Give Them Their Flowers | Equitable Leadership Recognition Strategy

I had nothing to do with it. It was all them. Did I play a meaningful part? Other than meeting fiduciary responsibilities and cheering within my bubble, no. Would I like to have said I played a larger part so I could share in the love? You bet. But that’s not reality; that’s not truth. Leaders who steal another's thunder (or worse, never acknowledge it at all) don't just miss the benefits. They actively stall progress.

Stories Worth Sharing

By all accounts, the Artemis II mission was a resounding success.  According to NASA, the primary stated mission was to conduct the first crewed test flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft to the Moon. The mission had four primary objectives of validating the rocket, testing life support, demonstrating manual piloting, and surviving a 25,000 mph reentry. All were successfully met.

NASA’s broader "Artemis Generation" goal for this specific flight was to serve as the "foundation" for all future lunar surface missions. By successfully completing Artemis II, NASA confirmed that the vehicle and teams are ready for Artemis III and IV, which aim to land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar South Pole.

The Artemis mission was conceived in December 2017. Nearly a decade later, when astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen stepped onto the deck of USS John P. Murtha, they became the faces of thousands of contributors. The most rewarding observation from this entire effort has been NASA’s leadership’s equitable distribution of praise for the success of this mission and not falling into the trap of just showering the faces of the team with praise.

The Artemis II crew safe at home because of the team.

Amit Kshatriya (NASA’s highest-ranking civil servant) offered the most direct praise for the ground teams, stating, “The vehicle spoke for all of them. And at 25,000 feet per second, it said the work was good.”

Like many, my journey to figuring out how, when, and why to give someone their flowers has taken time. I’ve been guilty of overpraise, ambivalence, and even insinuating something was my idea, when it really wasn’t. Certainly not my best moments, and had I possessed more self-awareness and maturity, I would like to believe I wouldn’t have made them.

Honest, warranted, equitable praise is a winning strategy when it comes to better outcomes. The data backs it up. Gallup's research shows employees who receive high-quality recognition are 45% less likely to leave within two years, yet only 22% say they get the right amount of recognition for the work they do.

What the Data Says

• The Credit-Claiming Problem: research on leaders stealing credit is damning, and its consequences are quantifiable. Frontiers in Psychology (2022) study of 418 matched leader-employee pairs at a large manufacturing company revealed leaders' credit-claiming behavior directly induces anger and perceptions of unfairness in employees. Essentially, employees feel something they earned was stolen from them. It's not hard to imagine people no longer wanting to contribute ideas or stick around at a place where their best is taken from them. Ensuring people’s value is recognized becomes even more mission-critical in environments, like NASA’s, where resource allocation is diminished due to budget reallocation, retirements, and mandatory reductions.

• There is a Market Impact: University of Northern Colorado (Courageous Cultures study, n=1,860) found 56% of employees said the number one reason they would keep a micro-innovation to themselves is concern they would not get credit for their idea. While the market may not directly care who gets the trophy it will eventually care if the players who won it bail for more equitable pastures. When employees stop contributing ideas because credit is routinely taken, the organization loses its competitive edge progressively, resulting in long-term innovation decay and inevitable market decline.

• Use or Create Tools to Know What’s Praiseworthy: not everything is trophy-worthy or warrants more than a simple acknowledgment. However, recognizing if the suggestion contributes to the priorities and objectives is key. Amabile & Kramer's Progress Principle (Harvard Business School) offers a useful lens: of all events that occur at work, the one with the most prominent positive effect on motivation is simply making progress in meaningful work. That should be your guide. Also consider Amabile's finding that 669 managers ranked progress dead last among five motivators, yet Artemis II was built on celebrating incremental milestones across 8+ years of development. You don’t get to touchdown without getting ten first downs. The takeaway: it’s not just mission complete. It’s mission progress that matters most.

• Deploying Praise Well is a Science: Most employees want recognition at least a few times per month. 40% want it a few times a week or more. Employees who feel fulfilled by recognition are 4x as likely to be engaged. This is one of the key findings from Gallup and Workhuman's Five Pillars of Strategic Recognition. They advise recognition is most impactful when it’s fulfilling, authentic, personalized, equitable, and embedded in culture. When done right, employees are 2.9x as likely to be more engaged, 12x as likely to be connected to culture, 66% less likely to experience daily loneliness, and 4.4x more likely to strongly agree their job gives them purpose in life.

So what should the effective leader take away from the eight-and-a-half-year endeavor to test drive a new spaceship to the limits?

Key Recommendations

1. Give praise where praise is due: publicly, specifically, and promptly

2. Reward leaders who amplify others, not themselves

3. Recognize progress, not just outcomes

Four people, a record 252,756 miles from Earth, returned home safely not only because of their own capabilities, but because of the collective work of the broader 30,000 people employed in the space community and 3,800+ suppliers in the mission. Singling out a few for praise doesn’t do justice to the scale of the team it took to pull this off. A model of honest, warranted, equitable praise recognizes valued contribution that scales beyond the initial mission. It readies the team and maintains needed mojo for what comes next. Which for NASA, is Artemis III. That's the model. Shared mission. Shared goals. Shared recognition. Better results.

Failing to celebrate progress and share credit are two of the most consistent leadership gaps I see across organizations today.

When was the last time every contributor in your project had their name called for a milestone achieved? I'd like to hear about it.

Cheers,

Adam Peddicord

I work with healthcare and SaaS organizations where the data says one thing and leadership hears another. If you're seeing a disconnect between frontline reality and executive decision-making, I’d be interested to hear how your organization is approaching it.

📧info@csbydesign.com | 📅calendly.com/csbydesign

Sources:

• NASA

• "The Power of Small Wins," HBR, May 2011

• Chen et al., Frontiers in Psychology, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.818454

• University of Northern Colorado (Courageous Cultures, Hurt & Dye)

• Amabile & Kramer, The Progress Principle, Harvard Business Review Press, 2011

• Gallup-Workhuman Five Pillars (2022–2024)