What's your way to celebrate consulting team members and clients?

Recognize that different people may have varying preferences when it comes to how they like to be celebrated or appreciated. Some may enjoy public recognition, while others may prefer more private gestures. Recognizing and celebrating the achievements and contributions of consulting team members and clients is vital for fostering a positive work environment and maintaining strong relationships. Take the time to understand what each team member and client values and enjoys. This could involve having one-on-one conversations, sending out surveys, or simply observing their interests and preferences over time.

You have to know your people. What moves them? What drives them? What makes them feel seen, felt and heard? Lean in to those and respond accordingly. For me, I loved being able to have a seat at the table when I proved I could do the work, handle clients, and deal with difficult conversations in a professional way. I wanted in on the strategy sessions, the client meetings, the deeper discussions, not the task rabbit requirements. Find out what moves your team and go for it!

Be genuine and authentic with your team. They need to know you care, that you aren't doing it out of obligation and that the intentional actions you are taking will drive them to further feel purpose and meaning to continue to improve in their performance.

While it may not seem appropriate on the surface. Understanding the 5 love languages will give you great insight into how people like to be rewarded. If you can identify their love language you can identify the form a reward could take: The 5 Love Languages are: 1. Words of affirmation. 2. Quality time. 3. Physical touch. 4. Acts of service. 5. Receiving gifts. I shouldn't have to say it, but apply these appropriately given the workplace environment.

Nothing is worse than getting feedback on an annual review (even good feedback) when the situation happened 10 months ago. Be timely - if your team member did something well, congratulate them then and celebrate the win!

The classic example of this is rewarding someone with a nice bottle of wine or scotch. You may not know their relationship with alcohol, and it may not be a positive one. You won't always get it right, but seek to be aware of the sensitivities of different rewards and be open to learning when you get it wrong.

Be consistent on this. Don't just provide great feedback and celebrate it because it's a big client. Celebrate the activities, attitudes and actions that you want to see your team emulate consistently. When you celebrate it consistently, the actions come more consistently.

You can achieve a lot by celebrating not only successes, but the actual learnings from failures. Simply gather the team for a retrospective session and brainstorm on the possibilities to do things differently. At the same time, celebrate the team's achievement in defining the outcomes of this session by organizing joint activity. In my experience do it in a way that is the most suitable for the team (e.g. don't force the full blown team buidling if the simple gathering/cooking/hiking/walking is more engaging for the team).

Be open to asking them specifically what makes them feel seen, felt and heard and how can you do a better job of celebrating them in their journey of professional development. I promise you they will tell you.