Party Time
Before we get going, I’d like to ask a favour. I really want this Substack to be a helpful and useful resource for leaders as we navigate the challenges of our current turbulent times. To this end, I’ve put together a very brief survey (just four questions!) about what you get out of these posts. If you had time to answer them - I’d be eternally grateful!
After the Christmas holidays, children (and adults) across the land were forced to leave their newly forged routines of having chocolate for breakfast and staying in their pyjamas until the afternoon, and contemplate a return to their educational (or professional) establishments - a not entirely appealing prospect for many. My daughter is generally pretty up for going to school (she has told me on more than one occasion that she wants her teacher to be part of our family) but even she was feeling a bit glum at the thought of a return to normality after two weeks of hanging out and mucking around. The day before she donned her school uniform again, she declared to my partner and I that she wanted to have a back to school party the following afternoon.
“What’s a back to school party?” we asked her, hoping for more details. She looked at us witheringly. “To celebrate going back to school,” she replied. Duh.
So the next day, my partner headed out with a shopping list and, when my daughter got home, she and her dad got to work. Despite the fact that she was the one that had returned to school, my daughter had decided that she wanted the party to be a surprise for me so I was under strict instructions to remain upstairs and not come down until told to do so. I dutifully dealt with my post-holiday inbox until the yells of ‘We’re ready!’ wafted into my ears.
When I came down, I was told to close my eyes. I felt my way into the kitchen and hovered in the doorway, listening to muffled laughter and various scufflings about. Then eventually my daughter shouted ‘Open your eyes!’ and I was greeted by a table covered in a Frozen tablecloth, four plates laid out with party hats on them, a weird and wonderful variety of food including pizza, Watsits and mini-doughnuts, my partner wielding a cupcake with a sparkler in it and, finally, my daughter setting off a mini-confetti canon so that the whole kitchen was suddenly covered in tiny squares of brightly coloured paper.
We had an absolute blast. We all put on our party hats (except my son who has never once allowed a hat to remain on his head), we got some music going at a volume that was just shy of ‘annoying the neighbours’ territory and felt a little bit of that holiday spirit permeate the cold January day. I looked at my daughter in admiration. What a totally brilliant idea.
As grown ups we tend to celebrate things that are essentially already good. Birthdays (survived another year!). Weddings (found the love of your life!). And, in a work space, press night (phew, we opened the show!) or anniversaries (look at all this amazing stuff we’ve done for the last 25 years!). These things are important to mark publicly, to amplify and celebrate all the work that has gone into making them. But an interesting question to ask might be - on a more quiet, more internal level, what other occasions might we choose to mark?
What was great about my daughter’s party was that she chose to celebrate something that was hard - getting herself back to school after two weeks of fun and games. It wasn’t a great academic achievement or a sporting victory - it was the ordinary everyday difficulty of turning up somewhere even when you don’t really want to. The more you think about this, the more it makes sense - those are the times when we need a lift, arguably more so than when we’ve succeeded at something. What else could we be celebrating that we don’t currently recognise? The submission of a big funding application (as opposed to its outcome)? Signing off the next season brochure (rather than the public launch of the season itself)? The end of a lengthy casting process (instead of / as well as the first day of rehearsals)?
What I like about these potential celebrations is that they focus on the process, rather than the end result. It’s great to go big on the final products too - going out for a celebratory lunch if you’ve just received news that you’ve been awarded a large sum of money by a funder seems entirely appropriate. But the reality is, even if you didn’t get that money, the team that put the bid together deserves to celebrate the huge amount of work they did to get the application in. We want to recognise that effort regardless of whether we are able to beat the odds and make it into the 8% of applicants that are successful - otherwise we are letting the funder decide what’s worth celebrating and what isn’t. And it doesn’t have to be anything fancy - a fifteen minute coffee break and a box of doughnuts may well be all you need.
The other question we should ask ourselves is how we celebrate our own wins. As leaders, so many of our greatest achievements are quiet, sometimes invisible, actions that make a big difference even though (or precisely because) no one knows about them. Perhaps you’ve just resolved a sticky HR issue that’s been hanging around for months. Perhaps you’ve just represented your organisation on the radio for the first time. Perhaps you’ve just got through a complicated Board meeting that took a long time to prep for. Ask yourself - what can I do to celebrate? Maybe it’s as simple as telling someone about it - your partner, your friend, your parents - so that they can share in your moment of pride. Maybe you get your favourite takeaway that night, or watch your favourite film when you get home. A celebration that’s just for you still counts.
This week, it’ll be precisely two years since I published my first Substack post. I’m not sure what I’ll do to celebrate, but I’m pretty sure my daughter might have some ideas - there’s a strong risk it might be Frozen themed, but to be honest, I’m quite partial to a bit of Anna and Elsa. Thanks for being here and coming on the journey - I’m excited for where the next two years of posts might take me.