No matter what the size of your business is, your accomplishments and milestones along the way are important to both recognize and celebrate. Running a successful small business is a step by step process and it will take years of small wins before reaching your larger, more ambitious goals. Regardless of how small or large a milestone might be, it's important to support your team and keep operations moving forward. This helps boost morale, trust, community and sends positive messages to your company about how it's doing and where it's headed. Let's explore some of the ways celebrating company victories can help fortify your business and encourage efficient work from your employees.

Team Building

Celebrating victories and milestones as a business is a large part of building and keeping your team strong. It helps keep your company's team positive and supported. 'Positive reinforcement is important for anyone in a leadership position,' said Founder and CEO of Assembly AI Dylan Fox. 'Your team needs to be aware of all your accomplishments and milestones together so your company is unified and working towards the same goal. If work goes on with no recognition of success, your team will feel stressed and burnt out.' Your team needs collective and individual recognition to work together toward common goals. Privately telling employees they are doing well or praising a victory during a one on one is great, but when victories affect the entire company make sure everyone feels like it was a team effort. Lauren Kleinman, Co-Founder of The Quality Edit had this to say, 'When your business accomplishes something big, it's important to recognize the collective effort that went into that success. Make sure you always give credit where it's due and recognize that the entire team worked together to make it happen. Even if certain employees are shining, make sure you and your company understand the team effort you are all making.' Treat your team like a team, and they will surely work together as one.

Building Growth

The goal of any business should be to make steady growth the longer you are in business. Celebrating small steps along the way is a part of making sure you stay on track for your goals. 'Making your team aware of small wins is part of building growth in your business,' says Corey Ashton Walters, Founder and CEO of Here. 'Your team needs to see how larger goals are met, and that's by achieving small wins along the way that act as stepping stones to your bigger goals. You're setting an example of patience and pride in the small things that go well throughout your week.' Being a patient leader as your business grows is important for all aspects of business growth.

Another great reason to celebrate small wins is that they usually symbolize something bigger on the horizon. Founder and Designer Jordan Duran of 6Ice said, 'Small victories always lead to bigger victories. These are your stepping stones to growing your business to your full potential and hitting those big, long term goals that will feel out of reach until you recognize those smaller steps.' Every business has to start somewhere, so no matter how small the victory, make a point to acknowledge it with yourself and your company.

These recognitions and praises are also great opportunities to open the floor to your team. 'Celebrating a victory should be opening a door for your team,' said David Gilboa of Warby Parker. 'These are opportunities for your team to set goals together, and collaborate on how we can take things to the next level.'

As for Steven Zeldes of Avacare Medical, he said, 'As leaders, we often always focus on celebrating the large win. Indeed, whether it is a large project that is completed, a monthly quota that has been reached, or achieving specific KPIs for the quarter, quality leaders more often than not do an excellent job at providing praise for a job well done…However, equally important is celebrating the small wins. Studies have shown that for every one piece of constructive feedback, six types of acknowledgment and praise should be vocalized. This not only provides extra motivation, but also reaffirms employee confidence and sentiments of appreciation.

Morale

Keeping morale high at any company is all about making sure the whole team feels like they're consistently working towards something. When things are stagnant, that means things aren't moving. And even when they aren't it's important to acknowledge the things that are going well. Founder Anish Patel at Tinto Amorio had this to say on celebrating small victories, 'Celebrating wins no matter the size is an essential piece to building morale and keeping motivation high. Sometimes, these recognitions are not about the win itself, but about lifting your team and making sure they understand that they're doing good work and to keep it up! Motivate your team by praising every success you have as a company.'

These little celebrations and praises go a long way in building morale, and helping your company keep track of it's sequential successes and failures. This will help a great deal with your future planning and record keeping. 'Celebrating your collective victories is great for morale, and even better for keeping documentation of your growth as a business. As your business grows and changes, it's helpful to look back at past successes and see how you can expand or improve on things that have worked well in the past,' said Kashish Gupta, Founder and CEO at Hightouch. It's a great practice for your company to regularly recognize these wins, and fallbacks when those occur.

These celebrations don't have to be extravagant by any means. Small, public acknowledgements go a long way. Jeremy Goldstein, CEO at Navitar had this to say, 'Recognizing wins and successes doesn't have to mean doing anything large. It can be as simple as giving praise in a weekly update email or meeting. Oftentimes, this can be incentive enough for your team to step up to the plate when things need to get done.' Employees and coworkers will appreciate being seen and recognized for the work they do and collaborate on with others.

Keep Your Team In The Loop

Another reason why it's important to celebrate all levels of victory is to keep your team in the loop of what's progressing at the company. Brandon Amoroso, Founder and CEO at Electriq Marketing, had this to say, 'It's important to keep your entire team in the loop of all your company's successes, no matter how small. If your employees don't know what's happening at the top level of the company, it's likely they'll feel isolated and extraneous to the goals of your business.' The entire team needs to be in the loop as there are likely many victories and wins that would go unnoticed unless someone made a public announcement, such as an increase in overall profits for the quarter.

It's also a helpful way to show your team what is valuable to your business and why. 'Showing your team your small victories is a way to show them what your values are as a leader and company,' said Ryan Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of Rooted. 'As your employees work for you longer, they'll start to understand the things you want to see happen at your company. Showing, along with telling, can be a great way to set goals and expectations.' This also shows that your company values communication and an exchange of ideas when it comes to short and long term goals that your company is meeting. Communication is the most important aspect of running a business, and should a business consistently decide to not make their team aware of wins and victories, it can breed an air of mistrust. 'Employees want to feel like they are part of the conversation,' says CEO of Outdoor Voices Gabrielle Conforti. 'If they feel like you are celebrating or discussing changes to the company behind their back, they will likely feel more isolated than included in the operations of your company.'

Show Praise and Differentiate

Showing appreciation for the work your employees do should be a given in any business. 'When employees do something right, it's important to make sure they get recognized for their good work,' says Justin Chan, Growth Manager at JuneShine. 'When hard work goes unrecognized, you'll end up with an apathetic culture in your workplace which is never going to lead anywhere positive.' It's been proven time and time again that positive reinforcement is the best way to get your team working to their full potential.

While recognizing all victories is important, differentiating between large and small successes is absolutely necessary. Small victories should be celebrated appropriately, and the same goes for large ones. 'Make sure that when you do have a large victory, you make a big deal about it! It's important to give your team context for when something is a small victory and a large one. Your reaction and attention to the success will be a good gauge for your team to understand what matters a little and what matters a lot,' said CMO of REX MD Anthony Puopolo. Some goals deserve praise at a meeting, while others deserve wider recognition and rewards for the efforts of your team.

Celebrating and recognizing victories helps bring your company closer together and realize common goals. Forward motion in any business is about taking these small steps and turning them into bigger and better things. Having a positive attitude toward all levels of victory means your business will grow and stand the test of time.