A Successful Leadership Strategy to Get the Best From Your Team
What would it be like if every member of your team worked to their full potential every day? In a survey of American workers, researchers reported that fewer than one out of four employees said that they were performing to their full potential.
In addition to this rather grim statistic, just less than half said that they did the barest minimum to hold their job and purposely withheld any extra effort.
The majority of workers said that they could significantly increase their contribution in terms of effort.
Now this is a pretty sad commentary on the state of the American workforce.
The question we should all be asking is, "How can we persuade people to do their very best because they want to?" This is instead of doing only what they have to do.
And yet it's strange because when we are doing a job that has a special interest for us we always tend to give "a bit extra.
" This is the phenomenon of discretionary behavior.
It's something which we have the opportunity to apply or withhold.
When we are doing something at home which is our hobby, we always seem to apply discretionary behavior.
On the other hand if we are carrying out a task for an ungrateful manager we tend to withhold our discretionary behavior because it is the only thing that we have control over.
Have a look at people in your team and you can see the amount of discretionary behavior that they apply to their work.
Imagine what it would be like if you could unleash all their discretionary behavior.
There is good news.
The effective use of positive reinforcement will create discretionary behavior.
Regrettably, positive reinforcement is misused and misunderstood.
A good example of this is the "Employee of the Month" which is supposed to be some sort of public recognition but ends up being a disincentive to everybody who is not employee of the month.
In some organizations it is further misused by making sure that everybody has a chance to be Employee of the Month in rotation.
These sorts of attempts at positive reinforcement have the opposite effect of their intention and prevents many managers from motivating their team and improving their performance.
For positive reinforcement to work there needs to be a deeper understanding of the psychology behind the practice.
A good way of looking at positive reinforcement is to look at it as any consequence that follows a behavior and increases future frequency.
From a leadership point of view, positive reinforcement is the key to generating discretionary behavior.
In addition to this rather grim statistic, just less than half said that they did the barest minimum to hold their job and purposely withheld any extra effort.
The majority of workers said that they could significantly increase their contribution in terms of effort.
Now this is a pretty sad commentary on the state of the American workforce.
The question we should all be asking is, "How can we persuade people to do their very best because they want to?" This is instead of doing only what they have to do.
And yet it's strange because when we are doing a job that has a special interest for us we always tend to give "a bit extra.
" This is the phenomenon of discretionary behavior.
It's something which we have the opportunity to apply or withhold.
When we are doing something at home which is our hobby, we always seem to apply discretionary behavior.
On the other hand if we are carrying out a task for an ungrateful manager we tend to withhold our discretionary behavior because it is the only thing that we have control over.
Have a look at people in your team and you can see the amount of discretionary behavior that they apply to their work.
Imagine what it would be like if you could unleash all their discretionary behavior.
There is good news.
The effective use of positive reinforcement will create discretionary behavior.
Regrettably, positive reinforcement is misused and misunderstood.
A good example of this is the "Employee of the Month" which is supposed to be some sort of public recognition but ends up being a disincentive to everybody who is not employee of the month.
In some organizations it is further misused by making sure that everybody has a chance to be Employee of the Month in rotation.
These sorts of attempts at positive reinforcement have the opposite effect of their intention and prevents many managers from motivating their team and improving their performance.
For positive reinforcement to work there needs to be a deeper understanding of the psychology behind the practice.
A good way of looking at positive reinforcement is to look at it as any consequence that follows a behavior and increases future frequency.
From a leadership point of view, positive reinforcement is the key to generating discretionary behavior.