Completion And Language

Here are my takeaways from the L. David Marquet book Leadership is Language about the completion of work.

Completion: It is crucial to mark the end of work and not do the work continuously. Think of work in terms of smaller chunks, and when one chunk is complete, reflect, collaborate, celebrate, and improve before continuing with the next chunk of work. 

There are multiple reasons why marking the end of the working period is important.

• One, it helps change the course of action if needed, as in this fast-changing world, the work begins to diverge from the optimal. So marking the end of work serves as a way of resetting ourselves mentally from our past decisions and allowing us to move on.
• Two, marking the end of the work, give a chance to celebrate. Without completion, we do not feel a sense of progress and accomplishment. If there is no opportunity to tell a story or reinforce behaviour that increases stress in people, For better mental health, the work should be completed, as in continuous work people feel stuck.
• Third, completing the work gives us the opportunity to stop, reflect, and improve, which leads to learning and growth.

How to move from continuation to completion:

1- Chunk work for frequent completes early, few completes late: 

Earlier in the project, multiple decisions have to be made, so plan for frequent completions to enable learning and tweaking of decisions if needed. The focus is on improvement. Later in the project, when most of the decisions are already made and less feedback is needed, plan for fewer completions and more uninterrupted work.

2- Celebrate with, not for: 

It’s important to understand the proper way to celebrate. Celebration does not mean praise. By saying “I am so proud of you” or “good job,” we assume that the leader has the right to judge and evaluate and it encourages people’s pleasing mentality. Instead of having the feeling of internal joy because of the accomplishment itself, the source of satisfaction becomes external, i.e., making their leader happy and feeling proud. 

Celebrating, on the other hand, is appreciating without evaluating and observing without judging. Celebrate by describing what you have observed by using descriptive words like “I see” and “I noticed”.e.g.

• I see that you have organized the presentation into three sections; I have your points in my head now.
• It looks like the product will launch on time. Your team has coordinated with all the departments.

Be specific and leave judgment and evaluation out. Instead, describe the action and how that made things better. 

Examples:

Celebration for:

“You showed great leadership in getting your team delivered on time” This statement presents a person’s behaviour as being a great leader, as evaluated by the person who is celebrating for him. It encourages the person who is being celebrated to repeat the same behaviour to earn more praise. He is being evaluated by someone’s eyes and it is something they do not have any control over. 

Celebration with:

“I saw you coordinating frequently with your team to deliver on time; it looked like a disciplined delivery process.” This statement empowers the individual by labelling the behaviour effort, which is under their control. Also, it stimulates learning and risk-embracing behaviour.

3- Focus on behaviour, not characteristics

When providing feedback and to improve performance, celebrate what people have control over, that is, their behaviour and their efforts, not their characteristics like the ability to be a deep thinker or great leader.

Examples:

• Say “you worked hard to resolve this issue” instead of “you are good problem solver.”
• Say, “it looks like it took difficult cross-departmental coordination to deliver this project” instead of, “I am proud you got this done.”
• Say, “ thank you; detecting that issue and calling for pause will help us solve the problem properly once and for all” instead of, “great job calling for pause.”

4- Focus on journey, not destination 

At completion, do not focus on the destination alone; invite others to share their journey and tell their story. Some of the following questions can be used to invite others to tell their story:

• Tell me what key decisions you needed to make.
• What are some of the hurdles your team had to overcome?
• How did you come up with that idea?
• What was the toughest part of the project?
• What made this project fun or rewarding?
• What are some of the inspirations you used when working on this project?
• Tell me more about…
• How did you overcome that?

Start with what and how questions, keep them short, and leave room for answering the question in detail.

A study has shown that inviting people to tell the story of how they achieved their goal makes them think about the goal attainment as a mile marker in the greater journey rather than the final milestone and if they think this way, they are more likely to continue with the behaviour that helped them achieve their goal.