We all make mistakes. Lawyers sometimes accept cases that they know they shouldn’t; teachers get into battles with kids that are unwinnable; and executives fail to consider all the variables in their strategic planning analysis. The question is; do we learn from our mistakes?  Regrettably, our current culture stresses apology over analysis.

In my practice of executive coaching I hear about business blunders all the time.  Actually, I don’t often hear about the mistake itself, more likely, I hear about the emotional consequences. I see people berate themselves or reach out for consolation after making a mistake that leads to the unleashing of a tirade from an aggressive boss. I hear people resolve never to do it again or vow to do better in the future.

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Mistakes · Problem-solving

Just say: “good job!” It’s simple, certainly brief and surprisingly effective.

As an occupational psychologist listening to stories of workplace stress and discontentment, I frequently wish that I had a communication pipeline to my clients’ bosses to whom I could whisper the above advice.

For the hard working but often harassed administrative assistants who receive requests, or rather, order after order from bosses with little consideration of the existing to-do lists, such whispered advice would provide obvious relief. However, I also see C-level executives – people with great organizational power and responsibility who arduously strive to accomplish a myriad of tasks often not to their own level of satisfaction or ideals. These people often let it slip that they would feel much better about themselves and their own job performance if the CEO would say: “good job,” even infrequently. (more…)

Employee recognition

I finally had enough hitting errand backhands.

Opponents were deliberately targeting my tennis backhand, and for good reason as the ball would either fly-off my too-open racquet, or alternatively, plummet into the net. In a last desperate effort before turning to racquet-ball, I engaged our club pro who coaches, not executives as I do, but weekend warriors with still lingering fantasies of ripping winners if not like Nadal, than perhaps like McEnroe, even the 2009 vintage McEnroe.

As a psychologist engaged in executive coaching, I like to entertain the fantasy that I do something special. I like to think that my training and professional development provide a certain uniqueness in how I intervene to improve performance or solve workplace problems. My illusions about uniqueness were quickly dispelled after an hour’s tennis lesson.

Firstly, I should introduce my pro – Konrad, whose young countenance appearing below should not divert you from his 10 years of competitive playing and now teaching experience.

Konrad began with what I would call an assessment. Although he didn’t use these words, I would refer to the assessment as multi-modal, in other words, he used various perspectives to see my problem. He first asked about my backhand, inquiring about typical errors and what playing situations elicited those errors. He then performed what I would call a behavioural observation where he observed my backhand in action – action that varied with the pace, direction and spin of the balls that Konrad sent me.

I didn’t say anything, but what Konrad did in his assessment bears a great deal of similarity to how I perform an assessment with a business client. I first elicit a self-report of the problem, then, I often include some real world simulation that allows me to view the problem as close to the actual working situation as possible. In my assessment of leadership problems or anger management, I have a particular interest in determining the factors that improve or impair performance – my own equivalent of varying the speed, direction and spin of the ball.

After assessing my backhand, Konrad initiated the intervention stage by describing the playing context for the modified stroke that he was about to add to my repertoire. He described how the new two-handed top-spin backhand would help me in various game situations. In my own coaching work, I call this the coaching rationale where I describe how a new skill or competence can effectively readdress the workplace problem that is hampering my client. This first step in skill acquisition involves understanding how the new skill will bring results.

I won’t take you through all the remaining steps of the lessons except to mention these highlights; 1) Konrad’s demonstration of the required biomechanics, 2) my practicing of the new movements in progressively more difficult situations, and 3) the final linkage of the multiple motor components of the new backhand into an easily retrievable and unifying image. I won’t say anything except to highlight how a psychologist often uses modeling, shaping and imagery training as principle ingredients of executive coaching.

I will however tell you how he ended the training – with relapse prevention. Although the phrase derives from work in addictions, the term’s applications should be used in all behavioural change interventions, especially coaching.

In essence, the technique involves preparing to cope with mistakes before they occur – talking to a now abstinent drinker about what he or she might react to a slip of control, or talking to an executive about what how he or she might react when they do forgot their coaching sessions and lose it with an subordinate.

It’s a hard phase of coaching, because after working and succeeding in training a new skill, we are reluctant to even mention that things might not continue to be rosy moving forward. We fear that if we mention it, we might encourage it. Well, Konrad like all good coaches did not suffer from magical thinking and ended the lesson with his own version of relapse prevention talking about what emotional and procedural responses I might bring to bear when I revert to my old backhand form.

I left Konrad’s lesson with a better backhand. But, I also left with an appreciation that my executive coaching sessions bear a great deal of similarity with what a good tennis pro or probably any teacher or coach does on a routine basis.

I still retain the fantasy, however, that we psychologists invented it.

executive coaching

Here’s a follow-up to the previous post.

