Written by: Erin Carlson Rivera
If you’ve ever worked on a long-term collaboration, you may be familiar with what I call the slog. The slog is the part of the project that comes after you’ve planned and launched your project, but before you’ve seen outcomes. The slog can also come when you have seen some short-term outputs, but it will be years before you reach the longer-term outcomes that got you excited about the project in the first place. The slog is often a place where collaborations start to lose momentum or fall apart.
Addressing The Slog
There is no magic bullet solution to maintaining momentum. If you only have time or capacity to do one additional thing, recognizing contributions to progress is a good place to start. When work is spread across many people it is easy to lose sight of how individual work ties into the group goals. Recognizing the value of smaller steps towards the big picture helps reveal the momentum generated by the collective work of the team.
When we recognize contributions, we also have the opportunity to spot and affirm the strengths of others on our team. As we name the value of different kinds of contributions, we can empower team members to use their strengths more fully.
A Practice for Recognizing Contributions
A good time to recognize contributions is when the group has reached the end of a meeting, milestone, or leg of a larger project. Pause as a team to identify how different people have contributed to your most recent meeting or project phase.
Ask at least 3 of the questions below to help the group notice and share how they’ve seen each other contribute:
- Who asked an important question?
- Who connected ideas in an impactful way?
- Who identified an important challenge to address?
- Who created a welcoming atmosphere?
- Who helped the group move forward?
- What contribution might have gone unnoticed?
Some contributions are easier for us to see than others – sometimes our blind spots get in the way, and some contributions are a bit ‘quieter’ than others. I encourage you to try this practice often. You might be surprised at what you start noticing.
