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News & Notes
A Case for Confetti
Workplace Celebration Is Key to Team-Building
By Major Elizabeth N. Strickland
In twenty years of reading about leadership at the direction of supervisors and commanders, not one book or article I have come across has explored the nexus between confetti and leadership. Yet, I have found confetti—and celebration, in general—to be one of the greatest tools for leading subordinates, building positive cultures, and using celebration to enhance team-building.
I use confetti in many of the workplace celebrations I plan. No, I do not weaponize confetti cannons or impossible-to-clean glitter bombs; I utilize a tablespoon or two of festively colored bits of paper or foil. I have mailed confetti, enlisted the help of friends to deliver a handful of confetti, and have hidden confetti for people to find later. I once talked a general into dumping a coffee cup of confetti on my boss’s head to celebrate her milestone fiftieth birthday. I have used confetti to celebrate birthdays, promotions, farewells, completing races or other extracurricular feats of strength, awards, thesis defenses, expressions of gratitude, weddings, and retirements.
While my favorite celebration tool is well-timed confetti, the true lesson for leaders is that recognizing, publicly acknowledging, and celebrating people and their milestones create a bond among those celebrating together. Not every leader is a “confetti ninja,” and it might not feel natural for a leader to congratulate a teammate on their Army ten-miler personal record with confetti. However, I encourage leaders to borrow this method or discover another form of celebration to use as a leadership tool among their teams. Celebrating our people and their accomplishments is pivotal in building trust, increasing candor, and sky-rocketing morale in any environment.
Confetti Builds Trust
Students of leadership are generally familiar with the importance of trust in team-building. An article in Society for Human Resource Management posits that leadership begins with trust and offers ways for leaders to
build trust.1 Sigma similarly addressed this in an article describing integrity as a leadership imperative and listing different ways to demonstrate integrity as a leader.2 Forbes published a list of ways to build trust, including, among other suggestions, trying to gather teams in informal settings and being transparent.3
Virtually every article on leadership emphasizes the need for trust in a
leader to create a positive culture.
Leadership tips in publications often cite the famous tenets of the
Trust Triangle: authenticity, logic, and empathy.4
The Harvard Business Review (HBR) describes empathy as caring about others and their success and offers tips for demonstrating this level of care to team members.5 Further, HBR advises leaders not to be distracted by their phones and to focus on the team instead of solely on their own interests.6 It is great basic advice, but it is only a small start.
This advice to be honest and transparent and put down the phone while someone is talking should be common sense. These basic principles do not delve far enough into leader actions to show a person they are cared about on a deeper level. An effective leader should strive to not only demonstrate honesty as a basic standard but also make subordinates understand they are valued in the workplace, which, in turn, motivates those subordinates to work hard and contribute to their team.
Leaders can build personal trust by investing their time to better understand the people in their professional environment; a good first step is looking someone in the eye and talking about creative endeavors outside of the assigned legal work. For instance, knowing that a teammate has been working hard at competitive ballroom dance and celebrating their milestones in this area, although wholly unrelated to the military mission, demonstrate a leader’s investment in them and their lives. This level of deeply understanding a person’s pursuits and celebrating their passions builds personal trust above and beyond baseline demonstrations of competence and integrity.
Talking about these passion projects and keeping updated on progress establish space to have personal conversations with each member of the team. If a leader only talks to their team about work tasks, suggested edits to products, and formation times, Soldiers are much less inclined to come to that leader to seek help with personal problems like divorce, financial problems, or sick children. This is important because these issues weigh heavily on people’s minds and impact their behaviors, attitudes, and performance at work. It is natural that if someone’s personal life is in turmoil, they may have difficulty performing at the level expected or previously exhibited. Good leaders want to know this information. Great leaders find ways to help and provide resources.
If leaders talk to their team about their hobbies and goals and follow through with interest in and celebration of their progress, Soldiers will be encouraged to talk with their leadership more. They will trust that bringing personal issues to their leadership teams will be addressed with humanity, humility, and compassion.
