re-engineered our processes, improved team moral and customer satisfaction.

What forums and mechanisms do you have in place so that your team members can share and act on their ideas.

3. Allows Your Team to Learn and Grow

Involve everyone in reflecting why things did or didn’t work out as planned.

Maybe you lost a deal because your team missed the proposal deadline. Out of that experience may come ideas for a standard template and components so that next time around the proposal can be put together much faster.

Reframing setbacks as learning opportunities will eventually create organizational knowledge and experience that can develop into a strategic advantage in the market place.
Albert Einstein ones said: “Failure is success in progress”
Read on at PowerUpYourTeam.com/9 and find out the 4th reason whey celebrating wins AND setbacks is so important.