Why You Should Always Celebrate The Assists

I was born in Canada, where hockey is just part of life. Heck, 80 percent of the country can skate, and 51 percent can skate backwards. Hockey is deeply embedded in the culture of families and even the language. Parents will say things like, “Remember to keep your head up and your stick on the ice,” to kids on their first day of school.

In Canada, hockey isn’t life or death … it is WAY more important than that!

Now that I live in New Jersey, I’m a big Devils fan

(the hockey team, not the evil spirit type).

I go to a lot of games and see lots of things that make this a unique sport. Here are a few of my favorites.

1. You can fight and not get kicked out of the game. Imagine two soccer players punching it out and then getting five minutes of time-out before coming back into the game. But that happens in hockey.
2. You can freely substitute anytime during the game or “on the fly.” The average shift is around one minute. The game is fast and furious.
3. You don’t have to play with a goalie. Teams will pull their goalie at the end if they are down, and that can make for exciting endings to a lot of games.

One of my favorite things about the game is they track assists—not just for the last player to have touched the puck before the scorer, but the one before that too. So two assists can be given for each goal. Many sports record assists, but hockey records twice as many. The best players are ranked by their point totals and goals and assists (first and second) are all valued equally. I absolutely love that! Wayne Gretzky has the most points ever in a career with 894 goals, 1,963 assists for a total of 2,857 points. Hockey does a great job in celebrating the support for the goal.

Players can score an unassisted goal. They can even score with just one assist. But according to Hockey Analytics, only five percent all goals in the NHL are unassisted. And only 15 percent have just one assist. That means some 80 percent of goals were touched at least twice before the puck went into the net. In other words, there is rarely a goal without an assist. That would make a great bumper sticker, right next to “My Other Car is a Zamboni!”

So how does this apply in business?

Often, we are good about celebrating the individual highlights. The goals if you will. But often we aren’t as good at celebrating those who helped. We all need to get better at celebrating the support we get from others, those who do their jobs every day so we can do ours. Are we seeing and recognizing the people who make goals possible? Often these folks are in the back of the house. Maybe they are in Accounting, HR, Legal, the maintenance and cleaning crews. These people keep our businesses moving. When the last time you called down to maintenance

and said, “I just want to let you know that the temperature is just right today. Thank you!” They might think you should take a quick drug test, but do it anyway.

So how do we make recognizing assists part of our culture? AT the Major League Soccer team Toronto FC, Bill Manning is the president. He has found a unique way of celebrating the assist. In his all-hands monthly meeting, he calls on someone randomly on the team to come up to present an award to another team member—in another team. That team member calls out someone (again on another team) who made a difference that month. We watched once as a sales professional called out someone in accounting, who collects the money when he sold a season ticket package. That’s an important assist. It was wonderful to see the team keeping track of all the help they’d received during the week, just in case they were called on in the meeting.

That’s one idea. What are some of yours? When you celebrate as a team, you create momentum that carries you to more wins and more celebrations. How can you get better at celebrating the assists in your world? I am eager to hear about what you do.

Keep skating, and don’t forget to

... put the biscuit in the basket!?

Love and always with gratitude,

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