Pride and Recognition

I’m grateful I learned a lesson a long time ago about mixing team pride with recognition. It’s one of those lessons that sits at the heart of leadership training and team development training.

My mistake was pretty simple.

As a leader of a small team, I wanted to show pride as a group by saying “we” did something. I often used the “royal we” to showcase team accomplishments.

The problem? I wasn’t always a part of the execution effort. In many cases, I was only reporting back what others on the team had accomplished.

My team rightly observed this as me claiming partial credit, even in cases when I was not directly involved. Yes, I was the leader of the team, but their actions were something they did - not something I did.

I should have reported it back as an accomplishment of specific people on the team, not as “we.”

It’s a small but important shift in language, and something I wish I had understood better at the time. It’s also one of the key lessons we embed in our leadership escape room training programs: words matter. In an escape room training scenario, when leaders claim credit or blur ownership, trust erodes. But when leaders highlight individuals and give credit clearly, teams bond and thrive.

That’s the foundation of great team building - trust and recognition. And it’s the kind of practical takeaway that makes our leadership training Singapore programs unique. Inside our immersive escape room Singapore workshops, leaders and teams don’t just talk about recognition; they experience the difference it makes in real-time problem solving.

I want to thank Garrath Johnson for pointing this out to me many years ago. I likely made the mistake a few more times during my career, but it’s a lesson I’m thankful Garrath took the time to explain. And now it’s a lesson I hope other managers can learn without repeating my mistake.