Your success is team's success

It was a crisp morning of December. Most of the people from the customer's side had already begun their vacations. Only a few people from the client's side were still working and completing their pending tasks before beginning there own vacations.

For me it was just a usual working day. I had spent my entire Diwali working on a project so that it could be delivered before December. I would also be working when the client would be away. I was not at all excited about the festive season that my client was celebrating. Suddenly an Email popped up in my inbox. It read, " Dear Amruta, We appreciate your work on the project. You ensured that it would be delivered and reviewed before December. We are aware of the additional hours you have put in to ensure quality completion and submission. I thank you on behalf of the entire safety team". The email was direct to me and the directors from the customer's side were copied on it. My eyes beamed with pride.

Within next 10 minutes I saw my manager approaching me. From his smile I knew that he had seen that email. He got the entire team and made an announcement, "team we have received appreciation from our client for a completed project before the deadline. The client is very happy with the team's work. The email is all about praising the teamwork that we have shown here. Kudos to your effort and let us keep up the good work". I stared at my manager almost like shooting daggers with my eyes. The team did not work on it but only I worked on it. This is why the email was directed only to me and not to the entire team. My other team members were also surprised that why the manager did not mention my name. They knew that it was only for me and not for the whole team. But still my manager did not announce even once that it was my work that was earning praise. I made a note of this behaviour. I was going to bring it to the discussion during the appraisal meeting that was schedule just in few days.

This was not the first and the last instance where the credit was not given to the person who deserve it. Whenever there is any success it is never considered to be an individual success but a team's success. Individual person does not get celebrated in the corporate. The team as well may not get celebrated but never an individual contributor gets celebrated.

Ben the management decides to give the credit to the entire team and not the individual, it feels like the erasure of their identity and the hard work that they had put in. It feels like the credit gets diluted when the undeserving people also get it. Imagine someone does nothing but still receives praise for the work they have not done or even are not aware of. Someone who had worked on it completely only receives a fraction of the praise instead of receiving it completely because it is distributed among the ones would not deserve it.

The lesson that I had learnt from my corporate career was that your success maybe diluted and it would be called as the team's success. But it is your responsibility to bring it up and take the ownership of the success.