May 14, 2024

The connection between leadership and celebration

I’ve hit my celebration quota for May. 

And it’s not even mid month. 😂

All around the country we’re celebrating for LOTS of reasons:

  • Graduation
  • Mother’s Day
  • Cinco de Mayo 
  • End of school
  • End of sports
  • Kentucky Derby 
  • Memorial Day

So, we do know how to celebrate.

We just have a problem when it comes to celebrating ourselves.

Some of us, in fact, avoid it altogether. 

I wonder how this is affecting the way we lead our teams and families? 

When we look at mental health in the workplace right now (May is ALSO Mental Health month), we see that 77% of workers are experiencing work-related stress. 57% of those people are experiencing things like exhaustion, demotivation, isolation and feelings of quitting. 

Consider the positivity ratio we discussed last week. To balance one negative event or emotion, we need three positive ones. Looks like we’ve got the negativity covered. Let’s triple-down on the positive. 

It’s time to activate our celebration levers, the way we know how to do on our favorite holidays. 

We need to run families, organizations and teams with a spirit of acknowledgement and celebration.

And this starts with ourselves.

“Great leaders find the way to appreciate progress in themselves and progress in others.” -Tony Robbins

Acknowledging our accomplishments builds self worth, and it does the same when you acknowledge it in others.

So in honor of this month’s celebrations, we decided to model it here. To take a minute to celebrate and share the stories from our Engage leadership group and what they are acknowledging in themselves.

Here’s what coaching has allowed some of our clients to celebrate:

“Celebrating setting my boundaries and seeing them through!! I’m not trying to do it all but do the right things that are important to me as a mom and a professional!” -C., Exec, 

“Through coaching I have learned how to step out of my comfort zone and choose courage and growth over comfort; which has led to huge dividends in both my personal life and work life.” -J., Director, 

“Celebrating the camaraderie in Engage that allows me to feel less alone in my journey…it reminds me to check my mindset and reframe my thoughts, which changes everything when I do. Coaching has changed my life!” -E., Sales, 

“Celebrating my ongoing commitment to coaching (4 years), personal growth, and learning what self-care is for me.”-J., Exec, 

Now you – what are you celebrating this month? Write it down, then go ask someone in your world the same question. 

Imagine what kind of world we would live in if we were paying this kind of message forward? Creating a culture where people were celebrating growth and progress? Our experience of the world would be so different. 

So cheers to May. May it be MORE of what you’re looking for.