MC50 Celebrating big and small

so shall we move on to episode 50 sure which is well it's our 50th episode so we can celebrate i figure we can just swap some stories here just because it's such a personal thing like what you define as a as a winner as an achievement when you've been a manager and those moments can be so sustaining it's interesting because i totally i totally get the celebrations but i can't think of any anything that i would classify as big win i think mainly because of the nature of of the work and how i've worked um just going back to the theater days you know a great review was great but it's also ephemeral uh i suppose maybe maybe that's another i'm thinking actually maybe that's not right because we have had like i signed a co-production for example i remember one of our shows was doing really well and when we we were invited to a still small theater but a more high profile than we've been and as a kind of a partnership and so and i've had interesting i've had those but i've never i never celebrated them as such like it wasn't like you hear oh let's do something we've achieved this we've done this i celebrated and you know you have like in remote teams the celebration channels and people go and post something but it was just such rewarding and it was something maybe that we would feel a lot later so it wasn't something that was great now and we wouldn't feel the reward later so maybe i never yeah that's funny well i think it's very common because you know two things you said one is that it's ephemeral and that's very you know some things will come up and they're gone you know because work just keeps coming things move on and we don't take the time to stop and smell the roses and the other is that some things aren't ephemeral but they're so gradual and our nature is always to sort of be looking forward and often as a manager the win is not necessarily well some managers maybe do but you don't take it as your win you know it's an organization win or a team win or an individual you know achievement it's not necessarily something where you sit down and go oh i really feel great about that but i think it's it's very valuable if you can yeah if every now and then you think oh i wanted this i wanted someone to you know i wanted this person to develop and they struggled to do it and now they've now i can look back and see that they've developed and that's that's a win that's a great achievement that's one of the most powerful things you can do as a manager so and it's if you take the time to recognize it and then reinforce it i think it's even better because it helps you identify the things that show you're doing a good job and it's really motivating yeah hold that thought hold that thought because we have our listeners around the table already listeners welcome i'm here as always with tim having a coffee for about 20 minutes and my name is pilar and well this is also talking of celebrations this is for the podcast management cafe this is our 50th coffee it's not our 50th coffee together tim i think we have a different list for that or it's not our 50th coffee today it's not it's not especially because you drink tea i love it i think maybe we should change the management cafe and tea shop and tea um not not tea shop what is it the the tea room and the tea room management tea room but yes of course we have 50 episodes because before you very kindly or foolishly agreed to having coffees with me i used to host this on my own and some episodes were better than others but the fact that the the show has reached 50 i think is definitely worth celebrating so listeners back to today we are we are talking as you heard we're musing around celebration and this reflection that i think what you're saying is really i hadn't thought of it like that i've always seen the value of course of celebrating as a group as a team and that but the value for me to celebrate as as going completely inwardly the value as a team leader of celebrating as a marker for me as well as the team as a marker of my development my achievements i never thought of that before well maybe it's uh different different personalities and different things i mean for me i uh i like the motivation and and yeah i like to feel like i'm doing a good job i think my ego needs it and so there have been times where you know i've been in a one-on-one with someone and they've said something nice to me about about our interaction and sometimes i've caught myself thinking oh wow that was that was amazing i'm gonna i'm gonna remember that that was really meaningful to me and i'm gonna treasure that that that they've said that or they've felt this feeling because as we're talking about in our in our last coffee like it can be lonely as a manager you know it can be a grind at times so it's important i think to well for me particularly i found it important that i was able to recognize good times and recognize times where i felt like i was having a positive influence uh because there were you know there were times where you feel like you're not doing a good job or you feel like you know it's all pointless and being able to go back and go oh yeah i did that one good thing that was good oh that one good thing tim well you're bringing up lots of things which are that sometimes it's easier to stop and recognize well maybe i'm talking for myself it's easier to recognize when you are messing up i find that very easy to see when i'm messing up and sometimes it's more difficult to i like what you said about treasuring that i might recognize when something when i did something well and it can be small or big like you say that just even a conversation that's gone well because of my input and i might recognize it but then it goes and i think that treasuring i mean i suppose i'm in a way i'm mixing like treasuring celebrating and also learning only one but just i think it's that recognition of something that went well one for the comfort and the joy of having done something but also something that maybe you can pull on later on as well as an example of something that worked yeah yeah absolutely like as you say a lot of stuff's gonna go badly uh yes i think it helps as well if you have that personality type where you're uh where you notice mistakes because i used to do this as a manager when i was managing other people i would notice mistakes i would comment on mistakes and i had a coach an executive coach who taught me uh catch people doing the right thing was what he termed it and you know i literally i would have like a notepad and i'd sit on the train at the end of the day and i'd try and write one nice thing about everybody i was managing like what do they do what do they do well it was a real struggle at the beginning and over time i got better and better at it and he explained that all this was gonna happen and you know i could do it easier at the end of the day and i could do it closer to when it happened and then in the end i was able to recognize it like as it was happening i was able to say to people like that's really good what you're doing or what you've done so i think focusing on positive achievements can be helpful as a manager because you want to reinforce those pathways you know you want to deepen that that groove to go oh okay if i do that i feel good about it that's a great thing to do and so i'm going to i'm going to pay a bit more attention to that so is there an overlap or a difference between the celebration bees and just acknowledgement and feedback there's i mean there's obviously something there i wonder if i'm seeing it differently like celebrating celebrating something always seems like i don't know it seems different to to feedback in a way is it is it would you think what you were saying was an acknowledgement or a celebration oh well treasure i think is a really good word when you use the word treasure so for me generally there'll be something that happens and you'll deal with it in you know let's say the team's done something i remember you told the story of how uh one of the theater productions had gone really well and they're like oh look and we did it all ourselves nobody manages