Skinnerian behaviorism is, in its pure form, preposterous. It proposes that the only force guiding our development, abilities, and personality … though personality is actually an unscientific mirage is the rewards and punishments we experience as infants and beyond.
In a word, conditioning.
Behaviorism ignores such obvious factors as, oh, I don’t know … that tall children who become tall teenagers are more likely to become professional basketball players than those who are genetically predisposed to a more diminutive stature.
Not that behaviorism is entirely worthless. For example:
Put a pigeon in a cage equipped with a bar. When the pigeon pecks the bar, for whatever reason, it receives a food pellet as a reward. Pigeons quickly learn to peck the bar when they’re hungry.
But if your goal is to maximize the rate of pigeon bar-pecking, set up the bar so it only delivers a food pellet after a random number of pecks. Pigeons subjected to this “variable-ratio reinforcement schedule” never lose interest. They peck the bar rapidly, repetitively, and enthusiastically until their beaks turn into lips.
Most golfers are similar – we smite the white spheroid well just often enough to bring us back to the course for another round. As applied to us humans, variable ratio reinforcement explains a lot more than golf. From video games to darts to jigsaw puzzles to birding, to writing text-handling Excel formulas, it’s the random scarcity of positive reinforcement that brings practitioners back for more.
Variable-ratio reinforcement also provides a useful lens for evaluating popular reinforcement-based methods for motivating the men and women who report to you.
Depending on which management theorist you read, you’ll come across (at least) these three popular alternatives:
Positive reinforcement: Find something to praise, because employees will do more of what gets them positive attention.
KJR analysis: This would be more convincing if humans were less like pigeons. Also, many managers who rely too heavily on positive reinforcement find themselves searching for something … anything … to praise to get the positive feedback loop started.
But when receiving praise is too easy, the praise loses its impact. Especially, too-easy praise for mediocre employees turns the best employees into eye-rollers.
Financial incentives: People do what they’re paid to do, or so goes this theory. So if an employee, after going the extra mile, receives cash money to recognize their efforts, they’ll go the extra mile whenever they’re given the opportunity.
KJR analysis: If you give an employee a bonus for today’s performance as an incentive for tomorrow’s performance, you’ll have to give employees a bonus every time they think they’ve gone another kilometer or two. If you don’t they’ll feel cheated out of money they think they’ve earned.
Also, any other employees who think they’ve also traversed eight furlongs or more will have every reason to expect a bonus of their very own, whether or not their self-assessment matches your assessment.
Hold ‘em accountable: Set your expectations. Make sure each employee understands them. If they meet them, that’s just fine. If they exceed them, the expectations you set were too low. If they don’t you make it clear, in no uncertain terms, that they’d better up their game.
KJR analysis: Set clear expectations? Check. Make sure employees understand them? Check. Except for the “set” part.
Have a conversation about expectations. Listen to your employees and their perspectives about what’s reasonable as much as you explain yours.
Yes, they might go easier on themselves that you do. But by the same token, if you’ve staffed your organization with people whose perspectives aren’t worth listening to, you’ve staffed it wrong.
Also, if you never recognize strong performance when it’s given, that’s okay. You can decide to only hire people whose motivation comes from the satisfaction of a job well done.
But this does mean you’re taking no responsibility for motivating them? If even the best performance earns no praise, your criticisms (or “constructive feedback,” or whatever) are pretty much meaningless too.
Bob’s last word: What works best also explains why outstanding employees are willing to stay with hard-to-please managers: compliment top-notch performance and only top-notch performance.
It’s variable-ratio reinforcement at its best. If you’re a behaviorist, see “pigeons,” above. If you think in less arid terms, praise that’s possible but not easy is praise that has meaning and impact.
Bob’s sales pitch: This is just a sketch. For a more in-depth view of the KJR approach to motivating employees, pick up a copy of Leading IT: (Still) the Toughest Job in the World. You’re looking for Chapter 6.
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I’m experiencing technical difficulties with this site. Specifically, the plug-in that drives my archives isn’t compatible with the current version of WordPress (yet), and the incompatibility mostly shows up when you try to post a Comment.
I’ll be taking the Archives down until I have them working without their interfering with anything else. As Search seems to be working right you still have an avenue into everything in the Archives.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
– Bob
I’m sure you left this out because of space/it isn’t straight on a part of what you wanted to say, but it’s what struck me. While I don’t know about pigeons, with humans one size doesn’t fit all. Random praise might work with pigeons but I’ve found it frustrates most people. some people respond best to praise, others to “criticisms”. There’s difference in response to volume- one child is reduced to tears by anything, while you practically have to “lower the boom” to get the attention of others. I’ve run into one or two who hate praise and just want you to get to what needs changing. You have to know your people, and unfortunately company policy and managerial behavior tends towards one size fits all.
Thanks, Bob.
Bob,
While it is admirable that “leaders” and “managers” think they can motivate employees, there sometimes comes a point where an employee is self motivated.
Hand out an Atta-boy – nice, but I was going to do it anyway because I am a professional.
Bonus – nice, the extra money will come in handy, but I am already back to work
At some point, the leaders and managers need to work on removing the annoyances from employees who are getting work done.
Do I really need to put in for PTO to go to the doctor’s office after I came in over the weekend to fix problems due to a failing UPS?
Do I really need to participate in every incentive program so that our department gets some imaginary feel good score?
Do you really want me to feel like I am an “owner” in this business? Ok – you need to buy some of this technology now instead of dragging your feet for another year or two.
Anyway good leaders and managers can take guff from their employees and sift out the good ideas and not get bent out of shape for failing to be “respected”.
Since the devil did not have an advocate in your column, I volunteered.
Hope you are enjoying this next phase of life!
Dan … I agree completely that the best employees are the ones who are self-motivated. I didn’t pursue that path because it would have (roughly) doubled the length of the piece. And even the most stringent hiring managers probably won’t be able to hire nothing but fully self-motivated employees – the question of how to motivate all the rest is still relevant.
One more point, not directly relevant to this week’s piece but very relevant to self-motivated employees (and something you allude to in your Comment): Bad leaders and managers can demotivate even the most self-motivated employees.
– Bob