Mike Lehr's Blog

People’s names are extremely powerful. Every day, opportunities to use names present themselves, but we don’t seize them. Names in emails, even the shortest ones, allow us to personify them, giving them personality. Just as people find pictures and news articles about people more interesting, the same holds true for emails.

For example, rather than send an email like this:

Can you meet me today at noon?

We can personify it this way:

Joan,

Can you meet me today at noon?

Linda

Thus, a generic email from by anybody to anybody becomes personal. Moreover, rather than use a formal address and closing, we can alter it by writing:

• Joan, can you meet me today at noon? ~Linda
• Can you meet me today at noon, Joan? ~Linda
• Can you, Joan, meet me today at noon? ~Linda

In these examples, we used the person’s name in the beginning, end and middle of the question. We can employ the same strategy longer emails:

I’m thinking about going out for lunch today. Can you meet me today, Joan, if I do? It would be great to see you.

Linda

We can also use their names more than once by combining the techniques above:

Joan,

I’m thinking about going out for lunch today. Can you meet me today, if I do? It would be great to see you.

I want to share a project I’m working. Joan, I really feel you might be able to help. If so, I’d like to introduce you to my manager.

Please let me know,

Linda

People aren’t light switches, so we can’t expect this to work instantaneously. Nevertheless, if we employ regularly and integrate with other techniques, we will accelerate better relationships and responses to requests over the long run.

It’s generally easier to understand what positive and negative reinforcements are than it is to understand their advantages and disadvantages. Tradeoffs exist. Generally, in terms of getting action positive reinforcements are better over the long run, negative over the short run. The table below explains:

Now, it’s important for us to understand and appreciate how these work together. After all, managers are likely to use both, not just one or the other. Therefore, here are two important ratios to remember:

Results Ratio: It generally takes five (5) positive reinforcements to do the work of one (1) negative one.

5:1

Relationship Ratio: It generally takes ten (10) positive reinforcements to overcome the negative feelings of one (1) negative one.

10:1

For instance, one could hold a gun to someone’s head and change his behavior very quickly, but the relational damage is immense. We don’t want to become overdrawn on our relational accounts because overreliance on negative reinforcements will reduce the effect of positive reinforcements. This will necessitate greater use of negative reinforcements and produce a synergistic spiral downward resulting in a compliant, uninspired workforce.

In Part 4 of this series, I discussed the positivity of intrinsic rewards in the workplace. Let’s now address the negative impact of monetary motivations which are the primary extrinsic reward in today’s business world.

As Yochai Benkler in his article “The Unselfish Gene” of the July-August 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review writes on page 84:

Whenever you design a policy that relies on monetary rewards, you have to assume that it will have side effects on the psychological, social, and moral dimensions of human motivation.

While it might be easy for us to see how monetary rewards encourage us to pursue our selfish interests, it’s difficult to see their deeper negative side effects. For instance, in many ways incentives encourage us to feel no better than rats in a maze. Rats seek out the cheese to guide them successfully through the maze. A right turn returns cheese while a wrong one does not. When businesses help employees navigate the maze of their business plans, making the “right” turns brings monetary rewards. When they make the “wrong” turn, the cheese is not forthcoming.

Now, many will claim, “I don’t feel like a rat.” However, as we come to understand ourselves better, we find much of this affects us subconsciously. We see this whenever we jokingly refer to the business world as the “rat race,” the “dog-eat-dog world,” or other similar descriptors. Of course, as Lily Tomlin pointed out, “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”

This isn’t to say we eliminate monetary rewards. It’s similar to eating; people require diverse foods to be healthy, so they also require diverse motivations for their professional health. In other words, we can’t create a cooperative culture on money alone.

Other links in this series:

• Cooperation vs. Competition on the Business-to-Business Level
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest: Which Reigns Supreme?
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 2): Context – The Great Influencer
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 3): Empathy
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 4): Intrinsic Rewards
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 5): Humans vs. Apes

Linda Hill and Kent Lineback write in their April 5, 2011 HBR Blog Network post, “Why Does Criticism Seem More Effective than Praise?”:

A lot of evidence suggests that positive reinforcement — identifying and building on strengths — will produce better results than a relentless focus on faults.

However, as post’s title suggests, this isn’t always apparent. They do briefly talk about focus on the long term. Related to this perspective, the challenge I find in strategically using compliments is primarily our expectations; we expect a compliment to work immediately. Criticisms and other negative reinforcements do much better here but over the long run they don’t do much to develop a strong working relationship.

