Make Their Day Blog

Is the economy affecting employees’ sense of being valued? Are the lack of raises, reduction in benefits, and increased workload having their toll? People who don’t feel valued aren’t usually engaged or motivated, so knowing the effect of economic changes on sense of value is important information for companies struggling to stay productive.

Over the course of  six weeks Make Their Day conducted a survey that asked:

“Do you feel more or less valued than a year ago?”

Of the 247 people who responded, the largest percentage (42%) said they feel less valued than they did one year ago. In contrast 31 percent reported no change and 28 percent said they feel more valued. Given the circumstances in most organizations: cutbacks, downsizing, extreme budgeting, it doesn’t seem surprising that people might feel less valued than they did a year ago. What you might find surprising is why they feel less valued.

The most sited cause of significant change in the way they feel was not pay, benefits, or work overload. It was the behavior of the manager or supervisor (49%)!

It always seems to come down to the relationship of the individual to the manager. People can tolerate just about anything but a manager who doesn’t seem to care. Here are a few comments from respondents who stated that they feel significantly less valued now than a year ago:

My manager is less positive.

There is less communication.

Managers are too busy trying to be heroes to their managers.

My manager is angry and disengaged.

These comments seem to indicate that there are more than a few managers who also feel less valued. Organizations often forget the importance of manager engagement in maintaining employee engagement. The following comment is from a respondent who says he/she feels significantly more valued, shows the value of engaged managers:

We have had no cost of living increase for two years in a row, the bonus plan has been stopped, and staff meetings no longer have lunch provided. My “living” costs continue to go up even though my bring-home income has decreased. This, obviously, does not feel good.

A few months ago we (”the staff”) put together three pages of grievances for and about “the management” along with suggestions for improvement. The management responded immediately and positively! We’ve been working with an outside consultant to ensure that everyone treats each other with dignity and respect. What a turn-around! It was risky, because there’s good talent out there that could potentially replace us. The way management handled this has made all of us feel more valued, as you can imagine.

This respondent doesn’t say what the grievances were, but clearly feeling respected was at the core of their concerns. Their managers’ engagement and interest in making improvements in spite of the economy really turned around a difficult situation. I hope employees recognized their managers for  coming through for them!

To see the results of this survey click here.

I just finished reading Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain. When I started this book, I never figured it would end up getting a mention in my blog, but you never know where stories of great workplaces will come from.

Towards the end of the book is the story of an employee at the celebrated restaurant, Le Bernadin. Le Bernadin is considered one of the top fish restaurants in the country, if not the top. How does a restaurant get to be the best? I believe the story that Bourdain tells about an extraordinary fish cleaner provides some clues:

1) The fish cleaner, Justo, makes a decent salary (unheard of in a restaurant).

2) His work is results-based. He leaves when he is done rather than when is hours are up.

3) The chef at Le Bernadin treats everyone the same (Justo compares this to his last place where they “didn’t even say good morning.”

4) Everyone addresses everyone else, regardless of position, as “chef.” They consider it a sign of respect.

5) They work with a common vision, that each piece of fish represents the chef’s reputation. Quality really is the focus. They are striving for perfection.

Results focus and respect. It is a winning combination wherever you find it.

Recently I saw a blatant example of kissing up and it made me wonder:

How do we know the difference between workplace recognition and just plain kissing up?

I knew I was seeing kissing up. My Kiss Up Detector’s (KUD) red lights were flashing and sirens were going off. Like most of us, I may not be able to tell you why I know someone is kissing up, but I just know I know!

But just knowing isn’t good enough. As a recognition advocate I am expected to figure out what is setting off my KUD. In this particular instance, I had been copied on an email from Manager 1 to Manager 2. Manager 1 was trumpeting the praises of Manager 2. The praise was plentiful and many people were copied, amplifying the exposure for Manager 2.

Praise is a good thing, so why did I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end?

After a bit of introspection I decided my KUD was going off for two reasons:

KUD Alert 1) The praise was effusive and grand. At the same time it was vague. There wasn’t a single specific detail in the entire lengthy email. Manager 2 may have been pleased, I don’t know. To me, the lack of information made the email seem insincere.

