Celebrate the wins in your team

Step 1: Set the Tone

• Introduce the activity by explaining the importance of celebrating wins—big or smalll
• Depending on your needs, you may wish to include both professional and personal achievements, or ask participants to think about workplace and team focused achievements.  
• Emphasize that this is a judgment-free, supportive space where all achievements are valued. 
• You might also choose to share some examples to set the stage including things like: "we made significant progress on this important project" or "I made a tasty apple pie at the weekend."

Step 2: Reflect on Wins

• Ask each participant to take a few minutes to think about a recent win—personal or professional.
• This could be a work-related success, an accomplishment outside of work, or something a teammate did that deserves recognition.
• As an icebreaker, it's helpful to leave this relatively open. When using this as a closing activity, I'd recommend asking participants to think of celebrating wins that relate to the session you just completed. This can hep create a sense of achievement and closure.  

Step 3: Share & Celebrate

• Start by sharing a win as a facilitator or on behalf of the team at large to demonstrate the desired format for sharing: ideally brief! 
• Go around the group, with each person sharing their win.
• Encourage others to react with applause, emojis, or words of encouragement.
• If the group is large, divide into small teams or breakouts so that everyone has a chance to share.

Step 4: Recognize Teammates (optional)

• Give participants the option to shout out a colleague who helped them achieve their success.
• Example: “I want to thank [Name] for helping me with that big presentation last week—it made a huge difference!”
• If you're short of time, this step can be skipped or omitted. You may also wish to let participants set the tone and not feel bad about who or what they choose to celebrate. 

Step 5: Close 

• Thank everyone for their contributions.
• If you have time and space or you're working on team culture more generally,  hold a debriefing round where you ask the group to reflect on how celebrating the group felt and what their takeaways were. 

Facilitation tips for Celebrate the wins in your team

• This activity is best used during project retrospectives, during team stand-ups or catch-up meetings where folks generally have something big or small to celebrate and it's likely to include team members.  
• This can also be an effective opener for new groups, though I'd recommend you frame the activity carefully and perhaps share an example of a small win that might even be something as simple as "I worked out this morning" or "My eggs during breakfast were perfectly cooked!"
• As a closing activity for a group workshop, a nice variation is to ask each person to celebrate someone else from the group. In this case, ask participants to try and think of someone who hasn't yet been mentioned so that celebrations travel around the group and contribute to the good vibes.