Leadership

Celebrate Behaviors, Not Just Outcomes

A mantra to reinforce the behaviors and mindsets that lead to excellence

Corey Ford

Corey Ford

— 6 min read
Celebrate Behaviors, Not Just Outcomes
Celebrate Behaviors, Not Just Outcomes - A mantra to reinforce the behaviors and mindsets that lead to excellence

This week in The Idea Bucket we continue unpacking the ten levers that you can pull to increase psychological safety in your subculture. So far we've explored the following mantras:

Today we pull the lever of celebrating effort and progress.

As leaders, we all want our teams to achieve great outcomes. But the greatest coaches and players know that focusing myopically on the outcome (i.e. "winning the championship") is not actually how you achieve that outcome. Instead, they focus on reinforcing the daily behaviors that challenge themselves to raise their own bar and let the outcome come to them.

They embrace the mantra: Celebrate Behaviors, Not Just Outcomes.

Celebrate Effort and Progress

As a reminder, one of the ten levers you can pull to increase psychological safety in your subculture is to celebrate effort and progress.

What you recognize gets repeated. If you only celebrate outcomes, people optimize for visibility. If you celebrate effort and progress, you reinforce the behaviors that lead to excellence. 

In the Anxiety Zone, invisible effort feels risky. When you celebrate progress:

  • You name learning milestones
  • You recognize thoughtful experimentation
  • You reinforce rigor and collaboration 

But many leaders think that they should only reward outcomes. They have good intent. They rightfully don't want to build a culture that awards participation trophies. But by only focusing on rewarding the outcome, they miss the opportunity to reinforce the key leverage point that unlocks that outcome: daily behavior.

Outcomes are lagging indicators. Behaviors are leading indicators. If you want better outcomes, you have to reinforce the behaviors that produce them.

Celebrate behaviors, not just outcomes is not about granting participation trophies. It’s about reinforcing the behaviors that produce excellence. 

Chase The Process

As I was driving home on Friday night, I was thinking about how I wanted to approach this newsletter post. In the background, I was listening to the Women's Final Four. UCLA has just beaten Texas to claim a spot in the championship game and Scott Van Pelt of SportsCenter was interviewing Cori Close, the head coach of the UCLA women's basketball team:

Scott Van Pelt: "If they win a title, awesome. But who they are as women, what's that journey meant to you to be part of that?"
Cori Close: "I always say that banners hang in gyms and rings collect dust but who you become and who you impact you get to keep forever. I always say that if you are chasing the process to be the best woman you can be, the best teammate you can be, to master your craft at the highest levels, outcomes usually find you. And these women have held on to that for dear life and have valued the journey and found joy in the journey and as well has been the hardest working team I have ever coached."

Boom. There it was in action. Process over outcome. Every time. Rings collect dust. Who you become is forever. Chase the process and outcomes will find you.

Not only did this personally inspire me for the work I do as a coach ("who you impact you get to keep forever"), but it precisely illustrates what I mean by celebrate behaviors, not just outcomes.

I could imagine how Cori Close coaches her players to focus on daily self-improvement rather than winning championships. Her message is that if you focus on your daily behaviors, the championships will come.

Good. Better. Best.

Cori Close's interview then reminded me of Chicago Bears Head Coach Ben Johnson's mantra to foster continuous improvement on his team:

"Good. Better. Best. Never Let it Rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best."

“Good” is about establishing a baseline. It’s doing the work to a solid standard, meeting expectations, and building competence. At this stage, the focus is on consistency: showing up, executing the fundamentals, and proving that you can do the job reliably.

“Better” is where improvement becomes intentional. It’s not enough to simply meet the standard, you start to refine how you work. You look for small adjustments, learn from mistakes, and push yourself to elevate your approach. This is where feedback starts to matter more, where effort becomes more deliberate, and where progress is no longer accidental but pursued.

“Best” is not a final destination as much as it is a mindset. It’s the relentless pursuit of mastery, the idea that even your best can be improved. It’s where you are no longer comparing yourself to others or even to a fixed bar, but to your own potential. At this stage, excellence is not an outcome you reach, but a standard you continue to chase.

