Be The Celebrator

Newsletter Catch Up Service:

• Don’t outsource your on-the-job thinking and learning

• A funny name for a critical skill

• Change is like adding milk to coffee

I’ve been The Celebrator recently—that’s because there’s been a wave of good career news in my professional circle lately.

Not too controversial, right?

But as someone who has mindlessly slipped into a more passive joy-sharing at an inopportune time or two, let me express from personal experience that it requires effort to recover a relationship from even a brief oversight in an inopportune lack of enthusiasm.

Being The Celebrator means taking what researcher Shelly Gable calls an “active constructive” stance responding to someone’s good news with genuine enthusiasm, engagement, and support.

It turns out that sharing good news is a rather intimate experience, even more intimate than sharing bad news, and the response from whom you share the news with is critical to the ongoing quality of the relationship.

It’s easy to understand why that’s the case when contrasting being the The Celebrator with the three other response types in Gable’s research:

Passive Constructive: "Oh, that's nice. That must be exciting," said without much enthusiasm.

Passive Destructive: "Oh... a promotion. Hmm … Hey, did you finish those slides? I really need them for my meeting tomorrow."

Active Destructive: "A promotion? Wow, that's going to mean a lot more responsibility and stress. Are you sure you're ready for that?"

Active constructive responses, the response type of The Celebrator, enhance relationships and build social capital by promoting intimacy, trust, and satisfaction through genuine enthusiasm for another person’s good news. The Celebrator approach amplifies positive emotions, encourages sharing, and demonstrates investment in the news sharer’s wellbeing. When we consistently embrace The Celebrator's spirit, cheering on each other's successes with genuine excitement, we create a supportive environment contributing to relationship success.

So when someone shows up with good news, be The Celebrator: genuine interest and support for someone’s good news is a boon to your professional relationships.

Bonuses!

Gable’s research reminded me of this Brian Koppelman standby: “Say what your dream is too soon and someone will shoot it down. Train yourself not to do that.”

And this—The Welcome to Wrexham opening title sequence, a reminder for personal celebrating: “Don’t forget to sing when you win.”

Around The Water Cooler ⛲

Niels Pflaeging invited me to join he and Rijon Erickson on their weekly show “BetaCodex Live” for two (!) episodes discussing the two modes of organization development: transformation and optimization. Niels has been a super-influencer on my thinking about organizations and work. So it was cool, it was fun, and I learned!

“When we use a personality assessment as a way to rationalize our differences (or even similarities) with others, we construct artificial rooms in our minds where some people are allowed in and others aren’t. This construct can be incredibly limiting to our ability to find connection and common ground with people.” Please Don't Put me in a Box: Why I vehemently distrust all personality assessments

“Most productivity books (and personal development and leadership books) treat you and the world as some kind of machine. That is, a complicated (not complex) closed system that can be “fixed” and “optimised” for performance. Thus, we see “formulas”, “rules” and “hacks” for productivity. These often “goal-driven” approaches are fine for formulaic work within stable and predictable/routine contexts (like working in a factory or training for the olympics). Yet, our most important and ambitious projects are rarely simple or straightforward (else we’d have already done them). They’re complex.” A Wizard’s Guide to “Being Productive”

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How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was. Here’s my take on we’re working through.