By William M. Dann
During a speech I attended by best-selling author Daniel Pink1, he summarized research on shifts in employee motivators. The old "if-then motivators" of giving bonuses for the achievement of goals no longer work. Work has become too complex and is changing too rapidly for such simple formulas to be relevant and to motivate performance.
The New Motivators
Pink described the motivators in today's knowledge economy as being autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is the ability to define one's own work; the tasks, the required time, the best technique and the best team required. Mastery means being afforded the time to make progress on improving one's own work. Purpose entails knowing that the work being done has meaning or adds value in today's world.
The Challenge
When these new motivators are in play, employees become engaged. Active engagement entails commitment to the organization's goals and values, motivation to contribute to the organization's success and a sense that doing so enhances employees' own well-being. In short, there is alignment between the goals of the employee and those of the organization.
Old incentives and management were focused on gaining compliance. New incentives and management must shift to increasing engagement if an organization is to remain competitive and retain talent in today's world. The important and obvious question is: How?
The New Management
According to 10 years of Gallup Poll data, 80% of the workforce is at least somewhat engaged. Leaders and supervisors now must focus on practices that: get employees to competence and autonomy quickly; aid employee efforts to achieve mastery; and continuously instill a sense of purpose in the work being done.
Supervisors should consider themselves partners who facilitate their employees' achieving high performance, i.e. mastery. The acid test for any executive director or department head? If your staff does not improve their performance during a given period, then you have failed to add value to the organization during that period and are a cost without benefit.
The road to adding value to your staff is paved with regular, frequent, and meaningful conversations about performance, problems, ideas for improvement, and how as a supervisor you can support achieving staff goals. Feedback is critical both to development of mastery and to instilling/maintaining a sense of purpose in work.
These frequent interactions need to replace the annual evaluation that is based on a judgment rather than partnership paradigm. In an age in which feedback is instant in almost all aspects of our life (e.g., ask a question of Google, instant answer; send a Tweet and the world responds), more frequent dialogue between supervisors and staff is essential.
In each of these meetings, supervisors should define steps they can take to help engaged staff achieve their goals. Those steps might include:
- Giving clearer direction regarding needed outcomes, priorities, purpose of position;
- More clearly defining what good performance would look like in for a given responsibility;
- Providing more feedback on performance;
- Granting more authority or autonomy for decision-making, problem solving, altering methods employed;
- Making decisions needed by staff more rapidly;
- Assuring that staff have the resources needed to succeed;
- Giving more credit/appreciation for the results delivered, i.e. strengthening a sense of purpose.
Added to these seven steps to increase engagement should be a discussion of staff ideas of how to improve performance in their work area and how management can support those ideas.
Addressing these topics can totally shift the organizational culture and the supervisor-employee relationship. It shifts the emphasis from manager to facilitator, from judge to partner. Such a shift is rewarding both for supervisor and employee and has huge potential for performance improvement.
How To Handle the Disengaged
What do you do about those (‹20%) who are not engaged? The actively disengaged have what is called a won't-do problem (i.e., they understand the assignment and have the skills, knowledge and authority to do it, they just won't). For such individuals, best practices would involve diagnosing the problem early and then employing aggressive progressive discipline and/or career counseling to try and turn it around or remove the problem.
There are some instances in which won't-do employees can be turned around. Factors outside of work have de-motivated them about life, and a good supervisor can encourage success at work as a means to build toward success in life. However, many won't-do problems are difficult to reverse.
More problematic is that "won't-do problems are difficult to spot. Won't-do employees cite numerous factors, none of which can be substantiated, that are causing their sub-par performance, i.e. they seek to define the problem as can't do (i.e., the employee is eager but does not have appropriate training, skills or authority to do the work). They often appear busy, even joyful. But, they have a toxic impact on fellow workers. Won't-do employees seek to give the supervisor responsibility for the problem. But, at the end of the day, data on their performance reveals the truth and that truth is that despite looking engaged, they are not producing real products.
Summary
Actively partner with your engaged staff through frequent conversations that search for ways to support employee goals of excelling in the organization. For those who don't respond, examine carefully their production, not effort, statistics, confront them regarding the failing partnership, and hold them responsible to confront the source of won't-do problems. In short, decrease the time you are spending spinning the wheels with won't-do problems and commit time to maximizing performance of those who are truly engaged.
1. D. Pink, 2006. A Whole New Mind. Penguin Publishing Group.
William Dann is the Founder and President of Professional Growth Systems and the author of Creating High Performers. He can be reached by phone at (907) 276-4414 or through his website at www.professionalgrowthsystems.com.