Put together, “Good. Better. Best.” creates a loop rather than a ladder. It removes the illusion that there is a point where you arrive and replaces it with an ongoing commitment to growth. It keeps teams focused on the only thing they can truly control—their daily behaviors—and, over time, those behaviors compound into results that take care of themselves.

What I love about this mantra is how well it travels. Johnson learned it from his high school coach Bobby Poss, who learned it from his friend Richard Bell. Johnson's high school teammate Chase Rice became a country music star and uses the mantra in his pre-show ritual.

A culture that embraces Good. Better. Best. is one that focuses its people on constantly improving their daily habits to makes the aspirational outcomes inevitable.

The Endless Pursuit

No athlete today better illustrates the idea that excellence is not an outcome you reach, but a standard you continue to chase than golfer Scottie Scheffler. Just listen to how he measures success his own success:

Journalist: “How do you measure how good you are?

Scottie Scheffler: “I have no idea Doug. I have no idea.”

Journalist:  “Is it scores? Is it trophies? Is it stats? How do you know you’re good?”

Scottie Scheffler: “I don’t. That’s why we keep practicing. You’re never going to get to a place where you’ve got it figured out. I always like practicing and trying to improve and creating new shots. I think golf is kind of the endless pursuit of trying to figure something out. I’m never going to get there but there is no harm in trying."

Scheffler, arguably the best golfer in the world today, is hyper-competitive. He hates to lose and he wants to win each tournament. But instead of focusing on winning each tournament or worrying about how his competitors are performing, he becomes hyper-focused on the shot in front of him. He recently said to a journalist:

"Your expectations of me are living week by week. My expectations of myself are almost more shot by shot."

He knows from experience that the joys of winning a championship are fleeting so instead he focuses on what is in front of him in the moment. In a way, he pushes himself by celebrating his own micro-behaviors rather than the outcome.

Focus on Behaviors

What ties all of these together—Chase The Process, Good. Better. Best., and The Endless Pursuit—is a fundamental shift in where attention goes.

They don’t ignore outcomes, they just don’t anchor to them. They anchor to behavior. Because behavior is what you control. It's what compounds over time and creates the conditions for excellence to emerge.

And as a leader, what you choose to recognize tells your team what matters. If you celebrate only outcomes, people will chase visibility, protect their image, and optimize for short-term wins. If you celebrate effort, progress, and thoughtful execution, people will stretch, experiment, and commit to the long game.

One builds pressure. The other builds capability. And over time, capability is what produces outcomes.

Your Challenge This Week

Pay attention to what you reinforce. In your next team meeting, design review, or 1:1, listen to your own language.

When something goes well, ask yourself: Did I just praise the outcome? Or did I name the behaviors that led to it?

This week, make one intentional shift. Instead of saying: “Great job, that was a big win.” Try: “I want to call out how you approached that. The way you tested early, incorporated feedback, and stayed with it. That’s what made this work.”

Notice what happens:

  • Do people start to focus more on how they work, not just what they produce?
  • Do they take more risks earlier?
  • Do they share more of their thinking along the way?

Because the standard you reinforce today becomes the behavior your team repeats tomorrow. And those behaviors are what ultimately determine your results.

Next Week

As a reminder, here are the ten corresponding mantras to increase psychological safety in your organization:

Next week, we dive into the mantra that pulls the lever of creating shared accountability: You Own Your Role, We Own The Outcome.

About This Newsletter

The Idea Bucket is a weekly newsletter and archive featuring one visual framework, supporting one act of leadership, that brings you one step closer to building a culture of innovation.

It’s written by Corey Ford — executive coach, strategic advisor, and founder of Point C, where he helps founders, CEOs, and executives clarify their visions, lead cultures of innovation, and navigate their next leadership chapters.

Want 1:1 executive coaching on this framework or others?  Book your first coaching session. It's on me.

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