Rewards Can Punish
Business Directions 7 Oct 1996This is not a discussion about corporate S&M. Well actually, it sort of is. Let me ask you a simple question.
Which makes you feel the best when you have just successfully wrapped up an incredibly tough contract - a bonus cheque for $1000, or your happy client telling your boss what a fantastic job you did?
(Sorry, "both" is not an option - our western business style has not yet evolved to that level of sophistication.)
If you said the money, keep reading what follows if you wish, but you will probably find it boring at best and nonsense at worst. Definitely no titillation for you here.
If you chose the boss's pat-on-the-back recognition to give you those warm-fuzzies in a way that money cannot, then you are heading for a much greater achievement track than those guys who aren't reading this any more - who are probably careening off in their hot BMW to their nearest ATM, bonus in hand.
Your bank manager is undoubtedly like mine (a noisy silent partner) - his eyes get moist when he sees a deposit heading toward my usually one-way cheque account. Any form of currency is wondrous to him, be it hard earned fee, bonus, lucky lotto, miserly Aunt Philomena finally falling off her perch, or the now-redundant piggy bank (recently down-sized), or whatever.
I am the last one to undervalue money, having perfected living without it into an art form. But it seems that our traditional corporate world operates on the belief that money, or other tangible rewards, is what matters most. It did for most people who lived in the corporate shattered remains of the 1929 crash through to the late eighties.
Those who continue to believe this will discover that their future achievements will be severely limited. And relative to the changing leading edge, their level of excellence will increasingly fall backwards.
Leading achievers will increasingly be us who work our little butts off to do the best we can because we like how that makes us feel about ourselves. Warm fuzzies about giving our best shot and successfully moving toward our inner goals, toward that iideal image of who we can be. Notice I did not sat what we can be. Who is the person; what is the job.
International human resources consultant Lynne Gaines writes that the latest management research is clearly showing that true and continued job excellence can be sustained only by people motivated from within, not from without.
They want to do the best damn job because that is how they see themselves and makes them feel good about themselves. Not because someone else will give them an extra lump of moolah, a cavorting week in Kuta, an employee-of-the-month plaque, or that corner office with a window.
Management psychologist Harry Levinson writes: "the drive to feel good about themselves is the strongest drive people have.... Rather than incentives, people want work that helps them move closer to their mental image of an iideal self."
Tangible incentives often backfire, he explains, because they make people feel helpless and manipulated. To regain a sense of control, we manipulate back to beat the system. (Sounds a bit S&Mish, doesn't it?)
How often have you seen an incentive "system" being manipulated to score a win? Creative statistics, fudging sales figures, exaggerating new contacts made, and so on. So often it is the phoney stuff that gets the reward, which makes a mockery of the company, the system, and the unrecognised good achievements of good people.
American author Alfie Kohn calls rewards "doggie biscuits" and considers them almost the same as punishments. Both do things to people, not for them.
While we may all be cheering for the TV golden retriever and sidekick terrier who so ingeniously outwit the mere human in the lift or in the shop to score a bag of Good-Os (the ad is often better than the program it interrupts), we do not really want to be treated as animals. (Back to S&M again - stud collars, chains....).
What can management do, then, to recognise achievement in a way that increases real motivation rather than kills it ? Here are eight suggestions for healthy rewards in a truly healthy system.
The Eight Best Rewards for Best Results
- Pay Fairly. An underpaid employee feels exploited and negated. How can they feel good about what they do if you apparently don't? Your best performers will not hang around an organisation that hurts their positive self image. (Now your S&M people, on the other hand, love such abuse and will happily continue helping your organisation toward future failure....)
- Champion your Employees. Assist employees in ways that will help them get where they want to go. Compliment them in front of more senior managers. Send them off to conferences, meetings, teams where they will be more visible to people who can help further their professional development. As Bank of Boston Manager Linda Costellese says: "Money can be matched by anyone. What can't be matched is environment and opportunity - the chance to be at the table and have an impact."
- Praise the Win-Winner, not the Competitive Scorer. We are still
locked into the Jurassic win-lose competitive mode in most Aussie businesses.
To succeed into the 21st century requires a cooperative management style,
but turning the system around is not easy. Often when a few employees
are singled out as winners, the rest of the mob feel like losers. Envy
and thoughts of favouritism can flourish. Competitive angst increases,
which is just the opposite of what your organisation needs.
Make any public praise brief, simple, and general. Mention the collaborative efforts of the whole team. Keep specific and extensive praise where it counts the most to the future of the praisee - privately and in front of more senior management. - Be a Career Booster. Take a personal interest in where your employee wants to go and what they need to get there. Help identify what skills and visibility the employee needs and grab opportunities to help make their career growth happen. Ask how their aims and the tasks of the job you need them to do can be linked together. Listen to what they say. When successful, you may end up helping them advance out of your organisation. Perfect. This creates an opportunity for your organisation to review what employee skills it best needs right now and then to find such a person. And your ex-employee remains an ambassador for you and your organisation. Both you and your ex-employee win.
- Provide Skill and Knowledge Opportunities. Send your staff off to courses, seminars, workshops, TAFE units, conferences, etc, to continue their skill acquisition and growth opportunities. You win the use of up to date knowledge and skills and industry contacts; the employee wins a greater sense of self and what they can achieve for your organisation now, including sharing what they are learning. Another win-win outcome.
- Allocate Appropriate Assignments. Because you know where your employee
wants to get to, you can assign the most appropriate projects and tasks
to further their enideavours. Every project should provide an opportunity
to increase their ability to make a real difference.
Simple inexpensive actions can have a huge positive impact on real motivation. Simple things like providing direct client contact, a chance to make a speech, to participate in key meetings, to have title page credit on a report, to be appointed team leader, and so on. The challenge is to grab these opportunities for your employees as part of your routine everyday management operation. - Catch Them Doing It Right. Aussies are not good at fielding compliments
and so are not good at giving them. Yet we all deep-down love to get them,
but just what are we supposed to do with them then? Amazing but true, the
more we give praise, the easier it is to accept. So just do it. If you
are uncomfortable, use the rapid handball technique: think ahead what praise
you are going to bestow on someone and also think about how you can quickly
move everyone's attention on to safer, less personal ground.
You might say something like: "Sally, the Committee really appreciated all the extra effort you put into the Acme contract bid; your graphics really enhanced the look of the whole thing. We hope to hear the results within two weeks; I'll let you know how it went. Now, how is the Smith contract going?"
Simple praise is just as effective as bigger-than-Ben-Hur gala productions (those full-on dinner awards nights in highly insured hotel ballrooms). Simple comments that say you notice and appreciate the little wins, too: "Steve, the way you greet new clients is very professional and makes them feel really comfortable - well done." - Be Your Own Best Boss. Apply the seven pointers above to your own situation. What do you need to achieve your best? What can your boss or more senior management do to assist you? What can your colleagues do? What "rewards" will really make a difference to your future achievements? Think it through, then act upon it. Make it known. Make it happen.
The best reward for your employees is to have you as an exemplary example to follow. If you want successful high achieving employees with sustained motivation, be that way yourself.
If you want competitive, win-lose, superficially and shallowly motivated employees, then keep the single awards systems going, keep using money and other tangibles as the key rewards, and keep ultimately punishing your and their inner selves. Also keep everyone pumped up with super motivation talks, contests, tapes, etc, because the other thing about external rewards is that they do not have any lasting impact.
And just like true S&Mers, everyone in such an organisation will appear happy as they move toward the inevitable ultimate reward: costly corporate self destruction.
The best rewards in life are usually free.
printer friendly version | Tell a Friend