I had planned to tell my team what we had achieved this year. Instead, I asked them to tell me.
Annual reviews usually happen in private 1:1s. I do those too. But at the one-year mark, I wanted to try something different: look back at the year together and celebrate the highlights as a whole team.
My plan was a presentation of all the achievements, prepared by myself. My agenda was full and time ran out, and I hadn't finished the preparation. So I changed the plan. I drew a timeline of the year on the interactive whiteboard and asked everyone to add 2–3 moments they were most proud of. They didn't stop at 3 moments. Then each one explained the moments they wrote. One colleague pointed to a moment on the timeline and said that was when they really felt they had become part of the team. When they spoke their moments, you could feel their pride and joy. Some decisions I had worried about turned out to be moments the team actually appreciated.
I could have spent hours telling them what we achieved. They showed me what the year meant to them in much less time.
As a leader, it's easy to become the person who summarizes everything. But sometimes the better job is to create the space and let people tell the story themselves.
The year is approaching the end. How do you celebrate yearly milestones with your team? Do you hold space for them to reflect together?
This is part of my "100 Days of Year One" series. Follow along as I share what I've learned in my first year as Head of Data and Cloud.