KUD Alert 2) One hundred or so of us  were copied (100 - really). Why were so many copied? It certainly wasn’t to bring us up to speed on what Manager 2 had done. That would have required at least a few details. Did Manager 1 assume we already had the information we needed? Was I  the only one who had no idea what was so grand about Manager 2? Why was I copied? I found myself looking for a motive beyond giving deserved praise.

Vague and overexposed. Combined, these two factors had my KUD flashing big time. I was curious. Was the recognition real or was I really sensing a Kiss Up? I did a little sleuthing. With very little effort I learned that Manager 2 is being promoted soon and Manager 1 wants her job!

Now that is a juicy bit of gossip that explains everything. But is it true? I don’t know. It may be, or maybe the suspect email sparked the fertile  imagination of an employee who thought it was the only reasonable justification for such effusive praise. From there, other puzzled employees could have helped to spread the rumor. So the question remains, does my Kiss Up Detector work? I really don’t know. There is always the possibility that Manager 1 simply gives sloppy praise.

How about you? What sets off your Kiss Up Detector?

Greetings, Make Their Day readers. My name is Alex Lamb. When my good friend Cindy invited me to contribute a guest post to her blog, I was both honored and delighted, but it took me a moment to figure out what message I wanted to share. My expertise is not in employee recognition, per se, but in improv theater and its implications in economics, psychology, and the study of leadership. After some thought, I decided that the idea I’d like to share is this: the employee recognition in your company can be revolutionized by understanding the role of cleaner fish in marine ecosystems.

Fish, Altruism, and Vampire Bats
At first glance, this might seem like a rather bold claim. After all, what do cleaner fish have to do with employees, let alone the recognizing of them? You might have seen cleaner fish on science documentaries from time to time. They’re the little fish that spend their lives swimming around in the mouths of larger fish, picking away the bits between their teeth, and miraculously not been gulped up. Am I implying that employees are little fish and that the secret of recognition is choosing not to swallow them? Not exactly.

Cleaner fish stay alive because of an evolutionary principle called reciprocal altruism. The large fish benefit from having their teeth cleaned. The cleaner fish benefit from getting a free meal and some measure of protection. Everyone wins and so the relationship is stable enough to persist for generations. The same patterns of cooperation can be seen in alligators and clover birds, between squirrels and songbirds, and even among vampire bats. However, nowhere in nature is reciprocal altruism, or reciprocity for short, so complex or nuanced as among human beings.

Influence and Christmas
In his book Influence, Robert Cialdini shares the story of a scientific study that reveals the power of reciprocity clearly. In this experiment, student volunteers carried out simple tests working in a pair with another student selected to be their partner. What the volunteers didn’t know was that in every case, that partner was an actor. Somewhere during the course of each session, the actor would briefly leave the room. In about half of those cases, he’d return with a can of coke for himself, and another for the volunteer. Then the test would proceed as normal. At the end of the session, the actor would ask the volunteer if he wanted to pledge a contribution for a charity event that the actor claimed to be taking part in that weekend. The rate of contribution in those cases where the coke was offered hugely exceeded that of the cases where it was not. In other words, when I do something for you, you feel gently compelled to do something for me, whether you like it or not.

The effects of reciprocity go way deeper than this, though. Human beings don’t just pay attention to the gifts they receive. They pay attention to all the subtle stuff that comes with them. Consider Christmas, or any other gift giving holiday. What makes these occasions both powerful and occasionally awkward isn’t what we get so much as what we see on each other’s faces when those transactions take place. This idea is magnificently captured in the song ‘Present Face’ by Garfunkel and Oates. In a nutshell, the first part of reciprocating to a gift isn’t the gift you give back, it’s how you receive the one you were just handed.

Gifts in the Workplace
Recognizing others brilliantly depends on realizing that every statement that one of your employees makes is a gift. By this I mean every remark in a meeting, every question, no matter how difficult, and even every email. Sometimes it’s hard to see things that way, but keeping this idea in mind will help you far more than you might expect.

Why? Because the reaction you give someone when you receive a gift is a message, and that message says ‘I’m responding in the way that you expected’. The brain loves getting messages like this. This is because your brain works by constantly trying to guess what will happen next. It’s a predicting machine.

