In any team setting, whether in a small startup or a large corporation, success is often framed as a collective achievement. Teams come together to collaborate, share ideas, and solve problems, and when goals are met, the praise is usually directed to the team as a whole. And while team recognition is vital for morale and cohesion, it’s equally important to acknowledge the specific contributions of individual team members. Recognizing the unique contributions of individuals not only fuels personal motivation but also fosters an environment where team members feel valued and empowered.
As a manager, recognizing the contributions of individuals within your team is not always as straightforward as it may seem. It requires courage. Let’s be honest: it’s easy to fall into the trap of focusing only on collective success because, as the leader, you are often seen as the person who is responsible for the overall outcome. However, the work your team does is rarely the product of a single person’s effort. It’s a collective endeavor where every individual’s contribution matters.
So, why does recognizing individual contributions take courage?
Practical Tips for Recognizing Individual Contributions
At the end of the day, while team success is crucial and should be celebrated, recognizing the contributions of individual team members is just as important. It acknowledges their hard work, motivates them to keep improving, and fosters a more engaged, productive, and loyal workforce. For managers, it takes courage to step back and recognize that the success of the team is the result of many hands, not just your own. By courageously giving credit where it’s due, you not only build trust with your team but also strengthen the overall performance and morale of your team.
So next time your team hits a milestone or completes a project, take a moment to call out the specific contributions that helped make it happen. It’s a small action that will pay big dividends in loyalty, engagement, and success.
This month, have a little fun by giving a teammate a bold shout-out for work they have done as a member of your team. It is easy to overlook an individual contribution when it is part of a group effort, especially when you are managing the team. But a team is a group of individuals and the individual effort matters.
Compliment their hard work, recognize a job well done, or give them a boost with a small act of appreciation and let them know you have the courage to give them the credit they deserve. Snap a photo or leave a note to make it extra memorable!
Being authentic is being unafraid to say you’re not perfect or that you don’t actually know it all. For some reason, I’ve never been afraid to say “I don’t know.” It has never occurred to me to try to hide my lack of knowledge from clients, my employees, my bosses, or my peers, even when I’m hired to be an expert. I never see saying “I don’t know” as a weakness. Part of that is that I always follow “I don’t know” with an important addendum: “But I’ll find out and get right back to you with the answer.” And I always make sure I do.
Admitting that you don’t know it all is a cornerstone of being authentic; if you can’t admit to gaps in your knowledge or experience, you’re wasting a lot of energy keeping up a front and pretending you do. Frankly, I find the very thought of that exhausting.
I remember a moment early in my career that was my first warning signal about inauthentic communication from a leader. During my onboarding as a branch manager, I received a disturbing piece of advice: “If you’re asked something, never say, ‘I don’t know.’ Call me, and I’ll give you the answer.”
Yikes. I wondered to myself how I’d get through the first few meetings, having to call my manager every ten minutes or so to touch base with my answer lifeline. It was a chilling preview of this manager’s communication style. And it was one of the reasons I committed to saying “I don’t know” whenever it was true; I also encouraged my team to do the same.
Chris Ballard, GM for the Indianapolis Colts, explains how it became more and more difficult to get honest feedback the higher he climbed in an organization. He understands it’s not so easy to tell the GM of an NFL team that he is wrong (unless you’re on Twitter, which is ablaze with people pointing out his mistakes). But for people who work with him, from assistants to scouts to coaches, he values their opinions. “Tell me what you think, not what I want to hear,” he says. “It may make someone mad at first, but the feedback is better for everyone.” He works to create a culture where people are encouraged to speak up.
When you allow your team members to admit they don’t know something, you also encourage and engage their sense of curiosity. Instead of seeing probing questions as challenges to their authority, they can get curious about the answers. They can reconnect with the intrinsic satisfaction of learning and growing on the job. They can also relax; they come to understand you hired them for who they are and what they’ve learned so far—and for what they can learn from their new experiences.
Social scientists have identified this mindset: it’s called a growth mindset. People with a growth mindset believe they can master just about any new skill or challenge if they study or work hard enough. When you expect people to come in as fully formed experts, you’re encouraging a fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset believe that abilities are mostly innate (I’m either smart or not so smart) and interpret failure as the lack of necessary basic abilities. In other words, if your team thinks they have to know it all, they’ll spend most of their mental energy trying to fake it or cover up their lack of knowledge, rather than actually learning more. Not a recipe for success.
Being afraid to admit you don’t know it all is all too common. I once worked with a leader who was highly accomplished but was too insecure to admit that she didn’t know it all. Her role was an important one that was responsible for a wide range of HR functions, from payroll to succession strategy; having held that role later myself, I can say from experience there’s no way to be an expert in every specialty.
But rather than admit that, she’d spend hours of her time and her division leads’ time being briefed before making an appearance in front of the executive committee. She’d memorize lines like an actor preparing for a role—the role being an expert—which, in my mind, was completely counterproductive, an obvious front, and less than effective since any level of detailed follow-up questions was beyond her. She’d wind up relying on her team to report back on the answers anyway.
Here’s the thing: as a leader, you’re responsible for outcomes. You need to deliver, for example, a recommendation for the best benefit plan for the company. That’s your job. But your job doesn’t include being the resident expert on benefit plans. Your job does include hiring—and trusting—the best experts you can find for your team. Hiring people with strengths in areas you don’t possess is both honest and smart. And telling them and your team that you are deferring to the expertise of others is showing your vulnerability and confidence.
There was another problem with the manager’s performance in front of the executive committee: by taking all the opportunities for herself, she deprived her team of their chance to shine. Access to leadership is one of the best rewards you can give your staff. Sure, it takes confidence to let a direct report represent you. But true leadership is winning through the team, not on your own.