Guideline #1 Form a Steering Committee

Strike a small committee, comprising peer-nominated shop floor employees and managers, with the mandate of designing and promoting the employee reward and recognition program or ERR program. Once created, the committee would bear the continuing management responsibility for the ERR by some surveying some of the following tasks:

* judging merits of employee contributions

* decisions about appropriate rewards

* on-going refinements to the program

Although the program initiated with management, its ongoing operation is a joint management-worker venture, thus eliminating any feeling of external coercion.

Guideline #2 Foster Individual Creativity

A key aspect of Self-Determination Theory is the role of the individual in determining his or her own behavior, self-direction versus external coercion. In the case of our ERR program, we can achieve that self-determination by maximizing the potential ways of achieving the rewards, specifically, by encouraging employee creativity. Since production gains are potentially ubiquitous, our ERR program will encourage employees to look at all aspects of the business including:

· product design

· operations

· waste reduction

· safety enhancement

· employee satisfaction

Guideline #3 Procedural Justice

The operation of the ERR program should be open and straight forward with established rules so that everyone believes the rewards are fairly distributed. This is not to say that any rule could not be changed but that the process behind the change would be transparent and aligned with the overall company mission. Some of the rules would include the following:

· what type of suggestions could be submitted

· how the suggestions are submitted

· methods of determining recognition award and their timing

etc

Guideline #4 Psychological meaning of the ERR program

An effective ERR program combines both monetary and social rewards. For either to work, they must be meaningful for the individual. The monetary rewards could be determined by company performance according to a specific profit-sharing formula. However, the importance of the social component must also be stressed since the performance-enhancement gained by company-wide recognition of an employee’s enterprising suggestion can be profound.

Here are some basic principles about the delivery and nature of some social rewards:

Timing of rewards:

-ensure that each suggestion or contribution is immediately recognized. Do not wait for the committee to meet and formally decide on the specific rewards, but establish a mechanism so that all suggestions are immediately recognized.

Personalized nature of the reward;

-personalized letters from the President or Manager are extremely effective, they can be coupled with more concrete gifts such as cups with emblazed employees name etc

Team and Family aspects:

-develop rewards that encourage teamwork, for example, lunch voucher for winning employee and two colleagues

-consider tangible rewards that can involve the worker’s family, such as trips to a local zoo or museum.

Meaning is not only important for rewards, but also for the procedures or behaviours used to obtain them. Therefore, the company should be very explicit about linking the employees’ suggestions to overall company successes. For example, if a suggestion concerning improved delivery times was recognized by the operations committee, then publicize the impact of that improvement, for instance, increased customer satisfaction ratings or decreased costs.

Guideline #5 Beginning, middle and the end

Start the ERR program with fanfare and endlessly promote it. Some companies use a common area to display winning suggestions or photographs of the employees making those winning suggestions. Regular recognition lunches or banquets can also be valuable.

Monitor the program’s operation with a suitable metric, actually many. Include financial and operational metrics, but don’t forget the subjective component. For example, ask yourself: “Did the employees seem more involved, more motivated?”

Finally, everything –even good things come to an end – plan your ERR program to last a specific time period, announcement the program duration at the beginning so that the ERR program doesn’t die a neglected death.

Bottomline

Following these guidelines will enhance employee motivation by maximizing creativity and a willingness to participate.

Employee recognition

As a professor who teaches an undergraduate course in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy or CBT, I have many students who outright dismiss many of the “B” or behavioural aspects of CBT.  Nowhere is this more event than when I talk about positive reinforcement and its role in performance management. To these students, anything associated with an external reward seems to be tarnished with the brush of coercion.  Flagrant Wall Street bonuses only add to the distaste for external rewards.

 The students are primed by motivational theory, in particular, the Self-Determination Theory of Deci and Ryan who have emphasized the importance of intrinsic motivation. The latter is defined as performing a work activity for the inherent pleasure of displaying self-determined competence.

Why is this important to managers?

Several studies have found there to be a positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance as well as between intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction (Linz, 2003). Research has also shown, albeit in selected cases, that the application of external rewards can negatively affect performance of an inherently motivating task.  Like we all knew – humans are not like rats, workers won’t always be motivated by the human equivalent of cheese.

However, I would argue that many of my research colleagues in psychology have limited experience with the world of work, and too much familiarity with analogue studies on easily available undergraduates.  From my consulting perspective, many of the tasks that my clients are required to perform offer little in the way of inherent pleasure, think of budgets, downsizing etc.  More importantly, even in today’s economy, financial bonuses and perks are a common and vital component of any organization’s motivational toolkit.

Having said that, I would also agree that these external rewards need to be launched and managed considering important aspects of self-determination theory.  I tried to illustrate this blending in a recent consultation with an industrial client who wanted people on the shop-level floor to be more attentive to waste and inefficiency.  The owner wanted to reward his employees’ suggestions with tangible as well as recognition rewards. 

In my next post, I will provide some ERR guidelines that attempted to blend individual determination and external rewards.

 

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