10

MOTIVATION AND ENCOURAGING PARTICIPATION

The use of incentives, rewards, and acknowledgments to encourage participation is an area that unskilled leaders often get painfully wrong. Misunderstanding how members are motivated, and “rewarding” them inappropriately, can destroy goodwill and a community.

Good leaders encourage participation regularly and often. Although incentives and rewards may appear similar, they are not. Misunderstand the difference and you will exasperate your community’s participants and appear emotionally tone-deaf.

The complexity of incentives, rewards, achievements, and acknowledgments can go very deep. The following simplified discussion will help you avoid destructive practices and notice enriching opportunities.

To help clarify distinctions, we’ll reference Carrie’s own real volunteer involvement. In Seattle, she volunteers to do data entry for a nonprofit that helps train women political candidates. By any standard, the actual work is both boring and tedious. Nevertheless, she has volunteered her weekends to do this work. In fact, she even invites friends, who also join.

Why does this work? Are those Seattle political organizers stunning manipulators? Do they know the exact management levers to get volunteers to commit to tedious work?

No. Carrie returns because those leaders help her be who she wants to be. More specifically, they’re supporting her to act on her internal motivation to commit to a cause greater than herself. This is what great community leaders do. In this chapter, we will dive into what’s going on.

Distinguishing between External and Internal Motivation

Each person has a diversity of things that motivate them. Inexperienced leaders often misunderstand how people are motivated toward community participation and contribution. As a result, they will “give away” goodies (such as branded swag or gift cards) thinking that this will create participation, contribution, and loyalty from the recipients. Note: It’s not a “giveaway” if you expect work in return; it’s a bait and switch, and that’s toxic to any community.

For the purpose of supporting community leaders, we’re sharing fairly simple and accessible distinctions. First, understand that there are two basic kinds of motivation, external and internal.

External Motivation

External motivation drives us to action in order to get a reward or avoid punishment. Typically the reward is offered and/or given by other people. They decide whether, when, and how much is awarded or punished.¹

For example, participants are externally motivated when they post media online to get likes, host an event to impress others, or compete to win an award. They aspire to get something that others control.

Some forms of external motivation in community are fine! These may include access to particular events, credentials, or resources (e.g., a clubhouse, grants, or a network). But if members participate only for external rewards, then you’ll have a transactional group (i.e., a mirage community) because the connected relationships will be missing. In such a case, “members” are largely competitors for limited rewards that they earn or win. Usually, externally motivated participants don’t build supportive, caring, and patient relationships with the competitors they’ve got to beat.

Internal Motivation

Internal motivation comes from inside us and feels like a natural part of ourselves. When we are internally motivated, no one else needs to provide anything more to inspire us to action. The (internal) joy we feel after an activity (such as volunteering to do data entry for women candidates) can be enough. Carrie doesn’t volunteer for the fun, attention, awards, or obviously money, and never will. She wants to see women politicians succeed and is willing to contribute as needed.

Internal motivation can be described in far more complicated ways than we have here. For the purpose of growing community leadership, we will focus on three key conditions to support internal motivation. We referenced them in part 1, noting that in healthy brand communities, members are internally motivated to commit.² Participants show up and return when these conditions are met. To be effective, all authentic community invitations need a context that supports all three conditions:³

1. Choice: the ability to say yes or no to membership and participation.
2. Connection: connecting to other people. We’ve discussed connection a lot in this book. Members want to be recognized by others and accepted for who they are, and they want to know that others care about their welfare.
3. Progress: advancement toward a purpose.

We want to experience progress toward a chosen purpose. This can include growing toward mastery of an art, skill, or field. This progress can be expressed as a form of being. For example, chefs do many varied tasks, and a chefs’ community can help us cook better. We may scrub pots with chefs because they help us become better cooks. In this way, we progress toward a goal of being a better cook.

When Carrie volunteers, she first chooses whether, when, and how she supports the organization. Second, she connects with others who share her values and purpose. Third, she progresses toward her purpose in helping women candidates win elections. That makes the experience worthwhile even though the actual work is really boring.

In order to effectively support others with their internal motivations, we need to understand what internally motivates them such that they want an opportunity to take action to connect and progress. This almost always means investing the time and work to learn what’s honestly internally motivating them. (See the section “Understanding Your Members” in chapter 4.) When we authentically support their internal motivation, we will be shocked to see what people will step up to do.

In the real world, there’s an unfortunate tendency among leaders to recognize their own motivation as internal and wrongfully assume that everyone else is externally motivated (i.e., that other people just want more cool stuff ).

