All Right, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready for My Close-up...

It’s awards season and my husband and I have been preparing for it with a frenzy of movie-going, sometimes hitting two, three, or even four movies in a weekend.

Leading up to the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the BAFTAs, we compile our lists of potential nominees and then move on to whom we want to win in each category. During the shows themselves, we make household chore bets, avidly keeping track on our scorecards as we laugh, cry, and wittily disparage our way through acceptance speeches. All of which is just a warm up to the Super Bowl for movie fans: the Oscars.

The only break in this routine has been the Olympics, which we’ve been watching every night (sometimes only after a movie). And it strikes me that what draws me to the Oscars – and all the other award shows – is also what keeps me glued to the Olympics: recognition of a job well done.

Working at EPI has made me even more conscious of the importance of recognition. The programs we’ve put together for clients over the past year have really illuminated some core concepts for me, concepts that are second nature to my colleagues but which are new enough to me that I can still think, yeah, cool.

A few of these concepts – the importance of coaching, teamwork, and proper training – have been on my mind, thanks to the Olympics and these ubiquitous award shows. An athlete may be hurtling down the slope alone, but she didn’t get there by herself. Behind every athlete is the support of her family, her team, her nation, her fans, her sponsors, her coaches.

Just as every film buff knows, making a movie is also a team sport. You have to start with a vision: the script, the producer, the director. You must have the right tools for the job: the cinematographer, the production designer, the crew. You have to cast the right actors, not just hire them but make sure they truly fit. And it all has to be in service of working together to tell the same story.

Some of us are just supporting players at work. Other people are the stars, the faces that clients know and admire, but no one does it alone. We all depend on one another for inspiration and vision and pure sweat. As a director, a coach, or a manager, it’s good to remember that nothing feels sweeter than the recognition that even a supporting player deserves the gold.