Every time you talk to someone, your brain is automatically trying to anticipate their next word, or what expression they’ll pull. When the brain is able to get more guesses right than wrong, it rewards itself. It starts to automatically trust that other person. So when we make sure that each statement that one of our team members makes is getting reflected in our expression and choice of words, they feel like their actions had a predictable, measurable outcome. In other words, they feel noticed.

The Clegg Effect
This isn’t to say that reciprocity means automatically accepting everything everyone tells you as if it’s a new pair of skis on Christmas day. However, what it does mean is that making sure that your team members feel heard before you contribute information of your own makes a huge difference. For a great example of this principle in action, I recommend the first ever British Prime Ministerial debate, which happened earlier this year. You can find it here.

In the course of ninety minutes, this debate temporarily turned the politics of an entire nation on its head. A big part of what made that possible was the delivery style of one party’s leader, Nick Clegg, and his grasp of the reciprocity principle. Of course, there’s plenty more going on here besides, but as the video reveals, Nick Clegg has a powerful grasp of how to respond to audience questions, make them feel included, and incorporate their material into his own vision.

Lead like a Cleaner Fish, Not Like a Shark
In conclusion, then, by treating each employee effort we encounter like a piece of food glued to teeth of a much larger fish–a fish that deserves our respect–we guarantee our survival and our effectiveness as leaders. As leaders, we need to aspire to listen and react with intuitive grace and confidence, and to make our responses naturally reflect the expectations of others. This might sound like a tall order, but fortunately there’s a highly developed toolkit for developing such responses that’s easy and fun to use. That toolkit, in case you hadn’t guessed, is improv theater.

The best of experiential learning for leadership development, Leadership Skills for the Analytical Mind, is a joint venture between Cindy Ventrice and Alex Lamb. To learn more visit www.techeq.com.

Ever need to delegate an assignment that you know is no fun, that no one in their right mind would want to do, but that needs to get done anyway?

Last week I presented at Adobe Software along with a panel of Adobe managers who shared their excellent ideas for recognizing employees (I love talking with managers who “get it.”)

Gwyn Weisberg

One manager, Gywn Weisberg, brought an example of an award that she  implemented with her team last year. It is a fun award that acknowledges those “nobody wants to do it, but they step up anyway” assignments.

As you might be able to see in the photos below, the award is a prettily packaged novelty dog “poo.”

Most of us have heard of the prank where you light a bag of dog poo on fire, put it on the porch of someone you don’t like and ring the doorbell and run. The victim comes out and stamps out the fire and, well, you get the picture.

Typically, receiving a flaming bag isn’t such a good thing. In this case, it is only symbolic and symbolizes a willingness to take on the less pleasant assignments. The words Thank You hold a prominent place in the message on the front of the bag. (This is an award  that focuses on the appreciation element of recognition.)

When we think about recognition as seeing and acknowledging staff this award does a great job of recognizing. Gwyn sees the reality of these unpleasant assignments (there aren’t too many!) and acknowledges those that are left holding the bag (sorry Gwyn I couldn’t resist).

The Flaming Bag is a traveling trophy. It goes from recipient to recipient, as each takes on an unpleasant assignment. On the back is a list of previous distinguished recipients.

I imagine the list shows that everyone pitches in and probably helps keep Gwyn on her toes when it comes to spreading the “ick” assignments around!

A few months ago, I wondered,”Is the economy affecting employees’ sense of being valued?”
For the past two years employees have coped with a lack of raises, reduction in benefits, and increased workload. I wondered, was this having an effect?

People who don’t feel valued aren’t usually engaged or motivated, so knowing the affect of economic changes on sense of value is important information for companies struggling to stay productive.

So I conducted a survey that asked:

“Do you feel more or less valued than a year ago?”

The largest percentage (42%) of respondents said they feel less valued than they did one year ago. In contrast 31 percent reported no change and 28 percent said they feel more valued. Given the circumstances in most organizations: cutbacks, downsizing, extreme budgeting, it doesn’t seem surprising that people might feel less valued than they did a year ago.

What you might find surprising is why they feel less valued.