Thus, in order to make complimenting work, here are six expectations I find very important to effect change:

1. Focus on the long-term
2. Apply regularly
3. Appreciate the importance of personalizing compliments
4. Be patient
5. Reward positive change with additional complimenting
6. Employ other relationship building techniques

Yes, this means complimenting is a long-term proposition, but we can integrate compliments into our daily work routines. The difficult part is disciplining us to follow through and adhere to a complimentary regimen.

Once we achieve this part, we can take complimenting to a more strategic level in which we consciously plan the employment of compliments. This comes about by knowing what we want to:

• Achieve with every person we manage
• Say to the person if we have a moment to interact

Thus, in our minds we visualize the interactions we might have with our people and determine how to position the right compliments to effect the desired change. The process is no different than that used in thinking about the numbers we reviewed, the plans we will right or the resources we need to maximize.

In a previous post, I briefly mentioned the work of Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology as reported by Elizabeth Kolbert in her article, “Sleeping With The Enemy,” which appeared in the August 15/22, 2011 issue of the The New Yorker. At the time, I cited Tomasello’s work to emphasize the natural orientation humans have toward cooperation. In this post, I am suggesting that cooperation is a higher form of intelligent behavior than self-interest.

Here are two quotes from the article indirectly suggesting this:

1. Apes seem to lack the impulse toward collective problem-solving that’s so central to human society.
2. If you were at the zoo today, you would never have seen two chimps carry something heavy together. They don’t have this kind of collaborative project.

Only thinking and working towards your self-interest without consideration for others is definitely easier to accomplish than cooperation is. Additionally, when you add the importance of context, empathy and intrinsic rewards – all ingredients we’ve discussed earlier – to encourage natural cooperative tendencies, the achievement of cooperation is difficult, demanding and warrants a higher form of talent, aptitude and skill.

Furthermore, we can even take cooperation to a higher level when it comes to encouraging it within a diverse workforce. Such a workforce is more likely to be creative, innovative and adaptable. It’s much easier to gain cooperation within an homogeneous workforce than a diverse one. Moreover, creating the context, empathy and intrinsic rewards to appeal to such diversity requires special talents.

Again, all of this is to suggest that the desire and ability to cooperate belongs in the realm of a higher life form, humans rather than apes. Seen more simply, whereas self-interest puts our behavior more in line with those of apes, cooperation elevates us above them.

Other links in this series:

• Cooperation vs. Competition on the Business-to-Business Level
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest: Which Reigns Supreme?
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 2): Context – The Great Influencer
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 3): Empathy
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 4): Intrinsic Rewards

Intrinsic rewards are important aspects of creating a cooperative work culture. However, such rewards are difficult to understand and teach. Moreover, many, many people just don’t believe they are that powerful. Yochai Benkler in his article “The Unselfish Gene” of the July-August 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review endorses the importance of intrinsic rewards in cooperative cultures.

Essentially, as we saw in the second post of this series, most people enjoy being cooperative, enjoy helping others; but, this enjoyment will dissipate if we ignore, discount or unreinforce it. Using effective, intrinsic, morale building techniques and compliments while working to minimize selfish extrinsic motivations such as money will ensure this won’t happen.

Since intrinsic rewards by nature are less tangible, it’s often difficult for managers and leaders to understand and appreciate the internal motivations of others, especially if they by nature don’t receive tremendous enjoyment from helping others. Nevertheless, here are a few tips for encouraging a cooperative workforce:

• Thank employees when they help others (letting them know it’s important to you)
• Demonstrate how they have helped you or others (it’s not always apparent to them)
• Recognize that they naturally enjoy helping others (reinforcing their internal motivation for helping others)
• Show how their job helps others to do theirs when performed well (creating a personal connection between their job and others)
• Hire and promote people who enjoy helping others (the desire to help others is a function of personality)
• Believe that people enjoy helping people (we cannot promote cooperation if we don’t believe it’s a motivation)

These tips will be uncomfortable at first but regularly applied they will produce positive effects over the long run. Thus, they require relentlessness, discipline and almost a fanatical belief in the power of cooperation.

Other links in this series:

• Cooperation vs. Competition on the Business-to-Business Level
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest: Which Reigns Supreme?
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 2): Context – The Great Influencer
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 3): Empathy

As we saw with pigeonholing and tasting food, context influences us greatly. This extends to people’s inclinations to collaborate. In support of this, the July-August 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review has Yochai Benkler’s citing in his article “The Unselfish Gene” the work of Lee Ross from Stanford University. He found people being more inclined to collaborate if the context of the effort promotes it.

