A little boy and the marbles

A little boy was playing with marbles. He had a whole bunch of them, some were rough, while very few were shining and new. I looked at them and said you have very few good ones left. Boy immediately retorted, “my good ones are these”, pointing to the rough ones. He said the rough ones are the ones with whom he had won many games. So they are the good ones. The shiny marbles are just new for me. They have not been tried yet so can’t be called good. We see the same stuff in our teams sometimes. Our good team members, pillars of the team are the people with whom we have gone through all ups and downs. Quite often we take them for granted and under-appreciate them. Our list of negative feedback/areas of improvement is mostly longer than positives/strengths/good things, since we fail to see all the value being created by the team on a daily basis. We kind of assume that company is paying salary for this purpose only. This itself is counter-productive sometimes. These subtle opportunities if identified on time and feedback shared with the team, go a long way in ensuring positive behavior from the team. So next time you see work getting accomplished (however small or routine it may seem) try appreciating your team member and see the magic.