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Work Hazards
Traditional techniques for motivating people at work have proven ineffective, faulty, or downright wrong.1 Yet well-intentioned managers still drive for results, promote suboptimal motivation, and make creating choice, connection, and competence at work a real challenge. A question worth asking is Why?
I got a glimpse into the answer when a vice president of sales cornered me during a break at a sales meeting. “I’m about to be embarrassed,” he told me. I looked at him quizzically. He continued, “I’m about to announce the incentive plans for selling our new product. I didn’t realize you’d be here. I know how you feel about incentives.”
I nodded in agreement. I am an outspoken advocate for the body of evidence proving how external rewards are a notorious form of suboptimal motivation with a detrimental effect on performance. Our conversation proceeded something like this:
ME: Why are you offering incentives?
VP, with a tone of “Isn’t it obvious?”: To increase sales.
ME: Are you assuming the sales reps won’t sell the product without an incentive? Is the product flawed? Do your customers not really need it?
VP: No, the product is good and our customers want it. But our sales reps get in the habit of selling what they have, not the new stuff, so we need to incentivize them to sell something new.
If the vice president’s answer had been “Yes, the product is flawed and our customers don’t want it,” we would have had an entirely different conversation about using incentives as a disguise to bribe people into potentially immoral and unethical behavior.
ME: Why would sales reps not take advantage of a new product? Have they not had enough exposure to the product to advocate for it? Are they lazy? Are they bored? Are they so content that they don’t need to generate more sales? Are they so conditioned with incentives that they don’t care about customer needs? Are they not aware of the benefits the new product offers clients?
VP, with a tone of resignation: I don’t know! It’s just what we always do when we release a new product!
We made a quick change in plans. After the break, I introduced the vice president, explaining that he was about to announce an incentive plan for the new product launch. My intent was to promote choice, connection, and competence to counter the inevitable pressure that winning incentives generates.
I encouraged the sales reps to internalize the incentives not as their reason to sell, but as the company’s way of communicating a priority. I asked the reps to consider why the company developed the product in the first place. I asked them to think deeply about their own reasons for selling the product and how that aligned with their values for selling. Would the new product improve people’s lives in a meaningful way, lead to a deeper client relationship, or help clients solve an important problem?
Sure, I would have preferred that they abandon incentives altogether. But encouraging the reps to look beyond the incentives to their own reasons for selling was a fair start at promoting choice, connection, and competence. At the next break, I found the sales reps’ feedback heartening. They thanked me for my comments, sharing that they had a fresh perspective they thought would prove helpful not only to their sales but to their customers. One seasoned rep told me he felt like a monkey doing tricks for coins when incentives got dangled but could now reframe that picture more positively. Several reps confessed that they’d gladly accept the incentives but were frankly insulted by the implication that they couldn’t see the value of selling the new product without an incentive.
What if the sales managers had taken the time to facilitate conversations so the reps could have discovered their own positive reasons for selling the product? Instead, the managers defaulted to tried and not true carrot-and-stick motivation.
But don’t cast all the blame on your manager for resorting to carrots or sticks, praise or pressure, and promises or threats. Have you ever seen the competencies your manager is being held accountable for achieving? Drive for results, exceed goals successfully, constantly and consistently be one of the top performers, be very bottom-line oriented, steadfastly push self and others for results, assess staff members’ hot buttons and use them to get the best out of the staff—these are real expectations from real performance plans.
Organizations, leaders, teachers, and parents don’t bamboozle you with external or imposed motivation with the intention of undermining choice, connection, and competence, but I am saddened by how many of them seem fearful of exploring alternative approaches to motivation. Much of my consulting is teaching managers and executives how to nurture rather than sabotage people’s choice, connection, and competence. But traditional beliefs about rewards, incentives, recognition and praise, power, status, and image die hard.
If your organization and manager see the light when it comes to the truth of human motivation, consider yourself lucky. But the real job falls to you to move beyond the carrots and sticks that can beat you up.