Confetti and Candor
Kim Scott became famous for her leadership expertise after developing the concept of radical candor and transforming this idea into a leadership philosophy, book series, podcast, and leadership consulting firm.7 To sum up this philosophy in the briefest way possible, leaders will have the best impact on their team if they demonstrate that they care personally about their team members and also challenge them directly when providing constructive feedback. Further, if this effect can take hold in an office culture, everyone can make each other better through the same balance of personal care and direct feedback. Where this type of directness is part of the office culture a leader sets, negative feedback is not perceived as hurtful. Rather, it is perceived as helpful and in line with the leader’s intent of candor and honest communications.8
Beyond just improving personal and organizational performance, candor has many more benefits. When a leader demonstrates personal care about a subordinate’s successes, they will know that the leader also (still) cares when they provide constructive criticism or correction. A person who feels constructive feedback comes from a place of concern will be more likely to take feedback to heart and action it, and they will be invested in the mission instead of trying to work just hard enough to avoid negative counseling statements and charges for dereliction.
Celebrating teammates’ individual and collective accomplishments and milestones demonstrates that a leader cares about each person as a human and is in their corner. Distributing a welcome letter/command philosophy memo is a common leadership practice that puts a team on notice about a leader’s general philosophy. In addition to employing these tools, getting to know people well enough to understand their personal goals and celebrate their success is an impactful way for leaders to show they are putting people first in their minds as well as their actions. One tablespoon of confetti says that a leader knows their people’s goals, sees their hard work, supports their endeavors, and wants everyone else to celebrate it, too.
If a leader shows they care about a person, their future, and their achievements, it sets a foundation for the entire team to embody the same mentality. With time and reinforcement, this culture will extend to those in the organization and among peers at the same leadership level. Modeling these behaviors and normalizing positive culture to junior leaders has the long-term effect of replacing any potentially toxic practices of the past with a far more effective alternative. When everyone knows the team comes from a place of support and care, they are empowered to have difficult conversations about professional challenges and ways to improve; they are empowered to support the good ideas of their peers rather than view innovation as a threat. This sets the stage for the team to listen to feedback from one another in an atmosphere and culture of support that celebrating others creates.9 Perhaps most importantly, it sets the foundation for the team to give the leader proactive, helpful, candid feedback because of the emphasis on and invitation for dialogue when it comes to showing care and appreciation. In short, showing care and empathy is the foundation for candor to thrive. The right combination of empathy and candor triggers peak conditions for adaptive, healthy teams to blossom.
Confetti Meets Morale
High morale is important for any work culture, but this is especially true in a warfighting culture. A positive environment helps attract new talent, retain current talent, and foster productivity.10 High morale is also associated with greater attention to detail, creative problem-solving, and increased teamwork.11 In most civilian work environments, it is enough to treat people with a basic level of respect and dignity, capped off with an annual barbecue and holiday party. At the end of each day, employees go home to their friends, family, and community. However, the morale mission in the military is inherently different from most jobs in corporate America. Unlike in most civilian work environments, Service members spend extended stretches of time around their coworkers during exercises, mobilizations, and deployments—all periods with increased importance on workplace community, support, and morale.
Confetti is a morale force multiplier. It is unexpected and tells the recipient they are seen, celebrated, and, most of all, they matter. By prioritizing morale, a leader can watch the workplace become more fulfilling and happier for their team. This is a benefit that makes the daily routine more enjoyable and is a game changer for longer missions away from home. Finding joy in the small things and celebrating together can keep a team thriving and cohesive. Focusing on celebrating people and the team itself is a way to see them and show them how they matter even when they are far from their home support structure.
Adopting a morale mindset early and celebrating often must also happen in garrison and as part of the unit culture. A leader who does not invest in their team at home station may seem disingenuous if they suddenly start to rally the team during a deployment. The confetti culture of celebrating people and their individuality that begins at physical training on a regular workday will carry to and through any mission.
A Call to Confetti
For those persuaded to build trust and morale through confetti or other celebration, the question becomes this: As a leader, what can I do to get started?
Find out what your people are up to. Set aside distractions or work that can wait a bit and get out from behind your desk. What are their interests and passions? What kinds of things are their family members getting into? No rule says you are limited to only celebrating your teammates: their families are important, too. Whether their hobbies are ultra marathons, competitive Irish dancing, or writing Star Wars fanfiction, take a minute to wonder at their dedication and ask how they stumbled into that hobby.
Remember that confetti should be a joyful recognition, not a nightmarish prank. It should be used in quantities, locations, and constructions that are easy to clean up, or you should have a plan to clean it up after celebrating. Confetti cannons or confetti of any sort in a public space where a cleaning staff is tidying it up is inconsiderate. Confetti “at scale” is easy to do, and your knowledge of the celebrated teammates’ personalities and preferences will help you decide how to scale the celebration.
