Mike Lehr's Blog

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.

People feel better about themselves when they feel they have power to effect change in their worlds. One of the best ways is to ask them to help you. It also integrates well with other morale building techniques.

It’s difficult for people to feel valueless when they are helping others; helping senior members of the organization compounds these positive feelings. Telling people what to do only reinforces helpless subordinating feelings because they are just order takers. In the end, it’s the difference between creating a compliant workforce and an inspired one.

The Ask has two parts:

1. The ask itself
2. The tying of the ask to you

For instance, compare the following:

• “Would you do this?”
• “Would you do this for me? You would really help me make this project successful.”

Feelings of value grow if they know how they are helping you. Avoid “we,” “they,” or “us.” Avoid generic group terms such as “company,” “employees” or “customers.” Use the power of names by referencing specific people, especially if they were helped too. Evoke the CEO’s (or Owner’s) name rather than the company’s name.

Sometimes employees will appear puzzled by your ask especially if it’s something that is obviously mandatory. Here’s a response:

• Employee: Why are you asking? I don’t have a choice.
• Manager: That’s not true. Yes, you might not have a choice whether to do this but you can choose whether to do it in an acceptable manner or an exceptional one. That is why I’m asking for your help. Will you help me?

This exchange demonstrates why the ask is sincere and valuable. We are asking for something exceptional. People not only feel better about themselves when they help us, but they feel even better when they learn that their help is exceptional.

So, the boss walks in and harshly reprimands an employee. Unknowingly, she probably just shot his productivity down for the day. A while ago I worked with a company in which it was fairly common practice for the owner to come in late Monday morning and severely reprimand his employees. I witnessed what that did to their productivity for the week.

What we often don’t realize is how much words, phrasing and general conversation can affect people. In the November/December 2011 issue of Scientific American Mind, Tori Rodriguez in her article, “What Just Happened?”, cites several studies including ones in which:

• “. . . people who were unconsciously exposed to images of fast-food logos became more impatient . . .”
• “ . . . when participants recalled an illness-related memory, their pain tolerance decreased.”
• Participants were “unknowingly primed toward goal pursuit” simply by reading something “that included words such as ‘success’ and ‘achieve.’”

While Rodriguez recommends that we become more aware of this “priming” as she calls it by recalling what we “saw, heard and thought about in the past few minutes,” we can also raise our awareness concerning how we negatively influence people accidentally. Moreover, we could use this priming for good. For instance, simply wishing people luck can improve their productivity and performance.

That means we need to beware of that “constructive criticism” we offer. If it really is that constructive and helpful, we should position it as advice, assistance or simply help. Consider too, if we never compliment an employee. It’s as though we never watered a plant.

Next time you want to motivate someone, it might be as simple as talking about something positive, enjoyable and yes, even humorous.

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?

I’ve seen positive thinking do much harm to some folks; if they can’t keep their smiley face on, they feel they’re failing. Moreover, if they fail and don’t know why, they begin to question their attitude thus compounding their problems. Too many times looking at why they can’t do something is declared negativity by their friends, colleagues and family. However, these “negative” thoughts can spurn motivation, preparation and problem solving.

I came upon an excellent article by Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz in the May/June 2011 issue of Scientific American Mind titled, “Can Positive Thinking Be Negative?” They summarize research on positive thinking from many angles by concluding that many of the benefits pushed by the self-help movement are tenuous. In one, they declare:

Optimists, especially when bolstered by success, can suffer from overconfidence and Pollyannaism, creating financial and business difficulties. They are also less likely to take corrective action because their optimism is a breeding ground for complacency. We see this in something as non-business as losing weight.

Recently, improved technology and research methodologies have taught us that biology and our subconscious influence us far more than we ever thought. “Who we are” is different than “who we think we are” so positive thinking’s influence is temporary at best. That is why it requires constant maintenance very much like a sandcastle does on a beach; we need to address the underlying biological and emotional elements of our being in order to find a more permanent and natural solution.

Optimism and pessimism work best together. One without the other produces a rosy picture on one hand and a bleak one on the other.

In a discussion with an attorney a while back, he told me about a client who routinely included him in their business planning sessions. He was puzzled because they didn’t seem to require his input on many of their discussions. This caused him to doubt the value he was giving them.

I told him a story about attending a client’s son’s little league baseball game. During the game her husband and the other fathers were busy yelling instructions. Meanwhile, the mothers were shouting encouragement. This exemplified two types of support: instructional (direct) and emotional (indirect). The sons played better because not only were fathers giving tips but moms were demonstrating their love and support through encouragement. Knowing someone about whom you care is supporting you is a powerful motivator.

