Keep being you

Feeling valued and appreciated for what you do every day matters.  In fact, I was just reading an interesting article where Google noted that the key to great teamwork is actually.... Being nice.  By creating an environment where people feel psychologically safe, we give people the opportunity to share ideas and their best selves without fear of humiliation or retribution.

Part of driving that safe culture is promotion of kindness and respect, and it starts with acknowledging each other's successes.  And its equally as important to give that feedback to our leaders, who don't get the satisfaction of completion of discrete tasks to keep them energized.  Most leaders only ever hear the bad feedback.  Often times this is received from both ends, leaders above flowing bad down and direct reports pushing bad up.  This is one of the reasons that when I mentor someone and they are on the fence about leading people, I always encourage them to take the jump.  At best, its a great match and they find a passion that is very different than leading engineering projects.  At worst, that person walks away with a new view of what it takes to fill a leadership role and maybe has a little more empathy for the folks still willing to serve the organization in this capacity.

In trying to drive this sense of teaming in my own department, I recently held a team poster contest.  Rules were simple, each team had to include all the team, not use digital imaging and got $20 to spend on props.  The team that I deemed "most creative" won pie at their next team meeting as a prize and my plan was to get a poster made of each picture and hung outside the team manager's door.  I honestly was very unsure how this was going to go over and was worried that participation would be limited.

When the contest end date rolled around, I was dumbfounded by the 5 teams' results.  Every group participated.  There was such clear hard work illustrated that in the end, I picked EVERY team to win the prize and ultimately made a "category" each team won under.  Here's the email I sent out to the department (photo modified to protect the innocent!)

"Precision Strike Department,

first off, let me say I hold a pretty high bar for costumed/themed contests.  I was also a little skeptical of the group's willingness to participate in something that was probably a little uncomfortable.  So I was very excited to see the level of creativity you all brought to bear on what was intended to be a fun teaming experience!  I've given this a lot of thought over the weekend and since I feel there was pretty significant participation all around, each team will win pie/dessert of choice as part of your next team meeting.  L5s, please work with Jenny to coordinate the treats and printouts of your team poster!

And here are the AWARD CATEGORY WINS by team, in no specific order.  

Best Manual Construction, literally...  - CT3, CASE for change, building our next generation of Tool Awesomeness

Creepiest/Most Realistic Award, I will have nightmares about this! - Strategic, The Walking Dead

Best Usage of Team Hidden Talents Award, aka "the rulebreakers" ;o) - Fighter/Vision Systems, Caricatures <assuming caricatures are far enough off real image, i left the faces here and just removed names; if you can recognize any of these folks and are NOT a RC person OR married to one, you ALSO win a prize!>

Best Sports - RMS, Keeping it Linked!

<Picture lost continuity with the blurred out faces, so unfortunately no pic to show here>

Best Single Prop, thanks for plane usage! - Trainer/UAS, The Aviators

I belatedly thought to share the poster results with my leader.  Within minutes of me forwarding the results email, I got a hangout from my boss telling me the following: "This is the thing that made my day today.  What a great idea.  Keep being you."

Hearing that makes the hard days worth it.