There are all kinds of internal rewards we seek in community. You may even identify some we don’t know about. Very often participants seek one or more of these benefits:

• Wellness (well-being)
• Creativity/innovation (creating something both personal and new)
• Generosity (being a support to others)
• Aliveness/vitality (fully experiencing life)
• Fortitude (persistence in the face of challenge)
• Purpose (meaningfulness)
• Fulfillment (sense of accomplishment)
• Belonging (deepening relationships with others who share their identities, beliefs, or values)

All these are benefits often associated with internal motivation and are less likely to be supported by external motivation. This is one reason why simply making friends is a legitimate reason to join a community. Strong friends help us feel belonging, aliveness, and fortitude. Friends also are people with whom we can express our generosity. This can be a reason why you’ll get mad if a friend doesn’t call you when she needs a ride to a hospital. She withheld an opportunity for you to be a generous friend.

Ignoring one or all of the three conditions explains why so many communities experience failure. It doesn’t matter how fantastic an invitation could be or how much participants really want to help. A single contextual element can make any opportunity distasteful. Coercion is just one example.

Community Internal Motivation

We want the right people to consider membership with at least some internal motivation. This is to say, we hope that they join without a cold calculation of a strict quid pro quo relationship with other people. Such calculations result in a transactional group relationship.

When Carrie originally volunteered to do data entry, she didn’t do so because she was looking for a really boring activity done under fluorescent lighting to fill her Saturdays. She chose to do something to be a support to women candidates winning offices (purpose) and to contribute (progress toward the purpose) and connect with a community that shared her values. (To learn more about community identity and membership, see chapter 1 of The Art of Community.)

At the time, she would have considered any request or invitation that would help her become a contributor and community member. In this example, she was asked to do data entry on a weekend. She tried it once and returned for more because all the conditions for feeling internally motivated fulfillment were in place.

Imagine that we invite you to go on a weekend apple-picking outing with us. It will be an opportunity to get outdoors on a sunny day, make some friends, and of course enjoy some apples. We obviously won’t pay you or trade for your participation, so you’ll only join because you’re internally motivated to do so.

Notice that no matter how much you’d like to apple-pick with us, an otherwise fun opportunity is transformed into something else as soon as we dismiss or ignore any one of the three conditions that support your internal motivation.

MISSING FREEDOM (COERCION)

• If you don’t pick at least forty pounds of apples, we’ll ban you from all social events among our friends.
• Everyone who refuses the invitation will be labeled as “not a team player” in our work group.

MISSING CONNECTION (ISOLATION)

• All day, you’re assigned to work in an orchard corner alone so that you “won’t have to compete for apples” or “get distracted” by other pickers.
• We insist that there be no talking in the field because some people are introverts and may not say that they prefer the silence.

MISSING PROGRESS (STAGNATION)

• You’re neither told what to bring nor provided sacks, buckets, or ladders. Without appropriate equipment, you can neither collect nor carry to the car more than ten apples at a time.
• You’re allowed five minutes to pick your apples and then told to guard the car alone while others pick in the field.

Leaders’ ignoring any one (or all) of these three conditions explains why so many experiences fail to build community.

The most powerful way to support internally motivated volunteer participants is to separate their contribution (such as work) from external rewards. If we make rewards into things to be earned, then we create a transactional relationship that competes with outside market-rate returns (e.g., payment for data entry or anything else).

This does not mean that you cannot give valuable rewards to high-contribution and high-performing members. You can, and we support that wholeheartedly. But when you do, you must make clear that you’re not giving meaningful material rewards because they’re earned. You give the reward in recognition of the members’ commitment, and/or to honor who they are and their importance to the community and purpose.

To give you more effective options, it’s important to understand the distinctions between tokens and acknowledgment, as we will discuss later in this chapter.

Combined External and Internal Motivation

Often we are driven by both external and internal motivations. Many teachers, doctors, house builders, artists, chefs, and firefighters love to contribute because they know they’re making a difference in others’ lives (contributing). Virtually all of them need, and rightly demand, payment in exchange for their work. If they didn’t, they couldn’t and shouldn’t continue. There is nothing wrong with this! Either or both kinds of motivations can be effective. What matters here is distinguishing between them so that we can deliver appropriate support in member relationships. If we don’t, relationships (and participation) erode quickly.

