Take Stock of Your Achievements

It’s December and the end of the calendar year, so it’s a natural time to reflect on the past 12 months and think about all the things that occurred. Far too often we get stuck in thinking about what we didn’t accomplish, which leads to disappointment or frustration.

In the video, I’m going to share why it’s important to take stock of your achievements, even small ones, and to remind you that you should be doing this any time of the year!

Take Stock of Your Achievements!

It’s December and the end of the calendar year, so it’s a natural time to reflect on the past 12 months and think about all the things that occurred. Far too often we get stuck in thinking about what we didn’t accomplish, which leads to disappointment or frustration.

In the video, I’m going to share why it’s important to take stock of your achievements, even small ones, and to remind you that you should be doing this any time of the year!

Moving Beyond an Annual Evalution

Acknowledging an individual’s accomplishment sounds like part of the process you undertake to conduct an annual performance evaluation process. That’s true, but what I’m suggesting here is separate and different, even though there is some overlap. The goal with focusing only on the achievements is two-fold: intended to ensure that you and others are clear on the good things happening and it will boost productivity and excitement because of that recognition and appreciation.

There are other benefits as well. When you set aside a time to review your accomplishments, it forces you to think about your goals. So if you didn’t even have any targets that you were trying to meet, well, this is a great time to put some in place!

I once had a most interesting conversation with a person who worked in a public school system. His administrator would have an annual requirement for each of his staff members to set an annual personal and professional goal for themselves. The administrator put no specific expectations on what the goal should be, only that the person really wanted to achieve it. This employee was filled with success stories he shared with me that he pursued and accomplished over the years because of this initiative that was started by the administrator. As managers, remember you have a lot of power to help people achieve their dreams.

A Closer Look at the Process

What does this process look like? It can be as simple or complex as you like. But here are my guidelines:

Be consistent. Establish regular check points when you make a concerted effort to take stock. Maybe December works best for you, and that’s great, but ideally it would be more frequent. No matter how often, make sure you are keeping track of events real time. Maybe it’s joting down a record of something you see in a notepad or an electronic file or database. That makes your review more accurate and easier to pull together.

Capture specific behaviors as well as outcomes. Remember it’s important to recognize the effort in addition to any specific results someone has accomplished.

Here are some examples:

• Someone who has initiated a huge project outside their comfort zone.
• Someone who learned a new software program.
• Someone who offered to help a co-worker for a much-needed task even they dreaded it!
• Retained 100% of key clients this last year.

We want to help reward and recognize those things that are challenging to an individual, that help or support another person and ultimately the organization.

Reap the Benefits of Taking Stock

Why is it so important to take stock of your achievements and the accomplishments of others? Because it’s too easy to get caught up in everyday work and lose track of the good things happening around you. By doing so, you’re going to be boosting productivity and increasing morale for future good things to happen in your organization. So do it now in December, but if you’re watching this another time of year, don’t wait! You get going right away; there are tons of good things happening in your organization that need to be recognized. You go get ‘em!

Be sure to check out other videos in the Learning Resource Center, available to you as a member. Here’s to your Graceful Leadership!