Piling on the good
When team members make mistakes or miss deadlines, people are quick to roll their eyes or trade negative messages. Yet when someone delivers exceptional work, the silence is often deafening.
This workplace version of the social media 'pile-on' - where people rush to criticise unfairly - destroys psychological safety.
Research from Google's Project Aristotle found that teams with high psychological safety outperform others by 12%, yet most organisations inadvertently reward the critics (those that ‘shout loudest’) whilst ignoring the quiet creators.
The answer isn't complicated: pile-on the good work being done instead.
When you witness someone doing something courageous, creative or collaborative, don't just acknowledge it privately, amplify it publicly. Bring knowledge of their work to senior leadership with specific context. Raise it in team meetings. Create a Slack or Teams channel dedicated to celebrating wins, not just logging problems.
This isn't about forced positivity or participation trophies. It's about deliberately building the cultural habits that high-performance teams share: they notice excellence, they name it, and they multiply it.
The impact extends beyond the individual being recognised. When you publicly celebrate someone's achievement, you signal to the entire team what ‘good’ looks like. You give others permission to be equally bold. The team's energy from threat detection to opportunity seeking and its collective mindset from fixed to growth.
Our workplaces are already full of negativity. Choose to pile-on to the good instead, and watch what your team becomes capable of.