When members participate for both internal and external motives, leaders must honor and deliver all rewards needed. We’ve seen many leaders criticize contributors because they need or demand external rewards for participation when leaders think all contribution should come with no external rewards. This is silly and very often extremely toxic. When leaders insist on ignoring the need to fulfill all appropriate motivations, they appear abusive and tone-deaf.

We know of a Christian summer camp that recruited twenty-something staff to run operations. The camp offered either no pay or very little. Each workday lasted more than twelve hours. When staff expressed a problem with the situation, they were told that “if they really were serving because of their faith and they really believed in the work, then they wouldn’t want more money.” This is both ridiculous and a good example of leaders ignoring the often connected relationship between internal and external motivation. Ignoring either one erodes the relationship and builds deep resentment.

Likewise, if leadership only fulfills external motivations (“The pay/reward/ exchange is enough”), then there should be no surprise why stakeholders feel unappreciated, disgruntled, and angry.

Our job as effective community leaders includes discovering the means and member relationships that serve both our community’s needs and the contributors’ needs. This includes honoring all internal and external motivations.

Rewards: Separating External and Internal Motivation

Let’s clarify some important distinctions before we discuss how to avoid creating problems with incentives and rewards.

Incentives

An incentive is intended to incite action. An incentive appeals to external motivation for someone to take action. Typically, incentives work in a commodified transactional relationship. If we ask you to pick us up from the airport and you’ll only consider it if we buy you dinner (to make it worth your while), then the offer is an (external) incentive. It’s commodified when we then compare the dinner cost to hiring a car.

Tokens

A token is an item given to someone. It represents a relationship, a shared value, or both. A token specifically honors a recipient’s internal motivation.

Tokens are never transactional even though the token item may be materially valuable, such as jewelry. A token’s value lives in its representation of something nonmaterial. It works in a relationship.

Because tokens work in the realm of meaning (representation) and refer to a relationship, the person who gives the token makes a big difference. In fact, who gives the token can make all the difference. When we say “give,” we don’t refer to who physically hands over a token; it’s OK to send a token in the mail, for example. Tokens work because of who gives them, so it’s important that someone knowingly offers the token to represent a relationship.

Tokens are often given after a participant contributes in action. However, as noted, the token’s material value is not the motivation for someone to contribute.

It’s hard to overstate how powerfully tokens can serve a community. Many people—you may be one of them—keep special tokens the rest of their lives. Some examples of tokens include military medals, wearable pins, challenge coins, and any item passed from an elder to a growing novice to honor the novice’s development.

If we ask you to pick us up from the airport and you want to do that to support us as your friends, we may offer you dinner. That dinner is not then an incentive. It is a token of our friendship. We provide it to honor our friendship and your internal motivation to help friends.

Acknowledgment (No Judgment)

In acknowledgment, someone specifically articulates the contribution a participant makes (or made), without judgment. Typically, this includes words that specify how the individual is making a difference. For example, “Carrie volunteered four hours of data entry this Sunday” acknowledges Carrie’s contribution. There’s no judgment of whether she did a good job or not. In fact, even if she did a terrible job, the acknowledgment remains honest and accurate.

The important aspect of acknowledgment is that it enables us to show others that we notice their contribution (or effort) without putting ourselves in a judgmental relationship. For one thing, there are people by whom many of us don’t want to be judged; for another, there are times we just don’t want to be judged.

For example, we (Carrie and Charles) are book writers, and neither of us wants to meet others at weddings where the conversation includes, “You’re a writer! That’s amazing! I could never write a book. You must have so much discipline!”

That’s not a terrible thing to say to an author; it’s just a judging (albeit positive) announcement from someone (a nonauthor) from whom we don’t seek judgment. Consider that we don’t mind getting judged on other occasions, such as when volunteering for a political campaign over months. Hearing we did a good job will be important.

By contrast, on her first day volunteering, when Carrie is frustrated by the database program, she doesn’t necessarily want someone judging how well she’s using it . . . because she’s not good at it yet. A simple acknowledgment can be far more effective:

Carrie, I notice you’re putting in the time to learn the program. That’s the only way to do it, and using the database is an important job here.

If someone tells us we’re doing a “great job” or “good work” and we know we aren’t (yet), then that person is just demonstrating insincerity, which erodes both trust and credibility.

Because acknowledgment excludes judgment, we can acknowledge someone who isn’t doing a good job or isn’t very helpful yet. We can acknowledge someone’s time, commitment, intentions, and effort, regardless of the quality of the work. In fact, acknowledging someone’s time, effort, and improvement can create the right context to share helpful criticism for improvement. So, even when Carrie is still lousy with the database, we can acknowledge her:

Carrie, I see you came in on a Saturday to help. It’s a reflection of your commitment to this work, and we’ll only succeed with help like this from many volunteers.

