How does a business get the best out of its most critical resource – people - and foster innovation and learning? Recent research reported in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) provides some critical keys to unleashing the potential of all employees.
1. We learn from success; failure has no impact.
Neuroscientists have long understood that the brain can re-wire itself in response to experience – a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. Now, new research has documented one type of environmental feedback that triggers plasticity: success. On the other hand, it was shown that failure has no impact on the brain’s plasticity.
Researchers concluded that, on a neurological level, success is a lot more informative than failure. If you get a reward, the brain remembers what it did right. But with failure, the brain isn’t sure what to store, so it doesn’t change at all. This puts a new slant on the quote “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” (Nietzsche)
While researchers caution against concluding that this supports the management tenet of focusing on individual and team strengths and successes, they suggest that management should pay more attention to failures and challenge why they occur.
2. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.
In this study, researchers outfitted executives at a party that recorded data on their social signals e.g. tone of voice, gesticulation, proximity to others. Five days later the same executives presented business plans to a panel of judges in a contest. Without reading or hearing the pitches, the researchers accurately predicted the winners of the contest using only data collected at the party.
The researchers concluded that more successful people are more energetic. They talk more but they also listen more. They spend more face-to-face time with others. They pick up cues from others, draw people out, and get them to be more outgoing. It’s not just what they project that makes them charismatic, it is what they elicit. Positive, energetic people have higher performance. The more of these energetic, positive people you put on a team, the better the team’s performance.
Another finding was that face time between colleagues is vital to productivity. The researchers believe that they can increase productivity by 10% at no cost just by re-arranging the work environment to promote more employee interaction. Not only does this increase productivity, it decreases stress, increases job satisfaction and makes people in large organisations work better together.
3. Progress motivates performance.
What factor has the most impact on employee motivation and emotions? In this study researchers asked 600 managers to rank the following five factors: recognition, incentives, interpersonal support, support for making progress and clear goals. Recognition for good work was ranked by the managers as the most important factor.
However, they are wrong.
In a multiyear study tracking the day to day activities, emotions and motivation levels of hundreds of workers in a wide variety of settings, researchers have been able to determine that the top motivator of performance is progress.
On days when workers have the sense they are making headway in their jobs or when they receive support to help them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel that they are spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest.
Surprisingly this was the factor that survey participants ranked dead last.
From a management perspective this is good news as it turns out that the key to motivation is within a manager’s control. It doesn’t hinge on elaborate incentive systems. Managers have powerful influence over events that facilitate – or undermine – progress. They can provide meaningful goals, resources and encouragement and they can protect their people from irrelevant demands. Or they can fail to do so.
Managers can proactively create both the perception and the reality of progress. Managers need to carefully clarify overall goals, ensure that people’s efforts are properly supported and refrain from exerting time pressure so intense that minor glitches are perceived as crises rather than learning opportunities. Above all, a culture of helpfulness needs to be cultivated.
And yes, recognition is important; managers should celebrate progress, even the incremental sort. However there will be nothing to recognise if people aren’t genuinely moving forward. On a practical note, recognition can’t happen every day. However progress can be a daily achievement.