and you were like well i managed you but i've obviously done it in such a way that you've felt like you've done it all yourself so that's a great achievement but you can't go in front of the group and go actually really this is my trial this is how good i am that i've made you all think you did it yourself but really obviously the whole time and so how do you celebrate that or how do you recognize it i mean you see it in the moment and then for me you know like a like a dragon with his pot of gold i go into my okay i take it away and then i and then i you know i think about it and i and i polish it and i uh you know i feel good about it you know it's really this reminds me of our last coffee that we had together when we were talking about burnout and especially how now it's always the case that i think middle management is more prone to some kind of burnout especially now and i think what you're saying is it could be a strategy because sometimes like you say there are things that you can't necessarily the achievements by the team and that are good things and that we want to not just acknowledge them but celebrate them together and that's an experience in itself they're very obvious and hopefully we might need to look for smaller things depending on times and celebrate the smaller things when we're going through really difficult times and just keep an eye out for small things that the team does that we can celebrate i think that's one thing but the other is also that they might be like you say things that we need to celebrate that we've done and to catch i haven't have i had to do this before yes i've had i haven't had to lay off people but i have had conversations with freelancers that i wasn't re-engaging they're very different conversations but i think handling something like that that's difficult that you can't then bring back to anyone else in the team to say hey i handled that getting rid of that person really well but it might be something that you need to acknowledge and even and even say okay well now i'm going to treat myself to really nice coffee in a cafe because i did that well and i'm thinking that we often miss out on opportunities to do that and to celebrate with a small c by ourselves and it's not as joyful as celebrating with that and of course we can celebrate that then outside of work with people we trust and then we can say and we can put a context in but i'm just thinking that actually small celebrations would be a really good strategy to minimize burnout absolutely yeah it's very sustaining and also it can help you understand at a personal level what are the things that you get the most satisfaction from so for me uh when people like the you know if we got like 10 higher productivity i just didn't really care you know like i understood it was good for business but it never really got me excited you know or if we sold more widgets or whatever like it was good but it wasn't i never found it that motivating but if i felt like i'd had an impact on a person for me that that would really move me and by focusing on it a bit you know by thinking oh well so that was important to me i feel really good about the work that i did there it helped me understand how i could feel like a good manager and feel like i was making a difference within what i could control to go back to your example one of the things that i started to become quite motivated by was trying to uh navigate a situation as sort of as humanly as i could sort of as genuinely as i could and it didn't mean necessarily i was going to do like you know i might be firing someone for a performance or i might be uh telling somebody that their project i've been working on for six months it's getting canned and it's going to get released but knowing that the things that were meaningful to me the moments that i thought were wins were when i could look at it and go oh i feel like the way i did that was you know better than it could have gone i think i did it uh in a way that i'm proud of that was very motivating for me because then i would try and do it again you know i'd try and approach those situations in that way and to your point it meant that i could come through a situation and go well that was actually an unpleasant thing to do and it was a uh it was a difficult thing to go through but i could you know secretly or with you know trusted peers or whatever i could look at it and go i'm actually proud of the role that i played with within you know with the cards that i had yeah yeah yeah finally this conversation's gone in a different place than i thought when we started which i really like and it's that a lot of importance and i mean it is like big celebrations for big things like big achievements or big wins there's there's a lot of importance placed in those and rightly they are moments of joy and celebrations are also a way of bringing people together around one thing and one good thing which is great but you're making me think about the power of recognizing treasuring and celebrating marking i think celebrations are markers aren't they and then marking the smaller the much smaller things especially when we're struggling especially when things aren't great and the power of of that well they don't have to be small to you i think that's the important thing here yeah it's small as in um no yeah yeah i think smaller as in i think they look like they're small like quantity wise like i don't know it's really interesting as well what is a small and what is what is yeah but like that big win where your team meets some impossible target and you know uh and gets out the other side that stuff is very rare and and improbable you know which is why you celebrate and it's great that it does get celebrate but sort of pretty easy to celebrate it's pretty obvious but as a manager the most meaningful thing might actually be i really hate conflict and advocating for myself and yet i asked my manager for a pay rise and i didn't flush red in the face and i didn't stumble my words and i stated my case clearly i didn't get emotional about it and that was incredible for me you know what a what a milestone and you might consider that like on the surface of it might maybe you didn't even get the pay rise but you asked for it it might seem like a small uh a small thing but for the individual you know i think it's so subjective i think for the individual that can be a huge thing and i guess what i found more and more important in my management in my leadership practice was recognizing what those sort of moments were or those motivators were for me so like you say you know you can uh you can identify them and then you can treasure them and then they sustain you love that well i would love to hear what others around the table think of this because i think that there's so many layers to this conversation i thought we were just going to talk about pizza or coffee um i would love to say to know what people are thinking also how they celebrate in particular what i would class as the smaller things that actually sometimes are the bigger things so the visibly smaller things but um that count those things that do count so management cafe podcast at gmail.com and you can also find a contact form over at management cafe podcast.com and uh tim anything that you want to let us know before before we close this episode number 50 oh i just want to congratulate you on getting to 50 episodes and we were 50 last year which is also an achievement i think i love the number 50 lately yeah well this is a big this is a big celebration yes yes yes so uh so i think i can find no better way than celebrating with you and our listeners today so listeners coffee is over for us but hopefully not for another 50 episodes completely coffee's over for us now it's over to you thank you for joining us at the management cafe remember you can subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use to make sure you get your weekly dose of reflection our website is management.cafe and on twitter we are at managementcafe that's all for this episode from myself like or t and our fellow co-hosts thank you for listening Transcription by CastingWords