Dr. Heidi Grant

Giving Employees the Feeling of Choice, When You Are Really Pulling The Strings

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A Guest Post for SmartBlog on Workforce:

Most managers and leaders have, on a regular basis, the unenviable task of trying to get other people to adopt particular goals.  Companies have agendas, and employees need to support those agendas if the company is to succeed.  But if you want your employees to live up to their full potential, it’s not enough that they do what you tell them to – that they work hard and meet deadlines because you said they have to, and you are watching.  Ideally, you want the members of your team to see that the goals they are pursuing have real value.

In fact, you want them to make the goals their own – and with good reason.  Again and again, studies show that the greatest motivation and most personal satisfaction comes from those goals that we choose for ourselves.   Self-chosen goals create a special kind of motivation called intrinsic motivation – the desire to do something for its own sake.   When people are intrinsically motivated, they enjoy what they are doing more, and find it more interesting.  They feel more creative, and process information more deeply.  They persist more in the face of difficulty.  They perform better.  Intrinsic motivation is awesome in its power to get and keep us going.

Autonomy is particularly critical when it comes to creating and maintaining intrinsic motivation.  But in the workplace, goals have to be assigned.  What’s a manager to do?

It turns out that it isn’t so much actual freedom of choice that matters when it comes to creating intrinsic motivation, but the feeling of choice.  Choice provides a sense of self-determination, even when choice is trivial or illusory.

The good news is, while true autonomy in the workplace can be hard to come by, the feeling of choice can be created fairly easily, using these three tips:

Tip 1: First, and most obviously, your employees need to understand why the goal they’ve been assigned has value.  Too often, managers tell their employees what they need to do, without taking the time to explain why it’s important, or how it fits into the bigger picture.  No one ever really commits to a goal if they don’t see why it’s desirable for them to do it in the first place.  Don’t assume the why is as obvious to your team as it is to you.

Tip 2: When the goal itself is predetermined by Management, allowing your employees to decide how they will reach the goal can create the feeling of choice necessary to be intrinsically motivated.  Allowing them to tailor their approach to their preferences and abilities will also give them heightened sense of control over the situation they find themselves in, which can only benefit performance.  (If you can’t give them total free reign, try giving them a choice between two options for how to proceed.  If even that is not possible, skip directly to Tip 3.)

Tip 3: If you have to assign both the goal and the method for reaching it, try creating the feeling of choice by inviting your employee to make decisions about more peripheral aspects of the task.  For instance, if your employees have to attend weekly team meetings to improve communication and collaboration (with both the goals and method for reaching it predetermined), you can have team members take turns deciding what the topic of the meeting will be each week, or even what kind of lunch will be ordered in.  Studies show that these more peripheral decisions create a feeling of choice, even when the choices aren’t particularly meaningful or relevant to the goal itself.

Take time to reflect on how you might be able create a greater sense of autonomy in your own workplace using these three steps. Choice is incredibly motivating – to bring out the best in your employees, harness its power.

How To Recognize Motivational Strengths (Yours, and Everyone Else’s)

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From my Fast Company blog:

Why do colleagues working toward a common goal so often fail to see eye-to-eye when it comes to achieving it?  At times, you feel like you aren’t on the same page, or even the same planet, as your coworkers, even when everyone involved is clearly capable and has a proven track-record of success.  Why the disconnect?

The answer is a remarkably simple one:  There is more than one way to look at the same goal.  Take for example a goal that many of us share:  I want to do my job exceptionally well.   For some of us, doing our jobs well is about achievement and accomplishment – we have what psychologists call a promotion focus.  In the language of economics, promotion focus is about maximizing gains and avoiding missed opportunities.

For others, doing our jobs well is about security, about not losing the positions you’ve worked so hard for.  This prevention focus places the emphasis on avoiding danger, fulfilling responsibilities, and doing what feel you ought to do.  In economic terms, it’s about minimizing losses, trying to hang on to what you’ve got.

Promotion and prevention-focused people work differently to reach the same goal.  They use different strategies, have different strengths, and are prone to different kinds of mistakes.  One group will be motivated by applause, the other by criticism.  One group may give up too soon – the other may not know when to quit.

So, do you spend your life pursuing accomplishments and accolades, reaching for the stars? Or are you busy fulfilling your duties and responsibilities – being the person everyone can count on? Start by identifying your focus, and then use the information below to better understand and embrace your strengths, your potential weaknesses, and the strategies that will work best for you.

What Motivates You – Criticism or Praise?

When you are promotion-focused, your motivation feels like eagerness – an enthusiastic desire to really go for it.  Eagerness is enhanced by positive feedback –the more you are succeeding, the more motivated you become. Confidence heightens your energy and intensity. Doubting yourself takes the wind right out of your sails.

When you are prevention-focused, your motivation feels like vigilance – you are on the lookout for danger.    Vigilance actually increases in response to negative feedback or self-doubt.  There’s nothing like the looming possibility of failure to get your prevention juices flowing.  Over-confidence or effusive praise, however, may lead you to let down your guard, and undermine your motivation.

Do You Embrace Risk, or Avoid It?

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” pretty much captures the promotion-focused philosophy. The promotion-minded have a habit of saying “yes” to every opportunity, having what psychologists call a risky bias.  Prevention-minded people, on the other hand, are cautious. They tend to say “no” more, or having a more conservative bias.

These biases manifest themselves in all sorts of ways.  For example, people with prevention goals are reluctant to disengage from one activity to try another, preferring the devil they know to the one they don’t. But their conservative nature also makes them less likely than their risk-loving colleagues to procrastinate, for fear that they won’t have time to get the job done.