For some people, using acknowledgment enables them to escape what we call the “death spiral of thanks and compliments.” You know people who describe everyone they know or work with as “amazing,” “the best,” or “incredible.” The hyperbolic words grow empty and annoying because everyone isn’t actually amazing at everything.

At one of Charles’s workshops, he worked with the head of a high school military academy. By every standard, the academy is a strong brand community. Every morning, the head of school inspected the cadets’ uniforms and quarters to ensure that all was in order. He felt silly “thanking” each cadet for doing exactly what they’re tasked to do every day. He then recognized that all they needed from him was an acknowledgment. “Cadet, your uniform is exactly right. Your quarters are clean and tidy.” He may sometimes add “good job,” which is a judgment. That can be great too. But he doesn’t have to do it.

There is a gray area between acknowledgment and judgment: Whenever we draw attention to something (say, with acknowledgment), we judge it worthy of attention; also, when we acknowledge someone’s contribution, we are implicitly judging it helpful and appreciated. Fair enough. There’s an overlap between acknowledgment and other forms of encouragement.

When we’re speaking to or about someone who doesn’t want to be judged (because they’re struggling or feeling vulnerable), avoiding judgment can make a very big difference. When we’re connecting with others and want to avoid creating a judgmental relationship with them, then using the acknowledgment distinction gives us a way to do this.

We acknowledge you for taking the time to sit with this book in hopes of growing better at bringing people together. We don’t know whether you made a good choice or whether you’ll get better. We acknowledge that reading these words is part of your commitment to be a better community builder.

Recognition, Gratitude, and Appreciation (with Judgment)

Recognition, gratitude, and appreciation are three distinct and nuanced ideas. We’re bundling them in this discussion because many leaders use the terms interchangeably. The important commonality is that all three include both acknowledgment and a value judgment. Obviously you can judge something without gratitude or appreciation. Community leaders usually recognize members because there is both evaluation and appreciation for someone’s commitment and contribution.

In a healthy community, a lot of gratitude is shared, so we’re assuming that this kind of judgment will come up a lot (as it should). An example is, “Carrie volunteered four hours this Saturday, and she did a great job” or “Carrie is a really helpful volunteer. She volunteered another four hours this weekend.” The difference between this and acknowledgment may appear subtle.

Status is one way to recognize or acknowledge a member’s contribution. In fact, we know that Twitch broadcasters have cried when offered a higher status because it acknowledged their contribution to the community.

Keep in mind that providing higher status simply for longevity (“seniority status”) can be toxic for a community, because it doesn’t recognize contribution, only longevity. Someone can be a pain in the butt for years and have longevity. Providing higher status because of contribution enriches community.

The important benefit to distinguishing these terms is that we then have a better lens for seeing what is the right kind of communication, at the right time, to offer in our communities. It gives us more tools to relate to and connect with members.

In community, we want to be seen for who we are and the contributions we make. When someone simply acknowledges both of these things, that is often moving, heartening, and enough.

To help you understand the distinction among acknowledgment, recognition, tokens, and incentives, imagine Charles getting advice from Carrie on improving his marriage relationship. Carrie tells Charles that many partners like getting flowers, so Charles decides to give his wife, Soch, flowers more often. The examples in the next sections can help clarify how any one gift (flowers in this case) can very differently influence a relationship, depending on how the gift is presented.

Assume that Charles’s wife remains with him because they each care about the other’s well-being and like their connection. No surprise, the marriage is overwhelmingly internally motivated. This is to say it’s not a transactional marriage for external rewards. Given that they have a son, the home holds a family community. It’s obviously not a brand community, but otherwise all the principles apply.

Charles’s plan is to welcome his wife home on Friday with a dozen roses. He hopes the gift will help her feel even more appreciated and connected in the relationship.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT TOKEN GIFT ROSES (HELPFUL)

Recognizing Soch’s internal motivation to support the marriage and family, Charles can present the roses this way:

Soch, I notice how much time and work you put into the house and our family even with a full-time job and work tasks late into the night. I notice that every day you check in with me and our son. These roses are for you to acknowledge your commitment and effort.

In this presentation, Charles acknowledged Soch’s commitment and efforts. The roses are a gift given generously, and they serve as a token of his appreciation for her and her commitment.

Notice that there is no judgmental language. It’s possible that she is in fact doing a poor job of handling both work and family needs. The words and gift remain honest.

