Recognizing and Celebrating Successes

As a leader, how do you recognize and celebrate the successes of your staff?

In the end, people will forget what you said, forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

As a leader, recognizing and celebrating the successes of your staff can be very motivating.  Kouzes and Posner (2002) speak about encouraging the heart and its significance for people.  As leaders, we often focus on the front-end deliverables related to planning, implementing, resourcing, and managing.  It can be easy to forget about the power and energy that comes from sincere recognition and celebration of actual accomplishments.  Emphasis here is on the word 'sincere'.  If it's not coming from your heart to their hearts, it's meaningless.  People see through insincerity very easily.

In his book Drive (2009), Daniel Pink cautions us that an excess of recognition and celebration can actually de-motivate people.  Staff learn quickly that if there is no 'reward' on the way, the work is either not important or it's not worth doing because recognition won't come on the heels of completion.  When recognition becomes routine, isn't sincere, and doesn't recognize truly worthwhile work, it means nothing.  

For you as a leader, it's a case of knowing your staff and how much recognition and celebration are appropriate.  Here are a few questions to guide your thinking about when and when not to praise.

• How often will it be given?  In what forum?
• Does it always come from you?  Can it also come from colleagues?
• Is it done publicly or privately?
• Is everyone recognized at some point?  Is anyone left out?
• Do people know what merits recognition or does it appear to be arbitrary?  Does recognition come when school/organizational goals are met?
• Are people praised for results, effort, or other reasons?  Why?
• What have your staff told you about what they'd like in terms of praise, recognition, and celebration?
• Is it sincere and honest?

From:  Leading Every Day by Joyce Kaser, Susan Mundry, Katherine E. Stiles, & Susan Loucks-Horsley
Published by: Corwin Press

Asking Good Questions

Earlier this summer we shared five practices effective leaders use to accomplish extraordinary results.  One of them - "Challenge the Process" - recognizes that leaders today must continuously ask how to get better and improve outcomes.  They ask, "Why are we doing what we are doing?  Why are we doing it this way?  Are there more effective things we can do?" (Kouzes & Posner, 2002).

In today's fast-paced world, leaders can't possibly have all the answers.  They need to use good questions to guide others to get to the "right answers".  Peter Scholtes (1998) identified "seven basic all-purpose questions" leaders must ask:

1. Why?  When you encounter a problem, ask why.  Ask why as many as five times to get to the root cause of the problem. 
2. What is the purpose?  People love to suggest things and often grab onto new ideas to implement in their organizations without making sure there is a match between the organization's needs and their ideas.  Help people clarify the purpose - or desired outcome - as they plan new projects.
3. What will it take to accomplish this?  While it is nice to dream, your job as a leader is to support people to implement their ideas.  This question gets others to think through the methods they will use to put ideas into action.
4. Who cares about this?  Ask this question to make sure you are choosing actions that will matter to the right people.  If the people you serve notice or care about the action, it should have higher payoff for you.
5. What is your premise?  Many suggestions and ideas are made without stating the assumptions or beliefs that are guiding them.  When you ask people to state their premise or assumption, you help them gain greater insight.
6. What data do you have or could you get?  Some suggestions and ideas are based on perceptions and hunches - asking this question pushes people to "ground" their actions in real data.
7. What is the source of your data?  Before you base decisions on data, make sure it is valid and comes from a reliable source. 

Increasingly, a leader's role is to coach colleagues to think through plans, anticipate problems, and get the right things happening.  Questioning and demonstration are the basic tools of a good coach.  Here are some other questions that Scholtes suggests leaders ask when a team is implementing a new project or intervention:

Prior to Starting

• What could realistically go wrong?
• How might that be prevented?
• What should we monitor to see if the problem is occurring?
• How can we be prepared to react if it goes wrong?

During Implementation

• What are you doing?
• Why are you doing it?
• How do you know this is the right thing to do?

After Implementation

• Are we getting what we wanted?
• Are we avoiding what we didn't want?
• Do we need to make adjustments?
• How would we do it differently next time?

From:  Leading Every Day by Joyce Kaser, Susan Mundry, Katherine E. Stiles, & Susan Loucks-Horsley
Published by: Corwin Press

Building a Shared Vision

Vision.  What is your reaction to this word?

Is it negative?  Perhaps you have been involved in vision-building activities that never really made a difference in how your organization functioned or in your results.  Perhaps your organization, like many others, failed to live by its vision once it was created.

Effective leaders engage people throughout the organization in building commitment toward the shared vision that becomes the guiding force for all action.  A great example of this is schools that have established a vision of an unyielding commitment to ensure that all students meet local standards.  The vision drives all behaviours and informs all of the school's operations, structures, and allocation of resources.  Another example is schools that envision themselves as providing the best quality instruction, without exception.  Again, the vision shapes what the staff does, including making sure every teacher is supported to learn and carry out best practice and use ongoing analysis of data and results to find out what is working and what needs to be changed. 

Many organizations have vision and mission statements.  Most visions, however, are not shared visions.  They are imposed on others by the head of the organization or a group of people at the top.  These visions are not effective long term because they "command compliance - not commitment" (Senge, 1990).  A shared vision is different.  A shared vision incorporates individual visions, engenders commitment, and focuses energy.  As Senge (1990) says, "When people truly share a vision, they are connected, bound together by a common aspiration.  Shared visions derive their power from a common caring".

Kouzes and Posner (2002) suggest that leaders inspire people to come to a shared vision that is appropriate for them based on carefully considering how future trends will affect them and what reputable people are predicting about their business in the next 10 years.  As leaders, you must look at this future and help to build a shared vision based on that.  Schools that have visions based on old trends and data from prior decades are going to be locked in the past. 

Don't confuse vision and mission.  Vision is knowing where you want to be or what you want to become.  It includes tangibles, as well as intangibles, such as virtues and the culture you that you want to surround you.  Mission is your reason for being and the work you pursue to realize your vision.  Your mission guides your actions to achieve what you envision for yourself and your organization. 


From:  Leading Every Day by Joyce Kaser, Susan Mundry, Katherine E. Stiles, & Susan Loucks-Horsley
Published by: Corwin Press

What Effective Leaders Do

Kouzes and Posner propose 5 leadership practices.  As a leader, to what degree do you engage in these practices?

According to an extensive database compiled by Kouzes and Posner (2002), leaders who accomplish extraordinary results with others use five leadership practices.  Their actions contribute to their effectiveness and the success of those with whom they work.  Effective leaders use these five leadership practices:

1. Model the way - It is no surprise that effective leaders are credible.....They are clear about their own personal values and views and build a consensus among others about the values that will guide all of them.  Leaders 'model the way' by checking to make sure their actions are consistent with their values...
2. Inspire a shared vision - Effective leaders care deeply about what they want to accomplish and work with their colleagues to identify common, shared goals and aspirations for the future
3. Challenge the process - Effective leaders question and work to change the status quo.  They take on challenging projects that help them learn something new.  They learn from their failures as well as their successes...
4. Enable others to act - Leaders foster collaboration and teamwork.  They share power and responsibility.  They actively remove hierarchy and other roadblocks to increase interactions among people who need to work together. 
5. Encourage the heart - Effective leaders build a strong caring community in which people praise and recognize success.  They know success breeds success and celebrate each small milestone.  They support and encourage everyone when the going gets tough.

From:  Leading Every Day by Joyce Kaser, Susan Mundry, Katherine E. Stiles, and Susan Loucks-Horsley
Published by: Corwin Press & NSDC (National Staff Development Council)