Is Your Thinking Abstract or Concrete?

When people have promotion goals, they feel free to be more exploratory and abstract in their thinking.  They brainstorm.  They generate lots of options and possibilities to reach their ideals, and are more creative.  They are also particularly good at picking up on connecting themes or synthesizing information.

In pursuit of prevention goals, abstraction and creativity seems reckless and time-consuming. Prevention-focused thinking is concrete and specific – you pick a plan and stick to it. The prevention-minded are great with details, and have better memory for what they’ve seen and what’s still needs to be done.

Speed or Accuracy?

Executing any modestly complicated task involves what psychologists call a speed-accuracy tradeoff.  The faster you go, the more mistakes you make.  But going slow has costs too – particularly if time is valuable and you are in a hurry to get the job done.  It won’t surprise you to learn that promotion and prevention-minded people end up on opposite sides of this particular trade off, with promotion favoring speed and prevention preferring the slow-but-flawless route.

Are You Better at Getting There or Staying There?

Promotion-focused thinking leads to energetic and enthusiastic motivation in the shorter term, but can be less effective when it comes to long-term maintenance.  Prevention-focused thinking, on the other hand, is ideal for making sure your hard-earned gains don’t slip away.

Do You Get What You Want?

When it comes to negotiating, having a promotion focus will give you the clear upper-hand. Studies show that promotion-minded negotiators stay focused on their (ideal) price or pay targets, while the prevention-minded worry too much about a negotiation failure or impasse, leaving them more susceptible to less advantageous agreements.  When it comes to getting what you want, it pays to focus on what you have to gain, rather than what you might lose.

Armed with an understanding of promotion and prevention, so much of what we do (and what our coworkers do) makes a lot more sense.   Perhaps now you see why you’ve always been a risk-taker, or why you’ve always avoided risks like the plague.  It’s clear why you are uncomfortable with being too optimistic, or why you are known for your sunny outlook.   You get why some things have always been hard for you, while others came easily.

There’s no need to fight it – embrace your promotion- or prevention-mindedness!  After all, both kinds of motivation can bring you success, and each brings something of value (e.g., innovation, attention to detail) to your organization. Just remember to take with a grain of salt the well-meaning advice and input from others when it doesn’t feel right for you, focus on the strategies that play to your own strengths, and see the value in what your differently-motivated colleagues are bringing to the table.

Why Creative People Get Kept Out of the Driver’s Seat

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From my Fast Company blog:

Two candidates are being interviewed for a leadership position in your company.  Both have strong resumes, but while one seems to be bursting with new and daring ideas, the other comes across as decidedly less creative (though clearly still a smart cookie).  Who gets the job?  And who should?

The answer to the question of who gets the leadership job is usually the less creative candidate.  This fact may or may not surprise you – you may have seen it happen many times before.  You may have even been the creative candidate who got the shaft.  But what you’re probably wondering is, why?

After all, it’s quite clear who should be getting the job.   Creativity – the ability to generate new and innovative solutions to problems – is obviously an important attribute for any successful business leader.  Research shows that leaders who are more creative are in fact better able to effect positive change in their organizations, and are better at inspiring others to follow their lead.

And yet, according to recent research there is good reason to believe that the people with the most creativity aren’t making it to the top of business organizations, because of a process that occurs (on a completely unconscious level) in the mind of everyone who has ever evaluated an applicant for a leadership position.

The problem, put simply, is this: our idea of what a prototypical “creative person” is like is completely at odds with our idea of a prototypical  “effective leader.”

Creativity is associated with nonconformity, unorthodoxy, and unconventionality.  It conjures visions of the artist, the musician, the misunderstood poet.   In other words, not the sort of people you usually put in charge of large organizations. Effective leaders, it would seem, should provide order, rather than tossing it out the window.

Unconsciously, we assume that someone who is creative can’t be a good leader, and as a result, any evidence of creativity can diminish a candidate’s perceived leadership potential.

In one study conducted by organizational psychologists Jennifer Mueller, Jack Goncalo, and Dishan Kamdar, 55 employees rated the responses of nearly 300 of their (unidentified) coworkers to a problem-solving task for both creativity (the extent to which their ideas were novel and useful) and as evidence of leadership potential.  They found that creativity and leadership potential were strongly negatively correlated – the more creative the response, the less effective a leader the responder appeared.

In a second study, participants were told to generate an answer to the question “What could airlines do to obtain more revenue from passengers?” and give a 10-minute pitch to an evaluator.

Half the participants were asked to give creative answers (both novel and useful, e.g. “offer in-flight gambling with other passengers”), while the other half were told to give useful but non-novel answers (e.g., “charge for in-flight meals.”) The evaluators, unaware of the different instructions, rated participants who gave creative answers as having significantly less leadership ability.

Even though it is a quality that is much-admired, there is a very clear unconscious bias against creativity when it comes to deciding who gets to be in the driver’s seat.  Organizations may inadvertently place people in leadership positions who lack creativity and will only preserve the status quo, believing they are picking people with clear leadership potential.

The good news is, the bias can be wiped out – in fact, reversed – if evaluators have a charismatic leader (i.e., someone known for their uniqueness and individualism, like a Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, or Carly Fiorina) rather than an effective but non-charismatic leader in mind.   In the airline-revenue study, when evaluators were asked to list 5 qualities of a “charistmatic leader” prior to the idea pitch, the participants with creative solutions were instead perceived as having the most leadership potential.

Taking the time to remind yourself (or, if you are the applicant, remind your interviewer) that creativity is essential to effective leadership rather than at odds with it, is the key to making sure your company has the very best people behind the wheel.