High Performing Teams Celebrate Success -- This Tight-End gets it. What about your Leadership Team?
Recently Rob Gronkowski - arguably one of the best TE’s in the NFL — retired from the New England Patriots leaving the current, most winning team the league. Rob was not only a high performing individual; he also has one of the most important skills of the best-of-the-best players — a great, positive attitude. More on positive attitudes in future articles.
“Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”
Interesting that while his departure was for health reasons, Rob identified a critical need for this winning team — a leadership skill — Positive Appreciation and Celebration. While great leaders focus a team on improvement, driving for perfection, how a leader fosters a positive emotional environment while maintaining improvement-focus is crucial.
What should a leader do at the end of a success to drive improvement AND increase team morale?
After-Success Action
Record Improvement Ideas
Celebrate
Rest and Recovery
Plan Improvements
The Patriots (and Tom Brady) are skipping a critical step — Celebration. After a high performing team has finally achieved a success, the individuals need to recover from the experience of work. That recovery is physical & mental — rest and relaxation; AND emotional & energetic — feeling good about a job, well done aka: Celebration. As human beings, the fuel that drives our greatest action is our emotion. For a leader to expect to receive the same, high performance from the team a second time, how they celebrate success, can be a positive motivator of future action. Taking the time to celebrate together is also deeply connecting and relationship building. When a future problem arises, the team is more likely to want to work together, no matter the challenge, to achieve success when they feel a strong sense of community and relationships.
The Patriots do a great job of asking for improvement ideas immediately after a performance — recording thoughts at the time closest to the end of work is the only way to prevent lost ideas. And by giving the team the proper emotional, energy, physical, and mental recovery, then individuals can be ready to create high quality, improvement plans.
Chris
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