Plenty of leaders think “high standards” means being permanently unimpressed. They keep raising the bar, then act surprised when everyone looks exhausted instead of inspired.
When I was a teenager, the father of a childhood friend had a very special talent: he could turn literally any outcome into a disappointment.
Every time we came back from a baseball game, he’d ask how it went. If we lost, my friend got called a loser. If he hadn’t played perfectly, that became the headline. The basic message was always the same: try harder.
Winning didn’t help either. Apparently that just meant the other team probably had an off day. He never came to a single game, which somehow did not stop him from having a full catalogue of opinions. Nothing was ever good enough, and he delivered that message with the consistency of a metronome.
And, annoyingly, that stuck with me. Later, when I became a leader, I realized that father’s voice had moved in and started rearranging the furniture. I obsessed over what was missing, what still wasn’t good enough, what needed fixing next. I called it “having high standards.” In reality, I had a blind spot the size of a bus.
I see the same thing in plenty of leadership teams now. Not because they’re monsters. Usually because this is the air they grew up breathing. But the cost is real: when progress never gets acknowledged, people don’t magically dig deeper. They just start assuming nothing they do will ever count.
So here are five ways to use progress as fuel instead of running your team on fumes.
1. Winners obsess over improvement, not immaculate vibes
A lot of leaders spend their time staring at the gap: what’s broken, what’s lagging, how far the team still is from the dream. High-performing teams ask a better question: what’s getting better, and why? That question changes the whole mood. Ask people what’s missing and they brace for impact. Ask what’s improving and they start looking for ways to build on it.
Harvard researchers Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer spent years digging through diary entries from knowledge workers across multiple companies to figure out what actually drives motivation day to day.
The answer was not money, rah-rah speeches, or a suspiciously expensive recognition platform. It was progress: visible, meaningful movement in the right direction. Not fireworks. Just proof that the work was going somewhere.
Jerry Rice is widely considered the greatest wide receiver in football history, and he wasn’t exactly famous for being the fastest guy on the field. His coach shifted the focus away from perfection and onto improvement: crisper routes, better separation, more endurance late in games when everyone else was running on fumes. Rice retired with 197 career touchdowns, which is still ridiculous.
Walsh’s teams won three championships. Turns out improvement is a pretty useful strategy.
Winners study what’s working. Losers just keep glaring at the gap.
2. What gets attention gets repeated
Most leaders are very clear on goals, especially when those goals are not being hit. They can talk for days about the target, the number, the quarterly outcome, the mountain everyone is supposed to climb.
What they discuss far less is the behavior that actually gets people there. And that little gap between outcomes and actions? That’s where performance quietly wanders off and hides behind a shrub.
Carol Dweck’s research showed that the kind of praise people get shapes what they do next. Kids praised for being smart got more cautious after setbacks. They had a label to protect. Kids praised for effort and approach were more likely to keep going, try harder things, and not fold the minute it got uncomfortable.
Phil Jackson coached eleven NBA championship teams, and his edge wasn’t just strategy. He paid obsessive attention to the behaviors that made the system work, then named them. Not just the basket. The pass before the basket. The screen that made the pass possible. The quiet choice that changed the whole possession. Everyone knew what mattered, so they didn’t need constant babysitting.
Goals tell people where to go. The behaviors you notice tell them how to get there. Your attention is basically a spotlight, so point it wisely.
3. Progress gives people a sense of “this is mine now”
The more progress people can see, the more invested they become. Ownership follows. Once effort starts producing visible movement, the work stops feeling like homework and starts feeling like something they actually built.
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan spent decades studying what makes people willingly do hard things. Their most consistent finding was simple: people need to feel that their actions actually produce results. When they can see that connection, they take initiative, stick with difficult work, and raise their own standards. When they can’t, no incentive scheme in the world is going to save you.
Pixar’s Braintrust meetings run on exactly this idea. Every few months, a film in development gets reviewed by a group of peers. The feedback is blunt, specific, and often very unromantic. But here’s the magic bit: the Braintrust has no authority. They can point out what’s confusing, missing, or broken, but they cannot commandeer the movie and start barking orders.
The director keeps ownership. Which means the feedback feels like useful input, not an invasion. And because each round builds on the last, progress stays visible instead of evaporating into vague creative fog.
People rarely own what gets dumped on them. They do own what they help build.
4. Progress creates momentum
Momentum is not some mystical force that descends from the heavens. It comes from visible movement. One win, then another, then another.
Organizational psychologist Karl Weick called this the power of “small wins.” Back in 1984, he argued that big messy problems get solved through sequences of small, concrete actions with real results. One win does not solve everything. It just makes the next step smaller, less dramatic, and much more doable.
Dave Brailsford took over British Cycling in 2003, and the team had not exactly been drowning in glory. His strategy was to look for 1% improvements everywhere: nutrition, sleep, bike setup, training, even the pillows riders used in hotels. Each tweak looked tiny on its own. Together, they were a wrecking ball. British Cycling went on to win multiple Tour de France titles and a pile of Olympic gold medals.
The progress stacked up, little by little, until it stopped looking little.
Small wins compound. Each one makes the next one easier to believe in.
5. Recognizing success makes it easier to talk about mistakes
Momentum and ownership change how people hear feedback. When someone feels their progress is actually seen, criticism lands as information instead of a character assassination. Without that foundation, even helpful feedback can feel like one more entry in the “still not good enough” file.
John Gottman spent decades studying what separates stable relationships from fragile ones. One of his clearest findings was the ratio of positive to negative interactions. In healthy relationships, positive exchanges significantly outnumber negative ones. Difficult conversations still happen. They just happen inside a bigger context of trust and acknowledgment. Without that context, even calm feedback can set off a full internal alarm system.
The US Army builds this into how it learns in the field. After Action Reviews look at both what worked and what failed, and they start with what worked. That is not politeness. That is design. When people know their effort will be acknowledged before the mistakes get dissected, they stop defending themselves and start thinking clearly.
Recognition does not water down feedback. It makes honest feedback usable.
My friend’s father taught me something useful, entirely by accident. Chasing what’s missing does not raise the bar. It just makes everyone tired and slightly resentful.
Progress is fuel. Perfection is a gas tank with a hole in it.
Stay inspired, lead boldly,
Peter Mclees Leadership
Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT
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