After a technical success: sustaining pride without encouraging overconfidence
After a successful qualification or the resolution of a precision problem, a manager may hesitate between celebrating and emphasising the requirements still to be met. The management question is specific: how can pride in an achievement be acknowledged without turning a particular success into a conviction of superiority?
What the literature establishes
Jessica L. Tracy and Richard W. Robins (2007, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) distinguish two facets of pride: one linked to achievement, termed authentic, and another associated with arrogance and conceit, termed hubristic. Their research connects this distinction, in particular, to how success is explained through effort or through global personal qualities. Treating pride as uniformly beneficial or harmful therefore obscures important differences.
An emotion that can support perseverance
Lisa A. Williams and David DeSteno (2008, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) provide experimental evidence that induced pride can increase perseverance on a subsequent task. Their work supports a motivational function for this emotion beyond simply feeling good. It does not, however, demonstrate that a proud team produces more reliable components or makes better technical decisions.
The premature conclusion
It would be tempting to conclude that making a team proud is enough to sustain its effectiveness. This would conflate an emotion, the way it develops and the outcomes the organisation wants to achieve. A more cautious approach is to connect success to identifiable actions — testing, cooperation and checks — rather than to a sweeping claim that the team is “the best”. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these findings cannot prescribe
These studies do not evaluate an emotional intelligence training programme or a celebration protocol in an industrial setting. Nor does the distinction between two facets of pride justify classifying employees on the basis of a few remarks. In SHR's “Emotional Intelligence” programme, these findings can support situational analysis without becoming a personality diagnosis or a promise of performance.
A practical check in Neuchâtel
In a Neuchâtel team working in microtechnology, watchmaking or precision microelectronics, trial a brief review after each successful technical milestone for one month. The record should identify an action that contributed to the outcome, the factual evidence supporting it and a remaining limitation to check. Measure the proportion of reviews containing all three elements, then check at the next milestone whether the announced verification was completed. This indicator does not measure pride itself: it checks whether celebration remains connected to explicit practices and continued verification. To go further: explore the Emotional Intelligence training in Neuchâtel in the canton of Neuchâtel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Emotional Intelligence in Neuchâtel
- emotional intelligence
- Neuchâtel
- research
- training neuchâtel