I then connected this to trees. When businesses hold retreats to do their planning, they often leave the work environment for a serene setting. The setting often has trees. Now, the trees don’t offer any practical business advice but they create an emotional environment conducive to planning very much like the mothers were doing for their sons at the baseball game.

Relating it to him, I said that most likely the clients just felt better by having him there. While they might not acknowledge this consciously, they will rationalize his attendance in some way. In this way, he was like a tree. While he might not provide any practical business advice, he was creating a situation that encouraged his client to plan better.

The attorney chuckled and said he felt better about charging his fees, but the point is that some of us have the influence of trees. Our mere presence can make people do better; we don’t need to offer any pragmatic tips.

One of the major characteristics of intuitive approaches for leadership is the dominance of intrinsic rewards over extrinsic ones. The demarcation between the two is most clear in studies of the effect of praise over money from immediate managers. A November 2009 article from McKinsey Quarterly, Motivating people – Getting beyond money, is but one example.

In addition to praise from an immediate manager, the article sited attention from leaders and opportunities to lead as two other nonfinancial rewards valued above compensation. However, the transition to nonfinancial rewards is difficult for many managers. A major reason the article gave was that “nonfinancial ways to motivate people do, on the whole, require more time and commitment from senior managers.”

While this is true, an important aspect that is rarely examined is that the tendency to praise is a function of personality. In order to praise and interact effectively, people need to have some emotional awareness and sensitivity. Just as some cars are better than others, some praises are too.

For instance, a manager who is more easily drawn to statistics, reports, information and finances might not have the personality necessary to encourage him to seek out opportunities to praise and spend individual time with employees. Moreover, while some extroverts can excel at networking a room, they can fail miserably at nonfinancial rewards. It’s one thing to have polite, congenial conversations in public but quite another to have involved, developmental discussions with an employee one-on-one. This is why some great public speakers can’t teach and some teachers can’t speak publicly.

Until companies look for personalities and aptitudes conducive to using nonfinancial rewards, overreliance on compensation to motivate will continue.

In the last month, my wife and I had the opportunity on separate occasions to talk to a director of a very successful organic farm and the owner of a local Thai restaurant about talent. In both cases, they emphasized people who had a passion for their work.

In the director’s case, he felt talent followed passion. He could hire an untrained, passionate employee and eventually see that employee’s talent for the work surface. When contrasting this employee with a more talented, dispassionate employee, he found that the former a much better longer-term employee.

In the restaurant owner’s case, he claimed there were two types of chefs: those who love the food that they cook and those who cook because it’s a job. There was no comparison in his mind. To him, attention to detail is a critical cooking attribute. By far, the passionate chef paid more attention to detail.

While this might not be new, what is lesser known is the impact passion has on creativity. About five years ago, I had the honor to co-facilitate with J. Michael Fox of the International Center for Studies in Creativity a discussion on creativity. His center found that the single most important factor that shot creativity off the charts was motivation. When people are highly motivated, the possibility for creative thought and action was virtually limitless.

Motivation exceeded all other factors such as intelligence, education, experience, aptitude, skill set, etc, and liking what you do is an important contributor to motivation. That is why the Center found that “fun” used in purposeful ways contributed greatly to the creative process. In a day, when companies are working extremely hard to innovate and achieve competitive edges, maybe the simplest and best thing to do is to hire passionate employees.

In Robert Heinlein’s science fiction book, Starship Troopers, the instructor, Mr. Dubois says, “One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think.” Automatically, a picture forms in my mind of a person who collects a garage full of tools and doesn’t fix anything or who collects a kitchen full of utensils and always orders out. There are many people who treat knowledge the same way; they collect it but never think about it or employ it.

Often I will begin certain seminars by declaring, “You won’t learn anything new, but if you’re like others, you’ll still find it helpful.” We are so preconditioned to view the stuffing of our minds as a benefit, that we have difficulty seeing how this could be true. So, I go on to say, “Most of what I will cover you already know; however, I will present it in a way that will encourage you to think about it differently and take action.”

I contend that rather than go out and collect more knowledge, if we just use even 20% of what we already know but don’t use, we would see substantial changes in our careers and lives. How many people collect business improvement books as though they were collecting stamps?

Intuitively, we know that we must consider the emotional aspect of knowledge. This appears in the form of motivation to think and employ that knowledge. Simply, learning something new shouldn’t be the benchmark of a worthwhile learning effort. Did it encourage us to look at things differently? Did it move us from inertia to action?

Now, that is real power.