Since motivation is at the heart of everything you do or don’t do, why depend on others to do what you can do for yourself? You will discover that proactively creating choice, connection, and competence at work is worth the effort. Three ways to begin are to flip feedback, deepen connection, and advocate for justice.
Flip the Feedback
Getting pure feedback on your performance is essential to your development and ultimate success at anything you do in life. But you face a big problem when it comes to feedback. Recent studies reveal that in the workplace, most managers don’t like giving feedback—especially when it’s critical or reinforcing direction already given. Worse, when managers do give feedback, they aren’t good at it—despite the money, time, and effort that’s gone into training them to deliver effective feedback. In fact, 64 percent of the time, their feedback has been shown to do more harm than good.2 If this is true at work, imagine how challenging it is to get effective feedback from spouses and partners, friends, parents—or even athletic and artistic coaches.
Why continue to depend on others to give you the feedback you need to develop and grow? Maybe it’s time you flipped the feedback. Don’t wait for it; ask for it. Neuroscience provides additional evidence for flipping the feedback paradigm. Asking for feedback sets up a more responsive brain condition. Requesting feedback delivers the information you need when you need it but also results in less defensiveness—meaning you are more likely to hear what you need to hear and act on it.3
Years ago, I called a group of subject-matter experts together to discuss a project I was developing. I was so excited to gain insight from their combined experience and knowledge—especially since learning is one of my top values. I described the project, my hopes and dreams, and my opinions on several provocative ideas. To my dismay, I got no response. People just sat there staring at me blankly. I called a break—but not before making some inane comment like “Who were you before you died?”
During the break, Kathy, one of the participants, pulled me aside and whispered, “Susan, I think you called us here for a dialogue and you seem disappointed that people aren’t speaking up. If that’s true, would you be open to some feedback that might be helpful?” I shook my head yes, eager to hear what she had to say. Without hesitation Kathy explained, “Your style is so exuberant and direct that I think people figure you already have all the answers. I think you shut them down. That’s how I feel—you brought us here to listen but not participate.”
I was stunned. I told Kathy that shutting her down was the opposite of my intention. I was open-minded and hungry for collaboration. “Then,” she said compassionately, “you might want to adjust your style.”
I not only adjusted my style in the meeting but began observing myself, working to improve my approach to leading meetings and teams. To this day, I am grateful for the courage it took Kathy to provide me that crucial feedback. I also realize that many people—even people who love me and managers who depend on my performance—don’t have the courage, inclination, or skill to deliver that kind of feedback. That’s why I honed the skill of flipping the feedback.
If you’re interested in developing this skill, do the following exercise. Tomorrow morning, try a bold start to your day. Flip the feedback and ask your manager, coworkers, or staff members, “What feedback can you give me that you think could help me do [fill-in-the-blank] better?”
Perhaps you will find, as I did, that flipping the feedback is a powerful skill for creating the choice, connection, and competence required for generating optimal motivation. When you recognize the difference between what you are doing and what you could do, you can choose what steps to take next—creating choice. When you give your manager or others an opening to share their observations, insights, and ideas to help you develop, you demonstrate that you care about what they think and provide them the chance to express that they care about you too—creating connection. When you receive information that is relevant and timely, you learn from the feedback—creating competence.
If you want to take flipping the feedback to the next level, then when you learn something of value from the feedback you receive, act on it. Put what you’ve learned to use. Asking for feedback and then acting on it demonstrates that you have the willingness to learn and the courage to face the truth.4
Deepen Connection
Your greatest opportunity to master your motivation at work is in creating connection. Even if you create choice and competence, they are incomplete without the meaning, sense of purpose, or fulfillment of connection.
