Recognizing and Celebrating Successes

As a leader, how do you recognize and celebrate the successes of your staff?

In the end, people will forget what you said, forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

As a leader, recognizing and celebrating the successes of your staff can be very motivating.  Kouzes and Posner (2002) speak about encouraging the heart and its significance for people.  As leaders, we often focus on the front-end deliverables related to planning, implementing, resourcing, and managing.  It can be easy to forget about the power and energy that comes from sincere recognition and celebration of actual accomplishments.  Emphasis here is on the word 'sincere'.  If it's not coming from your heart to their hearts, it's meaningless.  People see through insincerity very easily.

In his book Drive (2009), Daniel Pink cautions us that an excess of recognition and celebration can actually de-motivate people.  Staff learn quickly that if there is no 'reward' on the way, the work is either not important or it's not worth doing because recognition won't come on the heels of completion.  When recognition becomes routine, isn't sincere, and doesn't recognize truly worthwhile work, it means nothing.  

For you as a leader, it's a case of knowing your staff and how much recognition and celebration are appropriate.  Here are a few questions to guide your thinking about when and when not to praise.

• How often will it be given?  In what forum?
• Does it always come from you?  Can it also come from colleagues?
• Is it done publicly or privately?
• Is everyone recognized at some point?  Is anyone left out?
• Do people know what merits recognition or does it appear to be arbitrary?  Does recognition come when school/organizational goals are met?
• Are people praised for results, effort, or other reasons?  Why?
• What have your staff told you about what they'd like in terms of praise, recognition, and celebration?
• Is it sincere and honest?

From:  Leading Every Day by Joyce Kaser, Susan Mundry, Katherine E. Stiles, & Susan Loucks-Horsley
Published by: Corwin Press

When Motivation Reduces Effectiveness

As a leader, do your motivating actions actually result in reduced effectiveness? 

In environments where intrinsic rewards are most salient, many people work only to the point that triggers the reward - and no further.  So if students get a prize for reading three books, many won't pick up a fourth, let alone embark on a lifetime of reading - just as executives who hit their quarterly numbers often won't boost earnings a penny more, let alone contemplate the long-term health of their company.  Likewise, several studies show that paying people to exercise, stop smoking, or take their medicines produces terrific results at first - but the healthy behavior disappears once the incentives are removed.  However, when contingent rewards aren't involved, or when incentives are used with the proper deftness, performance improves and understanding deepens.  Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible.  Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one's sights and pushing toward the horizon.


From:  Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Published by:  Riverhead Books

Motivating Staff

As a leader, how do you motivate staff?  Does the motivation come through some form of reward such as recognition or praise - or something more tangible? 

The Russian economist Anton Suvorov has constructed an elaborate econometric model to demonstrate this effect, configured around what's called "principal-agent theory".  Think of the principal as the motivator - the employer, the teacher, the parent.  Think of the agent as the motivatee - the employee, the student, the child.  A principal essentially tries to get the agent to do what the principal wants, while the agent balances his own interests with whatever the principal is offering.  Using a blizzard of complicated equations that test a variety of scenarios between principal and agent, Suvorov has reached conclusions that make intuitive sense to any parent who's tried to get her kids to empty the garbage.

By offering a reward, a principal signals to the agent that the task is undesirable.  (If the task were desirable, the agent wouldn't need a prod.)  But that initial signal, and the reward that goes with it, forces the principal onto a path that's difficult to leave.  Offer too small a reward and the agent won't comply.  But offer a reward that's enticing enough to get the agent to act the first time, and the principal "is doomed to give it again in the second."  There's no going back.  Pay your son to take out the trash - and you've pretty much guaranteed the kid will never do it again for free.  What's more, once the initial money buzz tapers off, you'll likely have to increase the payment to continue compliance. 

As Suvorov explains, "Rewards are addictive in that once offered, a contingent reward makes an agent expect it whenever a similar task is faced, which in turn compels the principal to use rewards over and over again."


From:  Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Published by:  Riverhead Books

Setting Goals

As a leader, do you set goals for and/or with your staff?  Do you find that setting goals accomplishes what is needed and wanted? 

Goals work. ... The academic literature shows that by helping us tune out distractions, goals can get us to try harder, work longer, and achieve more.  ... Like all extrinisic motivators, goals narrow our focus. ... But...a narrowed focus exacts a cost.  For complex or conceptual tasks, offering a reward can blinker the wide-ranging thinking necessary to come up with an innovative solution. ... Substantial evidence demonstrates that in addition to motivating constructive effort, goal setting can induce unethical behavior.  ... The problem with making an extrinisic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. ... Contrast that approach with behavior sparked by intrinsic motivation.  When the reward is the activity itself...it's impossible to act unethically because the person who's disadvantaged isn't a competitor but yourself.

From:  Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Published by:  Riverhead Books

Motivation 3.0

As a leader, is your staff working at the level of Motivation 2.0?  If so, how might they achieve flow?

Two main drives powered behaviour.  The first was the biological drive. (i.e. Motivation 1.0)

[The] second drive came from without - the rewards and punishments the environment provided for behaving in certain ways.  (i.e. Motivation 2.0)

Motivation 3.0
[The] newly discovered drive - 'intrinsic motivation'.........the state of optimal challenge called 'flow'.  What drives participants is "a set of predominantly intrinsic motives" - in particular - "the fun...of mastering the challenge of a given...problem"...

...we need to move beyond the idea of Homo Oeconomicus (Economic Man, that fictional wealth-maximizing android).  But his extension goes in a slightly different direction - to what he [Bruno Frey] calls Homo Oeconomicus Maturus (or Mature Economic Man).  This figure, he says, "is more 'mature' in the sense that he is endowed with a more refined motivational structure." 

From:  Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Published by:  Riverhead Books

Motivation 1.0 and 2.0

As a leader, do you motivate your staff by rewarding the good and punishing the bad?

Motivation 1.0 - trying to survive.  From roaming the savannah to gather food to scrambling for the bushes when a saber-toothed tiger approached, that drive guided most of our behaviour.

Motivation 2.0 - to seek reward and avoid punishment.  Harnessing this second drive has been essential to economic progress around the world, especially during the last two centuries.  The Motivation 2.0 operating system has endured for a very long time.  Indeed, it is so deeply embedded in our lives that most of us scarcely recognize that it exists.  For as long as any of us can remember, we've configured our organizations and constructed our lives around its bedrock assumptions.  The way to improve performance, increase productivity, and encourage excellence is to reward the good and punish the bad. 

From:  Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Published by:  Riverhead Books



Check tomorrow for..........Motivation 3.0

Work Consists of Mainly Uninteresting Tasks

As a leader, do you manage people who are doing mainly uninteresting tasks?  If so, what might you do about it?

If you manage other people, take a quick glance over your shoulder.  There's a ghost hovering there.  His name is Frederick Winslow Taylor...and he's whispering in your ear.  "Work," Taylor is murmuring, "consists of mainly simple, not particularly interesting tasks.  The only way to get people to do them is to incentivize them properly and monitor them carefully."  In the early 1900s, Taylor had a point.  Today, in much of the world, that's less true.  Yes, for some people work remains routine, unchallenging, and directed by others.  But for a surprisingly large number of people, jobs have become more complex, more interesting, and more self-directed. 

From: Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Published by: Riverhead Books