Judgment isn’t necessarily harmful. Still honoring the relationship, Charles could also express gratitude and appreciation:

Soch, I notice how much work you put into the house and our family even with a full-time job. I’m appreciative of the time you take to care for us. I think you do a great job, and it makes a difference, making my life happy. These flowers are for you.

Here, Charles is recognizing her for her contribution. The flowers still remain a generous gift and a token of appreciation in the relationship.

TRANSACTIONAL ROSES (DESTRUCTIVE)

Charles could mistakenly believe that, while he’s in the marriage because he values the connection, she’s in the marriage for external rewards (stuff from him and from other people). In this case, Charles might present the flowers this way:

Soch, welcome home. You made dinner four nights this week, mopped the floor, and bathed our son. For every chore you did well, I bought one rose until I reached twelve. Congratulations—you get a dozen roses from your husband this week for doing at least twelve chores well in the house!

We hope you got a sense of how much this will not help the marriage. Maybe you (appropriately) winced. We see this kind of mistake in bad community leadership far too often. The problem here is that Charles presented the flowers as earned in a transactional relationship. This dishonors Soch’s internal motivation. If there was generosity involved, it’s spoiled by transaction. She “earned” flowers through her actions. They’re the same flowers from the same partner on the same day, and they now don’t help her feel much appreciated as a partner—if at all.

EXTERNALLY MOTIVATING INCENTIVIZING ROSES (DISASTROUS)

If Charles were really wrongheaded and thought flowers would incentivize Soch as a reward, he would say something like this:

Soch, I’d like to give you something nice because we’re married and you care for our family. If you do chores in the house, including bathing our son, cleaning the floor, and making dinner, at the end of the week I’ll give you one rose for each chore you do, up to a maximum of twelve. If you do a good job, I’ll give you a big bouquet because you’ve been a good wife.

We hope this sounded ridiculous to you. We cringe reading it. In this case, Charles offered the roses as a potentially earned reward (bleh!). This isn’t very romantic and, knowing Soch, it will certainly harm Charles’s marriage. She doesn’t want to be judged, counted, and rewarded for tasks in her marriage! She wants to be in relationship. She wants to be appreciated for who she is in the relationship and any gift to come out of generosity, unearned. She wants a partner who cares about her no matter what happens in her week.

• • •

Notice that the flowers work as a helpful relationship gift only when they’re given to Charles’s wife because he’s expressing appreciation for who she is. She gets the flowers for being his wife, being connected, being committed, being important to him. Said differently, the flowers only work while they remain a token (representation) and there’s generosity (unearned giving) in the giving.

Some people get confused as to how “just words” can make the same gift work fantastically or disastrously. They rightly point out, “They’re the same roses!” “Just words” can make or break your efforts because the words tell recipients whether the gift lives within a transactional connection or a relational connection.

No matter how valuable the gift, if recipients want something that represents their precious connection to you, your presenting it transactionally will never fulfill their want. As an example, Charles can fly in one hundred plumeria leis because his wife “earned” them doing one hundred chores, but she’ll never appreciate them as much as one orchid given with these words:

Soch, I noticed this has been a hard week. You’ve had two days of work travel. There’s been a screaming sick kid in the house. You couldn’t go to the gym because of surprises, and I didn’t make dinners because of late meetings. This single potted orchid is for you. It’s for the dining room table so you’ll see it every morning and be reminded both when you leave and when you return that whatever happens, you’ve got a husband who cares about you and appreciates your commitment to our family every day.

The distinction between earned and unearned tokens applies to all gifts shared within internally motivated relationships. It also applies when we want to reward people because they deserve it. The gift must remain a token, and recipients will know this because our words present it as such.

“Earned” Tokens

You may know of tokens that are “earned” for achieving some activity. We know that HOG members can “earn” a token pin for joining a particular group ride. Many summer camp kids “earn” beads or badges for completing an activity (archery, pottery, etc.). The examples are countless.

After all our insistence on tokens being relational gifts and not rewards, why do such “earned” tokens work? The reason they work is that the item received (patch, pin, bead, sash) has little or no material value in the world. For clarity, the bead or pin tokens cannot be sold either within or outside the community for any substantial money or trade value. In fact, the only consequential value of the “earned” token is as a symbol. So even if we say it’s “earned,” the recipient is only “earning” a symbol.

Imagine if the HOG riders and summer campers “earned” a $10,000 gift card instead of the pins and beads. The whole community’s relationship to the rewards would change.