While I love to use confetti in my practice, celebrations do not have to include it. Know yourself and your audience. A celebration for some might just be a nice note recognizing hard work. Get to know your people well enough to celebrate them in a way that honors them and their life events or achievements.
Celebrations can and should also happen in conference rooms or areas where your team congregates, even if the celebrated person is not present. If you are briefing your section’s actions to “the boss,” do not be afraid to mention the person who just got married, completed their first half marathon, or performed exceptionally on a work project. “The boss” might not have known about these accomplishments, but notifying senior leaders will encourage leadership to acknowledge the success and will only stand to extend the environment of care and trust.
Streamers and confetti are available in large quantities and at low prices. A carefully spent $20 could probably last a career. Alternatively, hole punches can be used to make confetti out of any paper.
Before exercises or deployments, consider your celebration needs. Birthdays and holidays in the field or on a deployment are great opportunities to engage as a team. At the very least, acknowledge the day and try to find a small, joyful way to celebrate. Whether the person gets the TV remote for the rec room, the first place in line at the dining facility during surf n’ turf night, or someone’s MRE pound cake with a lit match sticking out of it in place of a candle, there is always a way to find joy.
A Confetti Conclusion
Though there are thousands of references to building trust and increasing morale in helpful leadership guides, articles, and books, the advice for cultivating these important characteristics in a workplace generally does not mention celebration as a leadership tool. Celebrating personal, professional, and team achievements in small ways builds a culture of trust and joy. Trust builds a better, more efficient, and highly adaptable team. Positive morale makes working at a high operating tempo more fun because people get along better, trust each other, want to be around each other, and have a higher tolerance for teammate mistakes, quirks, or shortcomings. In a profession that relies on the service of a tiny fraction of the population eligible and willing to volunteer, maintaining ways to bring joy and fulfillment is key to retaining talent.
A handful of confetti is festive, is a proclamation of joy, can be deployed at a moment’s notice, and—unlike its uncouth cousin, glitter—can be wiped up with a single swipe of a lint roller. While the cleanup takes less than a minute, the effect on individuals and teams can last a lifetime.
Leaders should look at their office dynamics and ask themselves if they have dedicated enough energy to the pursuit of trust and morale through celebration. If they do not have confetti and thank you cards on hand, ask around to see who knows where the confetti stores are.12 TAL
MAJ Strickland is an Administrative Law Attorney in the Office of The Judge Advocate General at the Pentagon.
Notes
1. Stephen M. R. Covey, How the Best Leaders Build Trust, Soc’y for Hum. Res. Mgmt. (Feb. 9, 2009), https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/organizational-and-employee-development/pages/leadersbuildtrust.aspx.
2. Sharon Van Duynhoven, Great Leaders Have Integrity, Sigma Assessment Sys., https://www.sigmaassessmentsystems.com/integrity-in-leaders (last visited Apr. 29, 2024).
3. Liz Ryan, Ten Ways to Build Trust on Your Team, Forbes (Mar. 17, 2018), https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2018/03/17/ten-ways-to-build-trust-on-your-team/?sh=6d04b2f22445.
4. Frances X. Frei & Anne Morriss, Begin with Trust, Harv. Bus. Rev., May-June 2020, at 112, 116.
5. See id.
6. Id. at 117.
7. See Radical Candor, https://www.radicalcandor.com (last visited Apr. 29, 2024); Kim Scott, Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss without Losing Your
Humanity
(2017). Radical Candor is a guide to leaders and students of leadership
in how to have difficult conversations, offer constructive criticism,
and why this candor is essential to the effectiveness of a leader and
teams. See Scott, supra.
8. See generally Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand
in the Way of True Inspiration ch. 5 (2014).
9. Id.
10. See Jessica Everitt, Why Employee Morale Plays a Big Part in Productivity, Wrike (May 11, 2021), https://www.wrike.com/blog/employee-morale-and-productivity.
11. Stuart Hearn, 7 Reasons to Care About Employee Morale, TLNT (Oct. 7, 2019), https://www.tlnt.com/124997-2.
12. It’s me. Hi. I’m the one, it’s me. I know where all the confetti stores are. Email me for help.