Missy is an administrative assistant for an energy company in Wyoming who took creating connection to heart. Part of Missy’s job was to triage calls coming in from the field. One lineman called in regularly and Missy would forward each call to the appropriate person. After months of enduring the lineman’s grievances and rants, no one would take his calls. After attending a training session on the skill of mastering your motivation, Missy thought about the lineman’s psychological needs. She realized that his job gave him plenty of choice—he had full autonomy on how to deal with situations in his territory. As one of the most seasoned veterans in the company, it would be unusual for him not to appreciate his competence. But his job meant being alone in the Wyoming wilderness, far from headquarters and without regular contact with coworkers. Missy concluded that the lineman’s weekly complaints were really a cry for connection.
The next time the lineman called in, Missy took the call herself and engaged him in a conversation. Now he calls in weekly just to chat with Missy for a few minutes. The complaints stopped; a friendship blossomed. Missy’s company was so pleased with what happened that it sponsored her attendance at a conference where I was speaking so she could share the story with me.
I was impressed with Missy’s awareness that helped her identify the lineman’s lack of connection. I was also struck by how she created her own choice by accepting responsibility to deal with the lineman, created connection by developing a genuine bond with him and giving meaning to an otherwise menial task of answering phones, and created competence by gaining the skills to deal effectively with conflict. By proactively helping someone else master his motivation, she had mastered her own.
Advocate for Justice
If you work for an organization that you think is unfair, you have a choice. You can leave. You can continue feeling disconnected and joyless but not leave (or as it’s often described, you can quit and stay—rationalizing that you need the money). Or you can choose to stay and stand up for justice. You can work to open closed-door policies where information is used as a form of control. You can campaign against wage discrimination, favoritism, and implicit bias. It is possible to petition for equal wages without being motivated by money. You can promote fair goals without being motivated by a free ride. You can encourage unbiased treatment without being motivated by self-serving interests. You can request a seat at the table without being motivated by status or power.
When you advocate for the principles of justice and fairness, you create deeper connection for yourself and with others.
Unfortunately, too many people wallow in circumstances that kill their spirit and rob their souls. A recent bank scandal is a sad example of what happens when company practices erode connection and employees fail to create it for themselves.5 Executives set unrealistic goals, creating a situation where salespeople ended up cheating over eighty-five thousand customers to achieve their goals. In the aftermath of the fraud, over five thousand employees were fired and over $110 million paid in fines, with the possibility pending of an additional billion-dollar fine.6 The world was stunned at the audacity of the deceit. As a customer, I was angry. As an advocate of optimal motivation, I was heartbroken.
But bad bosses weren’t the only ones who perpetrated fraud. Every employee who succumbed to the dishonest schemes shares the blame. Perhaps even sadder is that individual employees didn’t stand up and say, “I won’t do this.” Regretfully, individuals never linked their goals to their own values or a noble purpose. Nothing was stopping employees from doing the right thing. But they caved in to greed and fear.
Tragically, we have too many examples of organizations filled with employees who work with suboptimal motivation doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Don’t be one of those people. Be aware of your choices—and how the decisions you make align (or don’t) to values you claim are important to you. Recognize that
A work ethic without ethics leads to corruption
A goal without a mission takes you nowhere important
A life without work based on values has little value
Empowerment without a sense of power is an empty word
Empowerment is not something that is done to you; it is something you do for yourself
Think about this: 75 percent of the time you are awake is spent getting to and from work, working, or thinking about work. When it comes to your motivation, there is no such thing as compensatory need satisfaction. If you are not creating choice, connection, and competence at work, you are probably too tired or busy to create enough to compensate outside of work. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on creating choice, connection, and competence outside of work—just that you need to be sure you create it at work too. That is exactly what Rocio did working in the Mexico City office of a global company.
Rocio discovered what studies show: When you proactively create choice, connection, and competence, you are more likely to experience sustained high performance and reduced strain and fatigue—and have the wherewithal to devote quality time to health, family and friends, and all those dreams you’d pursue, inside and outside work, if you only had the energy!7
Learn more about motivation at work, by visiting the Master Your Motivation page at www.susanfowler.com.