For example, Airbnb staff send specially made key chains in the shape of the Airbnb logo (known as a Belo) to important hosts. The only way to get a real one is as a gift from Airbnb staff who want you to have it. Often the Belos are given with a handwritten note expressing appreciation. In this way, they serve clearly as a token of appreciation.

Our favorite earned token example was shared by a friend who worked for a famous investment firm. Each staff person was given a small Lego set that represented a given investment project. Over years, staff collected Lego sets on their desks that others in the know could interpret as representing the history of deals worked on. All the staff felt pride in their own Lego collection that represented their cumulative contribution to the firm.

The Folly of Maximizing Cheap Tokens

When wrongheaded leaders see or learn that inexpensive token gifts can work to strengthen member relationships and commitment, some engage in the folly of seeking maximum token efficiency and scalability.

Earlier, we used the example of Charles giving roses to his wife, Soch. Presumably he was smart enough to present them as a genuine gift from a loving husband who wants her to feel appreciated for who she is.

Imagine Charles returning to Carrie and telling her, “She loved them!” and then saying, “I wonder whether instead of a dozen flowers each week, ten would do the same? How about every other week? How much less will the flowers work if I give them 20 percent less often? What’s the most efficient return on flowers in my marriage? What if we consider adding her birthday gift budget to the flower budget?”

The important lesson here is that if a husband goes all the way through exploring the most efficient flower-gifting in his marriage, his spouse will rightly wonder why he’s so stingy and will question the importance of the relationship. This is because the effort undermines generosity in the relationship. We see this folly often play out even when multibillion-dollar brands consider what, when, and to whom token gifts should be sent.

Erin Wayne, Twitch’s head of community marketing, oversees more than forty Twitch city groups around the world. They’re called “groups,” but they function as brand communities. Each group operates with local volunteer leadership and hosts several events a year for its members. One way Twitch supports the local communities is by providing Twitch-logoed items or “swag.” Every year, Erin’s team suggests kinds of swag and asks what kinds each group wants. Depending on costs, Twitch can provide a few expensive items (such as high-end hoodie sweatshirts) or many inexpensive items (hats). The local leaders choose.

The Honolulu group recently asked for Twitch-branded beach balls. They loved them so much Erin said they “flipped out” (i.e., got very excited) when they received them. Because of vendor relationships and volume, the balls cost Twitch only about $1 each. Each ball inspired more excitement among members than a $40-per-person drinks tab at other events. Erin understands the importance of the token in the ongoing relationships and never tries to maximize ROI on any given beach ball.

However, for those leaders who don’t understand how tokens work, they’ll wonder . . .

What exactly is the ROI for each $1 beach ball?

If balls work so much better than event drinks, isn’t it best to eliminate drinks and send out more balls?

What’s the cheapest ball we can send out to every group next year?

These questions reveal someone who doesn’t recognize tokens or understand how they work. The balls only work because the gift (accurately) tells the Honolulu members that Twitch recognizes them, cares about them, listens to them, and wants them to (1) join freely, (2) build community among themselves, and (3) enjoy themselves (purpose). The token balls exist within a living relationship among the members, local leadership, Twitch staff, and Erin. As Erin put it, “You only get back what you put in. Swag is only one tool used in real invested relationships” (personal communication with Erin Wayne, June 2019).

More than sending out swag, Erin knows the name of every local leader around the world. Each one can and does contact her directly when they need help . . . and then her team helps.

Erin pointed out that the balls were a hit in part because they came out of a conversation where the Hawaiian leaders asked for something. Twitch responded to the request. The members recognized that Twitch pays attention to them.

To understand whether Erin’s team is helping support and achieve organizational goals, a better question is, “What is the ROI of the staff ’s commitment to the relationship?”

Using External Incentives and Rewards the Wrong Way

We obviously can’t know your participants well enough to tell you how to reward them. What we can help you understand is what kinds of rewards may work best.

Let’s go back to our earlier example of Carrie volunteering her time to do data entry. As we’ve mentioned, the truth is, political data entry is tedious. Totally, absolutely tedious, mind-numbing, and exhausting. There are thousands of other ways that Carrie could volunteer close to home that would be more fun. And yet . . . she does the data entry.

What’s going on here?

Carrie’s not returning for external rewards. Imagine that Emily, the volunteer organizer, offers Carrie a reward of ten campaign points for every voter data page she enters. These points can be exchanged for hats, T-shirts, pins, or other campaign paraphernalia. If Carrie were externally motivated (seeking things given to her by others), this might appear to be an effective strategy, because Emily wants as much data entry from volunteers (including Carrie) as possible.

