It’s easy to lose sight of progress when caught up in day-to-day tasks, especially during a long-term project or times of change. When achievements aren’t acknowledged, people can feel their work is invisible, leading to disengagement or disconnection from their purpose. Without check-ins, annual goals might become “time capsules,” and multi-year projects may feel overwhelming or irrelevant. Celebrating successes provides a much-needed boost, reminding teams of the impact of their work and helping reinforce shared goals.
Celebrating wins effectively requires intention. This means being specific with recognition, understanding individual and group preferences, and planning milestones ahead of time.
Wins Worth Celebrating: What to Look For
Everyday accomplishments and progress.
Even when work feels cyclical or doesn’t have distinct endpoints, there are natural opportunities to celebrate. Acknowledging consistent effort, creative problem-solving, or resilience during challenges can be as impactful as celebrating finished projects. This could include completing a hectic period, resolving a recurring issue, or finalizing edits in a course module, etc. By identifying these moments, you can highlight progress and pause to recognize the team's creativity and hard work. Routine acknowledgment ensures no win goes unnoticed.
Short-term wins help sustain momentum.
Some goals or projects can feel overwhelming because of their scale or complexity, mainly because they often require a significant change effort. Recognizing progress helps build confidence and reinforces that the team is on the right path. In his book Leading Change, John P. Kotter highlights the importance of short-term wins because they prove that the efforts are worth it, build morale and motivation, and help fine-tune the strategies. These wins can also turn people who were hesitant or neutral about the new ways of doing things into supporters. Kotter also suggests planning for those short-term wins. Consider how you can plan for and demonstrate progress in the early stages of your project. What might a visible milestone look like in the next few weeks or months? It could be:
- completing the first draft of a grant proposal
- launching an engaging newsletter
- onboarding a new team member to a lab protocol,
- helping a student register for classes that align with their career goals,
- providing personalized feedback to students in a course or
- ensuring all video materials are captioned.
What constitutes a short-term win and when it occurs will vary depending on your team or project. However, identifying milestones in advance allows you to celebrate both the effort and the achievement while maintaining momentum.
Incorporating wins into reflection and learning.
Whether at the end of a meeting, presentation, or project, we often focus on what went wrong or what can be improved. Even when receiving positive feedback, it’s easy to dismiss the positive and not give them the same reflection time as the issues faced during the project. Reframe this by offering an opportunity to reflect on what worked and how it can be applied moving forward. Recognition doesn’t and shouldn’t always have to come from a manager. Encouraging team members to acknowledge each other’s contributions builds relationships and allows wins to be celebrated from multiple perspectives. By framing celebrations as moments for shared learning, you reinforce the team’s capacity to grow and adapt.
Celebrating wins is about more than boosting morale—it’s about reinforcing progress, strengthening team connections, and maintaining focus on shared goals. Thoughtful recognition—whether it’s for individual contributions, team milestones, or the resilience needed to navigate change—ensures that progress is acknowledged and valued.