The most sited cause of significant change in the way they feel was not pay, benefits, or work overload. It was the behavior of the manager or supervisor (49%)!

It always seems to come down to the relationship of the individual to the manager. People can tolerate just about anything but a manager who doesn’t seem to care.

To see the results of this survey click here.

Brooke Thomas came up with an award that I love!

She writes:

A couple of months ago, we were getting ready to launch a new application to the whole company. Our last gating milestone was our internal validation process for which we had only one regular employee (and two recently hired temps who weren’t up to speed yet). These validations are extremely tedious and it takes a special someone to march through them.

This employee was extremely stressed out and working long hours. I sent her a Mike Rowe “Dirty Jobs” life sized card board cut-out with a note, saying I realized her job was very tough right now but I was sending her some ‘help’ in the form of Mike Rowe. Needless to say everyone in her office loves Mike and she can in turn ‘loan’ him out when others feel like they have thankless dirty job.

I hope it turns into a sort of ‘underground’ peer recognition program.

Very creative Brooke!

The Dirty Job award acknowledges that achievement doesn’t always mean doing something grand or exciting. Sometimes it just means rolling up your sleeves, getting dirty, and getting the job done!

The best ideas always seem to come from readers. Do you have an idea to share?

A new article was posted on the Inc Magazine website on the subject of How to Reward Employees on a Budget. Read it and then let me know what you would add to the list!

In the last post I looked at two books on the subject of influence. One is focused heavily on how we are manipulated into doing what someone else wants. Not the most positive subject, but Influence still manages to offer a lesson on positive motivation. The other book, Sway, looks at what causes us to behave irrationally. It too offers good lessons for managers. If you missed the last post, check it out here.

The third book I want to discuss is Influencer by the authors of Crucial Conversations, Influencer comes at the subject of motivation from a much more positive perspective, that of creating positive change by changing behaviors.

To achieve the results we want, the authors suggest we start by identifying the very specific behaviors that we want changed. Once we know what behaviors we want to change we can provide motivation.

Influencer provides examples where the behavior of entire communities was changed in order to improve health (eradication of Guinea Worm), keep convicts from returning to jail (Delancy Street), and reduce avoidable deaths in hospitals. The authors look at firmly entrenched behaviors and what motivators will get us to change those behaviors.

This book, like the previous two, holds some lessons for those of us that want to be a positive source of workplace motivation. (for the first three extrinsic motivators see the previous post).

Extrinsic motivator #4:  Peer Pressure. We all remember peer pressure from our school days, but we tend to forget that it is an influence in the workplace as well. It is the reason why you don’t have to turn everyone to your way of thinking. To achieve change you need to influence those whose opinions are most respected, the opinion leaders. Part two of peer pressure is to design a workplace with social support for the right behavior. This might be the pizza party for everyone when 51 percent of the department achieves a goal, with the promise of a bigger event when 75 percent achieve. The stakes aren’t high but there should be a little friendly pressure (and support) from those already achieving on those who have yet to get there.

Extrinsic motivator #5:  Change the Environment The old Western Electric experiments proved that if you change the environment people are more productive (Hawthorne Effect). Change things back the way they were and people are once again more productive. They showed that it was the attention itself that was motivating, not the environmental changes. When the attention was gone, the change itself made no difference.

When the authors of Influencer talk about changing the environment, they aren’t referring to the short term bump in productivity of the Hawthorne Effect. They want us to look at our environment to see how it influences behaviors we want to change, and ask ourselves if modifications to tools, aesthetics, or any other physical factor, would induce behavioral change without additional effort. For a manager, it might be a staff member’s uncomfortable chair that keeps them looking for excuses to get up and wander. Or maybe the first come first serve vacation sign-up chart  is causing animosity among coworkers and reducing cooperation.

Extrinsic motivator #6:  Design Rewards Obviously I think this one is right on target. Rewards help people to move in the desired direction by providing something to work towards. Rewards don’t have to be money or even anything costly. Recognition is as effective a reward as you have at your disposal. If you still have doubts, see this story of one manager’s experience.

