On the weekend, nobody waits for the final whistle.
When you're cheering on your team, you celebrate the pass that opened up the field. The sprint back up the line when it looked like their legs had nothing left. You celebrate progress on the way, not just the score at the end.
At work, we mostly wait for the score. Targets hit, clients won, projects delivered. Those deserve recognition. But if they're the only things we recognise, we miss most of the moments that change how people work.
Outcomes are only partly yours
The thing is, outcomes are partly outside anyone's control. A target gets missed because the market shifted, a client changed their mind or another team's work slipped. What people do control is the effort they put in, the new approach they tried, the question nobody else would ask and the standard they held when it would have been easier not to.
Recognise those, and two things happen. People learn exactly what to repeat, because you've told them. And you start to weaken the belief that people are either naturally good at something or they're not.
Two large reviews of workplace field studies by Alexander Stajkovic and Fred Luthans found that social recognition (genuine attention and approval) improved performance, and did more than feedback alone. Carol Dweck's research found that praising effort and process, rather than ability, made people more likely to persist after a setback.
What the APS census shows
The APS Employee Census is probably the biggest annual workforce survey in Australia, with 151,000 public servants responding in 2025. I've analysed the unit-record data, and recognition shows up again and again.
Across the whole workforce, being satisfied with recognition was the third strongest protective factor against burnout. Among senior executives in 2025, the gap is stark:
- Satisfied with their job: 97% of those satisfied with their recognition, compared with 47% of those dissatisfied.
- Reporting burnout: 20% compared with 60%.
- Intending to leave: 19% compared with 56%.
It's worth noting these are links, not causes. People who are burnt out may well feel less recognised.
Original analysis of APS Employee Census 2025 unit-record data (APSC, data.gov.au). Analysis: Progression Consulting & Coaching.
Can I be bothered?
There's an influential model in neuroscience, the expected value of control, that describes how we decide whether something is worth the effort. My Aussie name for it is CIBA: Can I Be Arsed?
In simple terms, your brain weighs the likely payoff of effort against its cost. Part of that calculation is whether your effort will actually change anything. If past effort has gone unnoticed, the sums start to look worse.
It's a model, not a settled account of how the brain works. But it's a plausible explanation for why recognising effort matters. Recognition is evidence that trying made a difference, and that evidence feeds into the next decision about whether to try.
When recognition backfires
Recognition isn't automatically good. Done badly, it can do harm.
When it feels like control. Recognition that informs ("I saw what you did, and here's why it mattered") tends to support motivation. Rewards that feel like a lever ("do this, get praised") tend to undermine it. Edward Deci, Richard Koestner and Richard Ryan's review of the research found this pattern repeatedly.
When it's about the person, not the work. In Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi's large review, feedback made performance worse in about a third of cases. The risk went up when feedback drew attention to the person rather than the task.
When nothing else changes. Recognition without any real change becomes a consolation prize. People discount it quickly, especially if the roadblocks they keep raising stay exactly where they are.
The people with the trophies
Awards nights, recognition portals and performance reviews all have their place. But the people collecting the trophies are sometimes the ones most short on everyday recognition.
I'm yet to meet a founder or business owner who feels recognised in their day-to-day work. There seems to be an assumption that the boss gets the big bucks and the public kudos, so they don't need anything else. Leaders run on the same calculation as everyone else.
Start with your own wins
Nobody likes this answer, but it works. Start by recognising your own wins. Tell a friend, add them to a document, record a voice note, or put a sticky note in a jar to read at the end of the month. We tend to remember what went wrong more easily than what went well, so this one takes deliberate effort.
So why are we so reluctant? Any of these sound familiar?
- Who am I to say that?
- It's not important.
- No one's interested.
- They'll think I'm bragging.
- They'll feel bad about themselves.
- We don't do that here.
Each one is a prediction about how someone will react. They're stories we tell ourselves.
Underneath a lot of Australian workplaces sits tall poppy syndrome: if you put your head up, someone will cut you down. Sometimes that's an accurate read of the room. Often it's a memory. Someone shared a win years ago, in a different job, with different people, and got cut down. They learned that sharing was risky, and carried that lesson into places where people would have been glad to hear it.
The cost isn't only paid by the person staying quiet. Everyone else misses the chance to learn what it took. And if a team can't say "this went well", it's going to struggle to say "this went badly".
Things to try
- Be specific. "Good job" is a start. Keep going: "I saw how much work went into getting legal across that." Or ask a question: "How did you get everyone on side so quickly?"
- Recognise a good attempt that didn't work. Name what it taught the team.
- Write down one of your own wins from this week. Share it with someone if you can.
If you want this to hold in a team, the team needs to decide together what gets recognised around here, and practise doing it. It's one of the workshops we run with teams, and one of my favourites to run with Nicole Florio. Book a call to talk about it.
Is tall poppy syndrome still a thing in your team? I'm collecting experiences from workplaces across Australia and New Zealand in a 4 minute survey. You'll get a short report on your own pattern at the end.
