Celebrate good times, come on!

We are so often busy, busy, busy, moving from one project to another. But what would happen if we stopped to celebrate our success and the success of others?

Your team will be more effective

Feeling a sense of belonging to a group has huge mental wellbeing benefits. Mentally fit employees perform better. When you can show gratitude for a job well done, appreciate the different skills and expertise each of the team bring to the group, and you collectively build those bonds through celebrating how far you’ve come, your team will be winning. We all want our team to be pumped for the next challenge.

Your leadership skills will be boosted

If you are fostering a sense of belonging in your colleagues, they will know they can come to you with issues and they will be listened to. That means you have a better sense of how your team is performing and where any issues lie, which you will then be able to resolve early.

Of course, you don’t have to be a ‘boss’ to be a leader, and the ability to bring people together is an important one for anyone in your organisation, and any aspect of your life. Being an ‘includer’ is an amazing leadership skill to have, and practice often.

Your work will have more purpose

So you have used your leadership skills to celebrate your big wins and jobs well done, creating a real sense of belonging.

Guess what all this leads to? A sense of purpose in what you do. Nobody wants to go to work every day feeling like an unimportant cog in a giant wheel. Everyone wants to feels that the contribution they make is for a reason. When you are connected to your colleagues and clients, and the work you do matters, you’ll do your best work.

You’ll see a change in your attitude and behaviour

We all want to be in encouraging environments where we feel like we belong, right? The effect of this on your day to day will be huge. You will find yourself relating to others in a more positive way. You’ll want to provide those around you with that sense of achievement and appreciation, and so will they in return. Win, win!

Studies back all this up. Schools have needed a lot of help to figure out how to make all students feel like they belong in school. Research involving over 4,000 10-18 year-old students in 134 schools in Italy found increasing active student participation in making rules and organising events, encouraging greater freedom of expression and addressing fairness of rules increases a school’s sense of community.  (MindMatters, Relationships and Belonging [PDF 1.5MB]). Maybe there’s something in encouraging creative expression and having everyone participate in events for all workplaces to look into.

When working for a large state government body, the biggest sense of positive change I saw in the workplace came from a simple initiative. Not morning teas, celebratory lunches or honourable mentions about great projects well executed at staff meetings, although these all helped. It was the installation of the ‘Brag Board’ that really made a difference. When you receive negative feedback in your work (as all government workers do), having a place to display the positive emails, the congratulatory notes and the pictures of jobs well done, for all to see, changed the way the team saw their job.

How are you going to celebrate your work and create that sense of meaning in what you do?

Meet the business

Roberta Styles-Wood is interested in what makes us, us. Her company, Lore Makers is a small interactive publishing house that aims to celebrate and reflect on those moments that make up a life. With a background in community education, social marketing and cultural heritage, she works to create a sense of community and meaning in a world that probably needs more of it. She also delivers pick me up parcels to whoever needs more mindful creativity in their lives.