What Makes an Experience Special?
Good leaders are in the business of creating special experiences for others. In order to support, challenge, and reward others, leaders design experiences that propel people forward. The best leaders are always thinking of new experiences from which to springboard learning for others.
Making experiences special is what great leaders do. The question is: What makes an experience special? When designing experiences to elevate and motivate others, leaders consider how to incorporate one or more of several critical features.
Special experiences are typically one-of-a-kind events. Their novelty makes them exclusive and hard to replicate easily. Their uniqueness makes people treat them as different from other activities that are more commonplace.
Of course, special experiences aren’t very special if they’re not personalized or tailored to the group. When leaders give them a specific flavor designed just for the person or team, it’s hard not to feel their specialness.
The best experiences require active engagement. They immerse people into new ideas and involve them with new people. The level of exploration and discovery from this immersion helps to make them memorable. Special experiences are never passive or fully expected. They push people to new insights and out of their normal comfort zone.
To emphasize the specialness of an experience, leaders don’t scrimp on resources or miss the smallest details. They show respect for people when they invest in top-notch experts, venues, and accoutrements.
When every detail matters, experiences become exceptional in the eyes of those who get to participate in them. This doesn’t mean special experiences have to be expensive, but it does imply that specialness requires details that are highly memorable. Creativity is equal to financial investment when it comes to creating noteworthy moments.
By incorporating these qualities, any experience can become more remarkable. Leaders who design special experiences motivate others to live up to the extraordinary. When people are treated to special experiences, they come to feel special about themselves.
Is there anything more important for a leader to create?
My favorite team experience has been getting invited to prep, cook, then enjoy a meal with the team in a professional kitchen under the supervision of a chef. We get to learn a little bit about cooking, some team work is involved as we break into different stations, and then again with everyone comes together to share the meal with the chef.