How to Find Wins—Even in Hard Times

When You Can’t Win the Game, Change It

You and your team need to feel wins to stay engaged. It’s biological. And sometimes, finding wins is easy—you gained a big client, or you got a project done under budget and under time. Other times it’s...not so easy.

What happens when the wins are hard to find? In stressful times, when there’s a high workload or timing for a big project is tight or you’re facing losing an important client—or, I don’t know, there’s a global pandemic (I know, sounds crazy, but it happens!)—wins are scarce.

We’re in a high-stress time.

We’re losing our accounts.

The board’s really scrutinizing us.

All you can see is the negative, because you’re conditioned to see that more quickly and clearly than the positive.

During the pandemic, one of my clients, a branding agency, was struggling. Most of their clients had paused operations, and had put non-essential expenses—like brand consulting—on hold.

I worked with them to find the wins, and was met with a brick wall: There are no wins. Everything is awful.

So, instead I focused them on recalibrating their goals. After all, when you can’t win the game, change it.

The questions I had them focus on became, “What are our goals right now? What is a win right now?”

The answer was clear: make sure that when, if, circumstances changed, all their clients would come back.

Once this new goal was set, ideas started flowing. Within days, a series of return-to-work contracts were created and signed with as many current clients as possible. It wasn’t the win they originally thought they needed, with the goalpost shifted, it was still a score.

When times get tough, creating new goals is essential. Your team needs to feel like they’re heading toward something achievable they can celebrate. Sometimes that can only happen if goals are adjusted.

How do you do this? First, recognize and acknowledge that things have shifted. As a leader, you don’t have the luxury of denial. Ask yourself what is achievable and realistic in the current situation.

Once you create more long-term objectives, though, you’re not finished. Remember, they need to be broken down into smaller, achievable wins, that your team can celebrate along the way.

The Goal Gradient Effect

Everyone has a different definition of a win, and your work as a leader involves consistently discovering what motivates your team members.

As a leader practicing Platinum, your first step is finding out what qualifies as a win to your team.

People generally perceive a win as anything you can check off that represents progress toward a goal. And the closer the win appears, the more motivated you are to drive toward it. This is called the goal gradient effect, and has been studied by psychologists and behavioral scientists for decades; the closer you are to the finish line, the faster you run.

Showing wins visually goes a long way. When there’s a large, looming project, having a shared whiteboard, physical or virtual, is helpful. On the board, divide the project into sections, or mini-goals that must be hit along the way to accomplish the ultimate project goal.

As you complete small goals, check them off and celebrate in whatever way makes sense for your team. When you frame it that way, in measurable sections instead of we still have 75 percent to go, the feeling of unending stress is replaced with the feeling of success, of accomplishment.

A few years back, I was brought in to work with a thirteen-person team halfway through a three-year conversion of many company systems. A year and a half into the conversion, they had lost motivation. On top of that, the team had lost five key members due to downsizing. They were working night and day with almost no time off. 

The energy in the room I walked into wasn’t just low—it was negative, defeated, bad.

“All right, guys,” I said, clapping my hands. “We need to find some wins.” I stood in front of a large whiteboard, marker in hand, poised to write down anything that was called out.

At first, I heard crickets. Then, finally, a few comments began to spill out—but they were dire.

“There’s nothing positive going on.”

“It’s so stressful.”

“We’re so overwhelmed.”

“Everybody sucks.” (Ouch.)

I tried a different approach. “Okay, let’s start really small. Did anybody...I don’t know, get through the week without a Zoom meeting crashing?” I asked.

A few nodded. “That’s positive!” I said. “Let’s put it on the board. What else?”

At first, it was quiet. As I said, these people were burnt. But then:

“Actually, my Zoom did crash, but Frank was on the call and he was able to finish it for me.”

“The team in Arizona finally got back to us after about a million follow-ups.”

I could see them starting to realize that a win is any progress.

“They brought in lunch for us on Monday. That was fun and a nice surprise.”

“Oh yeah, and then Lisa helped me with this thing and I was able to leave early...”

Each win they named, no matter how small, I wrote on the whiteboard. Soon we had a whiteboard full of wins. Being able to see the wins visually shifted the energy of the room— people started to unfreeze a little. It was only the beginning of my work with them, and we still had a long way to go, but it was a positive start that made room for practical optimism going forward.

As a Platinum Leader, you know the way your team wants to be treated—and you know what individually motivates each of them. Two actions can facilitate this.

Action #1: Ask

You have an idea what wins could look like for your team, but you need their input as well. Ask these questions:

• “What does a win feel like to you?”
• “As you look back on this project, what were some wins you experienced? What felt good?
• What gave you a sense of accomplishment?

You might be surprised by what you hear—because, remember, what feels good to someone else may not be what feels good to you. If you find yourself thinking, Seriously? That would pump you up? when a team member shares their answers, it might be time to go Platinum with them to make sure you’re on the same page.

Action #2: Pay Attention

The second thing you need to do is to be on the lookout for progress. When you spot it, call it out:

I know this was a tough week, but despite that, I noticed that you ultimately were able to resolve this problem—it’s been dragging on forever! That’s a big win!

Just calling it out is a celebration. When you point out a win someone missed, they’ll get a dopamine hit.

Once you spark a “wins” mindset, momentum builds. Soon, your whole team will be speaking the language of wins, propelling themselves and each other forward. 

Celebrate, Celebrate, Celebrate

Progress is the key to motivation, and motivation is essential to achieving goals. Celebrating any form of progress isn’t silly or indulgent—it’s critical. 

The more frequently people experience a sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run. Here are three of my favorite ways to practice the frequent recognition of progress:

• Celebrate in the moment. It’s easy for leaders to register a win internally and move on to what feels like a more pressing issue. Instead, pause, and take 30 seconds to acknowledge wins—both team members’ and your own.
• Make sharing wins a weekly agenda item. Set aside time in a weekly team meeting to reflect on wins and share them aloud. 
• Create a “Win Wall.” One of my clients designated a whiteboard as their “Win Wall.” As people experience wins, they write them on the wall. Very big and very little wins are encouraged. People also write wins about someone else—Zach crushed it in that board meeting!

Find Wins for Everyone—Including You

Often in organizations, people who get recognized and celebrated for wins are the ones who crossed the goal line, and the people who did a lot of vital work to enable a team’s success get overlooked. Everybody needs the motivation—everybody needs the win. 

Who made sure everything was accurate? Who created the document? Who supported the project in any way? Those people need to be celebrated.

Leaders often neglect to notice their own wins along the way, so take time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished, too. Navigating interpersonal issues, responding to feedback without being defensive, getting a proposal out, finalizing a budget, meeting a performance metric...these are all wins. 

And they all deserve to be celebrated!

Read more about keeping your team motivated by finding and celebrating wins in my book Spark Brilliance, available now on Amazon.