REWARDS WHEN THERE IS EXTERNAL MOTIVATION

Let’s explore using external rewards. Unfortunately, even if Carrie were externally motivated, these rewards will work poorly at best.

1. The strategy will only work short-term. Emily is never going to offer Carrie enough rewards to keep her doing a tedious task on her free Saturdays. If Emily were to eventually offer Carrie enough rewards to keep her going, Emily would end up paying Carrie. Carrie would become a part-time hire.

2. If Carrie is doing this tedious work for external rewards, she will look for something to do that’s less tedious to get those same points. Emily will have to offer increasingly more points for data entry and thus create a rewards death spiral.

REWARDS WHEN THERE IS INTERNAL MOTIVATION

The situation is worse for Emily if she has misread Carrie’s internal motivation and offers external rewards. Because Carrie is internally motivated, she’s doing the work to be who she wants to be. She wants to be effective supporting women candidates serving communities, and she wants to be connected with others with similar values and purpose. There is no point, T-shirt, or hat that Emily can give Carrie to help Carrie be an effective support.

When Emily offers external rewards (points), she undervalues and dishonors Carrie’s internal motivation and, ironically, erodes Carrie’s powerful internal motivation. Research shows that what will almost certainly occur is that Carrie will assign value to her tedious hours by looking at what the points are worth (a lot less than Carrie’s labor and weekend). That will tell Carrie that her volunteer work isn’t very valuable to the organization. So she’ll stop and look for something else to do. More than likely, she’ll look to volunteer where the leaders value her work and invite her to be effective and connected.⁴

Acknowledgment and Appreciation

Internally motivated people welcome acknowledgment and appreciation (A&A). These are not rewards. A&A honors the commitment already inside someone. It is never earned in a quid pro quo (transactional) relationship.

In Carrie’s volunteer experience, Emily can acknowledge Carrie in many ways. A simple option is for Emily to speak to Carrie alone and say,

Carrie, I notice you’re spending many Saturdays in this office entering voter data. All of us consider this a painful and tedious job. This is important work for the candidates we’re supporting because we need to know who to contact. Your time makes a difference getting our women elected.

Emily can also hold a short office meeting to acknowledge the day’s work among all volunteers. She could include words about Carrie’s contribution, along these lines:

Carrie spent her Saturday entering voter data. She completed eighteen pages today. It’s brutally tedious and painful work. Our database is more complete because of her time.

Emily can also express appreciation for Carrie. Here, appreciation is a kind of acknowledgment in which we include a judgment. Many times it may seem silly that we’re distinguishing between the two. As explained earlier, there are times when others don’t want to be judged and when we prefer to avoid serving as a judge. Recognizing that we can acknowledge someone powerfully without judgment serves as an important distinction.

To appreciate Carrie, Emily can say what we’ve already cited and add a judgment:

Carrie’s a strong volunteer who’s willing to do hard parts of this work. [Or] I admire Carrie for her commitment.

Tokens

As we’ve discussed, items used as tokens can be effective or countereffective, depending on how they are presented. For example, gift cards are terrible tokens if they are “earned,” but they can work well as “a token of appreciation.” In online spaces, badges work as tokens when they’re used strictly to acknowledge. This means they have no trade value but have symbolic value within the community.

You can make tokens symbols of just about anything, including commitment, accomplishment, or impact. Because they work in the realm of meaning, they are easy to make and share. But, as with all things, if we make too many, they lose their specialness.

Emily can acknowledge Carrie and add,

Carrie, I’d like you to have this logoed sweatshirt to acknowledge your commitment. You’ve done tedious work that makes a difference, and I’d like you to have this because you obviously care about our mission and you support all of us working on this.

Because Emily infuses the gift with meaning, it doesn’t live in a transactional relationship between the organization and Carrie.

In his work, Charles has given $20 ice cream shop gift cards to staff who’ve done an important job. The cards aren’t worth much by themselves, but he makes sure the recipients know that the cards are given so that staff can celebrate their success with someone with whom they’d like to share ice cream. The card serves as a token acknowledging their success, and it facilitates a ritual (an ice cream outing) celebrating the same. For this to work, the card must pay for ice cream for at least two, and Charles must make explicit that the gift is about celebration, never about a transaction.

