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Don’t develop winners and winning relationships

Skinner’s¹ behaviour modification principle states: ‘Every behaviour you reward you reinforce.’ And it doesn’t matter whether the behaviour is good or bad. Let’s say you are out supermarket shopping with a small child in tow. Being a small child, after not very long, it gets bored but can’t get your attention so decides the best course of action will be to hurl itself from its seat in the shopping trolley on to the floor and roll around in a red-faced tantrum screaming, “Sweets, sweets, sweets,” at the top of its lungs. (Is it possible to scream from the bottom of your lungs?) Now, if your reaction is to scream back, “Stop embarrassing me,” at the top of your voice (in front of a load of strangers who you will with all probability never see again – but that’s beside the point), then according to Skinner, what you are doing by giving the child your attention is actually ensuring this kind of behaviour will continue. Much better to catch the child doing something right and tell it, “It’s really good how you are sitting there quietly while I do the shopping.” Clearly Skinner didn’t have kids.

The fact is I’ve found this principle works just as well for big people. If you want to develop winners, catch them doing stuff right and praise them. Make sure the praise isn’t just flannel or flattery but specific and to the point. Not, “I really like you,” but, “One thing I really like about you is . . .” If you can do it in 60 seconds or less, so much the better, because that will make it more memorable and effective. It’s also been proven that the best kind of feedback is timely, so tell them as soon as you can about a behaviour you like. Don’t save it up for the annual appraisals.

I’m all for praise but not for appraisals. The best management tool ever invented if your goal is to demotivate an entire workforce is the annual appraisal. Don’t you love that term ‘appraisal’? What a management conceit. To me it says: “We clever people who run the company with our big superior brains, compared to you lowly workers, if we can find the time may deem to give you the benefit of our profound wisdom by appraising you.” Never of course must they, the workers, be put in a position where they can ‘appraise’ us back. Well to start with, they wouldn’t have the skills for it, it’s very hard to do, and of course to be a failure in management it’s really important you never ask your team what they think of your performance.

“The best management tool ever invented if your goal is to demotivate an entire workforce is the annual appraisal.”

The reason annual appraisals don’t work, if you are attempting to develop winners, is that all we remember is the massive cock-up the person made the week before the appraisal, not all the brilliant things they’ve been doing the rest of the year. Plus, you spend all the time looking back and ‘appraising’ past performance rather than spending most of the time looking forward at the exciting year ahead.

When I was a creative director working in an advertising agency, I realised the annual appraisals I was meant to conduct for every member of my department were a waste of time. No matter which side of the fence you were on, it was a time of year everyone dreaded. In fact I simply didn’t have the time to try and see the whole department in the space of two weeks, which meant quite often individuals’ ‘appraisals’ were put back or cancelled entirely. Of course, the message this sent to them was that they weren’t important, again proving ‘appraisals’ are a lousy way of motivating people.

So I changed. Instead of annual ‘appraisals’, I switched to regular ‘development discussions’. As the term implies these were held on a regular and rolling basis. The rule of thumb being the newer the person, or the newer to the job they were, the more often I would see them for a chat, which in some cases might be once a week. I didn’t see everyone at the same time of the year, but they would all have an annual ‘development discussion’ held on their anniversary of joining the company. This meant, because we had been meeting throughout the year, only 20% of the discussion was about that year and 80% was about their development for the next 12 months. This proved far more motivational for both sides.

One challenge is that so often it’s the poor performers who get all the attention because their mistakes stand out like a sore thumb. And you spend all your time telling people off and correcting performance. Whereas the best performers have got their heads down and are getting on with it, so that if you’re not careful they become invisible to you.

By the way, it’s very hard to reprimand someone if you’re not already in their good books. If all you do is catch them doing stuff wrong, once you’re out of the way, they’ll just say to their mates or brothers and sisters, “All he ever does is tell me off.” Whereas if you praise them much more often than you bollock them, they won’t be able to do that. Stephen Covey put it more politely when he said: “You need to be in the black in their emotional bank account.”

Dale Carnegie said we shouldn’t criticise, condemn or complain. When Abraham Lincoln had cause to be mad at one of his generals during the American Civil War, he made a point of sitting down and writing them a long letter. He would bluntly spell out exactly what he thought of them, listing all their failings and inadequacies in great detail. He would fill the letter with cynicism, scorn and anger. When he could think of nothing else to write he would take the letter, tear it up and throw it away. Maybe he was just following Benjamin Franklin’s advice: “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

I have a rule that I won’t indulge in gossip or talk about someone behind their back. I’d rather tell them to their face or not at all. You of course should continue to talk and gossip behind people’s backs. Of course, they would never do the same to you.

¹ The McDermott self-importance principle states: “Behavioural psychologists will always name principles after themselves.”