Catching People Doing Things Right

Lately, I caught myself doing something I didn't love. When I reviewed my team's work, my eyes went straight to what was broken. The bug, the gap, the thing I'd have done differently. The stuff that was going right barely registered — it just felt like the baseline, the thing I expected.

I've been thinking about that instinct ever since, because I don't think it's rare. It's easy to lead with the stick. Problems are loud and specific, and pointing at them feels like progress. But I'm increasingly convinced that the behaviors I want more of won't show up because I corrected the ones I didn't. They show up because I noticed them, named them, and made it clear they mattered.

The Carrot Is More Than a Reward

In Drive, Daniel Pink makes the case that for anything more complex than rote work, carrot-and-stick motivation is a blunt instrument. What actually drives people is autonomy, mastery, and purpose. That reframed recognition for me. Recognizing a good behavior isn't about handing out a treat — it's about pointing at a moment of mastery or ownership and saying, "that. Do more of that."

The stick tells someone what to avoid. The carrot tells them what to become. Only one of those actually shapes the kind of teammate I'm hoping to grow.

The Behaviors Worth Celebrating

If recognition shapes behavior, then the question becomes: which behaviors? The obvious answer is results. But I've started paying more attention to the quieter ones that make results possible over the long run.

Chief among them: help-seeking. It's tempting to treat "I'm stuck, can someone help?" as a small failure. I've come to think the opposite — that the person who asks early is doing exactly what I want. They're trading a little ego for a lot of speed, and they're modeling that it's safe to not have all the answers. When that gets recognized instead of quietly judged, more people do it. When it gets punished, even subtly, everyone learns to hide.

Curiosity as the Engine

The other behavior I keep coming back to is curiosity. Continuous learning gets talked about like it's a program you roll out, but really it's just curiosity given room to run. The person who asks "why does it work this way?" or "what if we tried it differently?" is doing the unglamorous work that keeps a team from calcifying.

I don't think you can mandate that. But you can notice it out loud when it happens, and you can make sure the curious question gets a real answer instead of a shrug. Culture is mostly the sum of what gets rewarded and what gets ignored.

Still Figuring It Out

I'm not writing this as someone who's solved it — I'm writing it as someone actively trying to get better at it. My working theory is simple: lead with the carrot, celebrate the behaviors you want to see more of, and make it safe to ask for help and stay curious. Then get out of the way.

I'd genuinely like to hear how others think about this. What's a behavior you've learned to recognize more deliberately?