Rituals

Rituals are activities that have meaning. Appropriate rituals can be a great way to offer A&A. In mature communities, rituals acknowledge changes and milestones. Part of a community’s value comes from offering connection to people who recognize one another for who they are. Community rituals allow members to see that their community recognizes both their changes and their accomplishments.

The topic of rituals is so grand and rich that volumes have been written discussing it. In this context, it is not wrong to think of tokens as items that acknowledge a relationship and rituals as actions that do the same. And yes, combining rituals and tokens is a fantastic idea.

Strengthening with Gamification

Gamification refers to using game mechanics to manage a group, usually by introducing competition among members.⁵ Progress is noted within the competition through such tools as points, leaderboards, trophies, and badges.⁶

Gamification is designed to help motivate groups to do things—that is, get actions done. Picking up trash, crowdsourcing resources, answering questions, and returning to participate (in loyalty programs) are examples of many actions that can be gamified.

In community building, Gamification is effective only within very specific conditions. Gamification introduced impulsively or recklessly into an authentic community can deeply erode members’ internal motivation.

It can help in getting tasks done. But we must remain very clear about whether our intentions are to yield short-term gains or to build long-term supportive relationships. A poorly organized game introduces uncertainty about participants’ real motivation and even their contributing value. For example:

“Is Carrie doing data entry because she cares about women candidates or because she wants to win the game?”

“We wonder whether Carrie is really committed, because her data-entry volume is often in the bottom-half ranking among Saturday volunteers.”

“Is Charles picking up street trash because he cares about a cleaner Oakland or because he wants the rewards?”

“We don’t know whether Charles really wants to help, because he’s never even close to winning the day’s trash-bag count.”

There is also the danger that game players will focus on the criteria counted and neglect the core community purpose(s). Charles picks up Oakland street trash several days a week. He knows that if a reward is offered for filling the most trash bags per week, he could win the game by seeking out the most bulky boxes, furniture parts, and discarded clothing. But what he really wants is a cleaner Oakland. So he’s happy to pick up candy and cigar wrappers even though hundreds of these strewn down a block won’t fill a single trash bag.

When participants (wrongly or rightly) believe they’re losing status for losing the game(s), they’re likely to ditch the whole experience. Charles would rather go pick up trash on his own block than get sneered at for not filling bags with bulky boxes.

Bad games lead participants to expect transactional value for social contribution or connection. Just as offering rewards can erode participation, leading to transactional relationships, game winnings can do the same.

To ensure that our games support relationships within the community and do more than “get something done,” we must attend to some key criteria. To help clarify these, we’ll imagine a game to support Oakland street-cleaning volunteers.

MINIMUM GOOD GAME CRITERIA

• The game encourages and rewards cooperation among participants.

  It’s OK for participants to help one another lift, carry, and load refuse together without penalty.

• The rewards serve only to acknowledge participant success rather than provide real material value.

  The award has very little market value relative to the work accomplished in the game.

  A pizza dinner for five is good. A week’s trip for five to Hawaii is not.

• Losing the game does not meaningfully harm participants’ status.

  When Charles picks up garbage all day but fills only two bags with fast-food napkins and candy wrappers, everyone knows this can mean that he is just as committed and helpful as someone who filled more bags.

  When Charles’s seventy-four-year-old mother fills only one trash bag, slowly, all understand that her commitment is just as respectable.

• The game is non-zero-sum. Everyone can grow by playing. This typically means that participants “win” by growing closer to who they want to be, furthering toward a purpose, and/or just doing what they seek (i.e., bikers get to bike; paddlers get to paddle). This allows genuine appreciation for all players, including the last finishers within the community.

  Everyone who participates helps make Oakland cleaner and spends time with neighbors who want to make a difference.

• Sitting out is OK and not a status-losing choice. Note that this criterion protects the freedom crucial in any internally motivated activity.

  If Charles takes his dog to the vet or visits a sick friend instead of playing the game, he loses no respect.

• It’s never a problem that other members are winning.

  If Charles hands in one bag of candy-wrapper trash, that’s not a problem.

  There is no reason for Charles to sabotage other players.

• Everyone wants winners to win. Said differently, no one meaningfully loses status or resources because there’s a winner.

  When Charles sees the trash pickup tally by the top teams, he’s excited to see how much trash got off the street and respects the work to haul it in. He loses no privilege, respect, or resources because there are new winners.

Please note that the last criterion doesn’t mean that “everyone wins.” Or that there is no top winner. The criteria ensure that winners win and losers win differently. This is how a community remains a community and avoids devolving into a backbiting, backstabbing, information-hoarding gang of frenemies.