Introduction

Your team just shipped its Big Project, and it was on-time, on-budget, and it had all the features the product owner requested. Congratulations! It’s time to reward the team for all their hard work and persistence, particularly that one week when they stayed late to make sure they’d hit the deadline. (You, of course, stayed late with them, because a manager should never ask their team to do something the manager themselves isn’t willing to do—right?)

But before you schedule that all-company or all-department meeting to stand the team up in front of everybody and give them all the standing ovation they deserve, pause a moment and ask yourself: Is this really what each individual member on the team wants? Some ...