Make excellence less scarce
When do you allow yourself to say your work is excellent? Probably not often enough.
We've made excellence scarce in two ways: We 1) limit it to public achievements, and 2) withhold it if it doesn't yield a positive outcome.
It's hard to imagine saying the warm-up in your practice session was excellent. Or that the mock audition you played for your friend was excellent. Or the career decision you made was excellent. It feels like the word “excellent” can't live in those spaces, because we've only allowed excellence to be associated with public achievements - something that's meant to be judged, evaluated, and to represent our worth.
Furthermore, we reserve “excellent” for select instances, when we really deserve it. A great performance that didn't garner great reviews can't be “excellent.” An audition played well where we didn't win can't be “excellent.” A recording that didn't win a Grammy can't be “excellent.”
We've gotten into thinking that “excellence” must be justified with a tangible outcome to prove it was indeed excellent.
When we don't allow ourselves to see our work as excellent often enough, it's hard to feel good about ourselves. This pride is the key in higher performance, motivation, and morale.
So we need to turn the tables and make excellence less scarce.
We need to find more data points to measure excellence beyond public achievements by focusing on the process.
Here are some areas excellence can also exist:
Effective teamwork
Clear communication
Professional and personal development
Mental and physical health
Sense of fulfillment
Feeling of belonging
Emotional intelligence
Practical empathy
Ability to take risks and reframe failure
Connection with our community
Give ourselves permission to be ambitious about all these dimensions and be proud of achieving them. Decide to start measuring our excellence in diverse ways, so that we have more frequent opportunities to see ourselves as excellent.
We can all make excellence less scarce as organizations and as individuals. There may be more pathways available than we might think. Where would you start? How would you measure it?
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