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.
Brooke Thomas came up with an award that I love!