That’s why leadership that manages, operates and communicates with the implied assumption that employees are essentially motivated by “What’s in it for me” will tend to foster a less collaborative culture than leadership doing the same against a backdrop of collaboration. From an everyday perspective, this means the culture that heavily relies upon extrinsic rewards such as money, awards and perks for individual performances will tend to be less collaborative than the one relying upon intrinsic rewards such as the enjoyment of working with and helping others. Mastering morale builders that don’t cost a cent go a long way in helping here.

This doesn’t mean we eliminate monetary rewards for individuals, but it does mean we focus more on the culture we are promoting in our businesses; culture is context. However, the promotion of that culture must be real. If employees sense a divorce between words and actuality, then the context for collaboration falls, thus causing most employees to resort to self-interested behavior.

Using intrinsic rewards to buttress a collaborative context is involved. In addition to mastering morale builders, it means mastering compliments. Understanding and appreciating the different kinds will help us see how intrinsic rewards differ from extrinsic ones. It’s only by mastering these on an interpersonal level will we be able to extend it throughout our companies and organizations.

Other posts in this series:

• Cooperation vs. Self-interest: Which Reigns Supreme?

Recently, Harvard Business Review focused its July-August 2011 issue on collaboration. It connected so well and deeply with my own experiences that I decided to write a series of posts dedicated to Cooperation versus Self-interest. I wrote previously about this on the business-to-business level, but the focus here will be on individuals.

I was further intrigued when I ran across in The New Yorker an article* discussing the research of Michael Tomasello and others at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. It found that a critical difference between the intelligence of apes and children was the collective problem solving and cooperation of the latter. This indicates there is something natural about cooperating. So, I ask: Which is supreme, cooperation or self-interest?

Yochai Benkler’s cites in his article “The Unselfish Gene” from the above issue of the Harvard Business Review that only “a large minority of people – about 30% – behave as though they are selfish” while another “50% systematically and predictably behave cooperatively.” The remainders accounting for 20% “are unpredictable, sometimes choosing to cooperate” and others times to behave selfishly.

Of course, this has huge implications. How many times have we been told that in order to change people’s behavior we have to answer “What’s in it for me?” Consequently, we’ve become so programmed to believe that people’s self-interest is the only thing that motivates them. As a result, people fill our expectations: we can only motivate them by appealing to their self-interests.

What this research suggests is that perhaps we’ve been letting the self-interested ones make the rules for the rest of us. In reality, many of us truly enjoy working with others even if it might cost us something. That enjoyment is worth something and reigns supreme for us.

*Elizabeth Kolbert, “Sleeping with the Enemy,” The New Yorker, p. 71, August 15 & 22, 2011 [Note: I could not provide a link to this article because of access restrictions to non-subscribers.]

Compliments are an extremely effective way to build morale and relationships. However, they are not as easy to employ as one might think. It’s not just a matter of saying something nice; it’s a matter of saying something positive about something that is important to the other person. There are two broad types, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic compliments refer to things “outside” of someone and intrinsic “inside.” Intrinsic compliments will tend to make a greater impact than extrinsic ones. Their disadvantage is that they tend to be harder to pinpoint and describe. For some, intrinsic compliments are more difficult to deliver because they require a higher level of sensitivity.

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Four Basic Types of Compliments

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Extrinsic Compliments

1.    Things: compliment what they have.

2.    Job: compliment what they did.

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Intrinsic Compliments

3.    Values: compliment what they believe.

4.    Talents: compliment their innate qualities.

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Examples

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Looking at beauty as power is important in understanding and appreciating intuitive approaches because it dramatically expands the influences and solutions we see. However, as I mentioned in the A Blue Heron Instructs on Patience, we tend to be prejudiced toward action; therefore, we will often overlook beauty as power because it’s not an active force. Thus, it helps if we initially think of beauty as attractive because the verb “attract” implies some kind of active force.

For example, suppose we saw a metal ball rolling on a level table toward a wall. We might initially think that there was something about the ball that caused movement. However, suppose later we find out that a powerful magnet was implanted in the wall. Now, we begin to see the wall as the active force.

Another problem we tend to have is that we look at beauty very superficially, as something physically feminine. However, beauty can exist in anything, including intangible things. For instance, consider the movie A Beautiful Mind; also consider the attraction of beautiful ideas, prices, cars, paintings, formulae, advertisements, parks, scenery, etc. Anything that attracts us has some level of beauty in it; even power is beautiful to many.

So, if a car dealer stocks his showroom with a car that he knows is likely to attract us enough to buy it, who is really applying the active force: the buyer or the dealer? Similarly, when the Indians attracted General George Custer into the trap on Battle of Little Big Horn because he thought he had a beautiful opportunity to defeat them, who was playing the active force: Custer who rushed in or the Indians who created the attractive situation?