Proposed for removal
Proposed removals
Make your partner look great
A standard where part of everyone's job is making the people around them succeed, so the supporting work gets valued.
Borrowed from improv theater, where performers are taught that their main job is to make their scene partner look good. Read the original source.
Ongoing habit · Minutes to start · Anyone on the team can start it
Try this first
At the end of a session, have each person name one thing a teammate did that helped them.
Use it when
Individual credit is crowding out mutual support, and AI tempts solo optimization.
Skip it when
Do not turn it into forced praise or a scoreboard. Once it becomes a performance people stop trusting it.
How to introduce it
Say plainly that on this team, part of the job is helping the people around you succeed. Setting up a colleague's contribution, filling a gap, handing off cleanly. And that this work gets recognized rather than assumed. Some teams mark it with a shared phrase before a hard piece of work that means I have your back.
How to show up
Name the supporting work out loud when you see it, because it is invisible by nature and goes unthanked. Making it visible is what keeps people doing it.
How long it takes
A few minutes to introduce. It grows over weeks as the supporting work gets named.
What makes it hard
Where individual heroics get rewarded, helping feels like giving away credit, so value the help openly, especially when a senior person does it. Watch that the same people are not always giving while others only take.
What it looks like when it's working
People set each other up instead of competing for airtime, and the supporting work gets thanked. Continued credit-taking means the norm has not landed.
How long until it sticks
It deepens gradually. Expect it to become natural over several weeks of the help being noticed out loud.
How you know it stuck
You will know it is owned when people thank each other unprompted and helping is treated as part of doing good work.
The idea behind it
The team wins together, and helping others succeed is real work rather than a distraction from your own. Make a colleague look good and the whole result improves.
Where it comes from
Improv theater. The lineage behind "Reward the Assist". The the quiet supporting work that holds a team together norm turned into a ritual. Your number-one job on stage is to make your scene partner look good, and theirs is to do the same for you. Some troupes ritualize it with a pre-show "Got your back."