Extrinsic motivator #7:  Demand Accountability The mirror of rewards is accountability. Rewarding good behavior just doesn’t have the same impact if you ignore bad behavior. Years ago I taught a Coping with Burnout course. We discussed what had led participants to feel burned out. I quickly realized that most of the participants had once been top performers. What really “burned them up” was  seeing how little others could get away with accomplishing, without recourse. Lack of accountability undermined their sense of value.

External motivators - I have covered three books that demonstrate that we can affect the behavior of those who work with us. I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic of influence and motivating others.

Copyright Cindy Ventrice

The past few weeks I’ve read three books: Influence The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Caldini, Influencer The Power to Change Anything by the authors of Crucial Conversations, and Sway The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Braeman.

Why these three books? First, I wanted to learn more about what outside influences affect our behavior. What exactly are the extrinsic motivators that cause people to do what they do? Second, I wanted to see how we can apply this information to what managers can do to create a more motivating work environment.

Sway and Influence both come at the topic from the perspective of unwanted external motivators. Influencer looks at intentional use of external  motivators to affect positive change. Today I will explore Sway and Influence. Next post, Influencer.

Sway looks at what motivates us to behave in an irrational manner, doing things that, when we stand back and observe, just don’t seem to make sense. The authors build a strong case for a and is very interesting in helping us to avoid the triggers that produce irrational behavior. You could tie each motivator they discuss back  to the workplace. It would be worthwhile to explore the impact of each. For the purpose of this article, I want to focus on two triggers that really resonated.

Extrinsic motivator #1:  Labels. One of the most powerful concepts for managers to understand is how labels affect our perception.

Do we see an individuals current performance or do we see what we expect to see?

One example the authors provide is from sports. It seems draft pick number, the order in which players are selected to join a professional team, affects players playing time even years later. The primary factor in determining how much playing time an individual receives was not how well they play now, but how valuable they were rated before joining the league.

Think about how this plays out in the workplace. Once  a manager labels an employee a poor performer that manager is much less likely to see good performance. He looks for the behavior and results that confirm his perception and ignores conflicting evidence. Couple this phenomena together with employees who tend to live up or down to expectations and you have a recipe that makes improvement pretty tough.

Extrinsic motivator #2:  Compensation. Remember, this book is about irrational behavior, so the focus is on when compensation reduces performance. Weird huh?

The authors point out that when people are already motivated intrinsically, maybe they are doing something for the good of the community, compensation can actually decrease motivation. The authors provide examples from a number of experiments that show incentives can motivate someone not to act or to perform poorly. It seems that extrinsic motivators can squelch intrinsic motivators. To put it another way our mercenary tendencies can override the altruistic ones.

I don’t bring this up because I think we need to stop paying people, but because we need to look at what motivators are in play in any given situation and take care not to override the intrinsic with the extrinsic. This idea of conflicting motivators has very interesting implications for incentive programs and might explain why some incentive programs backfire.

The second book, Influence covers some of the same ground as Sway, dives deeper into the research, and takes a significantly more negative approach to the topic. In reading this book it sometimes  was hard to get past the feeling that the book should have been called Manipulation. I had to keep reminding myself that influence is, in and of itself, neutral and can be used for either good or evil.

Here is the extrinsic motivator from Influence that I found particularly relevant to my work in  employee recognition.

Extrinsic motivator #3:  Gifts. The desire to reciprocate is a strong intrinsic motivator triggered by the act of giving a gift (an extrinsic motivator). Caldini points out that reciprocation is used  to compel us to buy or donate. Companies give free samples and, at some level, we feel an obligation to make a purchase. Charities give an unwanted gift and the statistics show we feel obligated to donate.

The need to reciprocate when we are given a gift is  a powerful motivator. The need to reciprocate may partially explain why recognition improves performance. Recognition, whether in the form of praise or award, is a gift. When we receive the gift we want to give something back. I know there is far more to why recognition improves performance than simply wanting to give back, but it is part of why praise motivates us to work even harder.

Labels, compensation, and reciprocation, three motivators that the authors explore for the negative repercussions. Managers need to understand how these triggers work to avoid unintended consequences and reinforce good performance.

Next post, we’ll look at Influencer and explore a different perspective on extrinsic motivators.