The ability to say “thank you” to people that perform well or otherwise advance the shared purpose of the organization is a character strength that I believe we should require from those that we grant the privilege to lead. Expressing gratitude for the contribution of others is a type of reward power that can make us more influential with others.

The evidence on the power of gratitude in the workplace is meager; however, a very well done study published in 2010 helps us better understand why a little thanks goes a long way. Adam Grant and Francesca Gino proposed that when we express gratitude, people are more motivated to be helpful because it increases their feelings of self-efficacy (capability and competence) and social worth (appreciated for making a difference).

Through a series of four separate experiments (see below for full citation) they found that when people received expressions of gratitude for their work, it increased both the frequency and duration of behaviors intended to help the organization. When people were thanked for their efforts, it enhanced both their feelings of self-efficacy and feelings of social worth, but only social worth was a significant predictor of helping behavior. According to the authors “when helpers are thanked for their efforts, the resulting sense of being socially valued, more than the feelings of competence they experience, are critical in encouraging them to provide more help in the future” (p. 953).

If all your people ever do is only what is in their formal job descriptions, your organization will be mediocre at best. For your organization to excel, your folks need to be good citizens and do more than what’s simply required to help the organization and their co-workers. Leaders that express gratitude to their employees make them feel valued, and this evidence shows that when employees feel valued they behave in ways that the organization values.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

I’d really appreciate your help with a survey I am conducting! Click here to learn more about participating.

Full citation: Grant, A.G. & Gino, F. (2010). A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98 (6): 946-955.

Image credit

Related Posts:

The Character Strength Of Gratitude

Book Review: Humilitas

Prudence: An Undervalued Virtue Of Leadership

I’m speaking today about The Progress Principle to the great folks at Leadership Douglas County, a program run by the Douglas County Chamber of Commerce. It’s beautiful county on the drive to the Genoa Lakes Golf Club.

This is the second time I’ve spoken about The Progress Principle, and I’ve streamlined my presentation for this audience.  Here are the main points I hope to make:

1. What your folks think and feel about the work they do, the workplace they do it in, and the people the do it for, affects their motivation to perform.

2. Helping people make daily progress in work they believe matters has a big impact on what people think and feel while they are at work.

3. Negative events are more powerful than positive events, so the most effective thing you can do to create a positive work environment is to clean up the garbage.

4. Partner with your folks to continually improve the work they do. It’s folly to think your folks will be motivated to deliver peak performance if you don’t listen to their ideas and treat them fairly.

5. Continuously improve your own capacity to genuinely care about your employees and treat them with basic civility and respect. Help them develop their own capacity to do the same for others.

I hope I’m able to communicate these points effectively and help them in some small way. I am passionate about helping other become more passionate about leadership.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Can you help me with my new work survey? I hope so!

Related Posts:

Nine Supportive Leader Behaviors

Leadership: There Is No Substitute For Caring

The Responsibility For Self-Engagement

I am working with my colleagues Dr. Fran McKee-Ryan from the University of Nevada, Reno, and Dr. Jaron Harvey from the University of Alabama on some new and exciting employee research. Dr. Harvey created our survey instrument, got it approved through the University of Alabama Institutional Review Board, and has now posted it online.

Good science dictates I can’t tell you exactly what we are studying (e.g. motivation), but I can tell you that the things we are interested in learning more about are very relevant given the changes our drastic economic conditions of the last few years have caused in the workplace. Most of the evidence we have about the effect of the economy of employee attitudes and performance is only anecdotal at this point. Your responses to this survey will be combined with and compared to other respondents from different samples (e.g. recent MBA graduates).

Can you help us learn more about your attitudes and beliefs about work? We hope so! We would really appreciate it if you would take about 20 minutes to fill out our online survey. You can access that survey by clicking this link.

Here are the instructions you will find when you click the link:

I am a professor in the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of Alabama. I invite you to participate in a research study. The purpose of this study is to better understand how employees’ skills, education, and experience are related to their work experiences.

Your participation will involve completing these two surveys and should only take about 18-20 minutes for each survey. This is the first survey and the second survey will be sent in about two months. Your involvement in the study is voluntary, and you may choose not to participate or to stop at any time. The results of the research study may be published, but your name will not be used. In fact, the published results will be presented in summary form only. Your identity will not be associated with your responses in any published format.

The findings from this project will provide information about workers’ feelings, opinions, and behaviors with no cost to you other than the time it takes for the survey. However, everyone who completes both surveys will be included in a drawing to win one of several $25 gift cards at a retailer of their choice (e.g., Target, Best Buy, Walmart).

If you have any questions about this research project, please feel free to call me, Jaron Harvey, at (205) 348-8942 or send an e-mail to jharvey@cba.ua.edu. Questions about your rights as a research participant or concerns about the project should be directed to the Office of Human Research Protection at The University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa Campus at (205) 348-8461 or at participantoutreach@ua.edu.

Here again is the link to the survey. I hope you can help! Thanks, Bret

The third category of events that affect inner work life are nourishers, which are events that support the person doing the work. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer identify four categories of nourishers in their book “The Progress Principle” (pp. 131-133):

1.     Respect: Implicit or explicit expressions of another person’s value. Basic civility signifies respect and incivility disrespect.

2.     Encouragement: Help others find the ability to work through challenges, setbacks, and fears to accomplish meaningful goals

3.     Emotional Support: Validating emotions, including calming fears and reducing frustrations.

4.     Affiliation: Developing bonds of trust, appreciation, support, and cooperation among co-workers.

“The primary way in which nourishers fuel inner work life is by infusing the work with greater meaning” (p. 131). Unfortunately, Amabile and Kramer found that in their research that toxins were overwhelmingly more present than nourishers. They conclude by reflecting on the work of Peter Drucker, and state:

In Drucker’s view, a manager’s job is to serve employees by ensuring that their needs for challenging work and satisfying work lives are fulfilled. Leading by serving does not mean abdicationg responsibility. But it does require a wholly different mind-set toward management – focusing not on traditional control of subordinates, but on contribution to real work progress by the organizations’ members. (p. 155).

Hold yourself accountable for providing nourishment factors to those you work with. If you wait for this to come from top management, you might be waiting a long time. Your everyday words and actions toward those you work with matter and can make a long-term difference in the climate of your organization. Choose to be nourishing rather than toxic.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Related Posts:

Respectful Engagement

Treating People As Adults At Work

Bona Fide Leadership

Thoughts, feelings, and motivations comprise an individual’s inner work life. Inner work life manifests in behaviors that matter at work – performance, citizenship, and withdrawal. Inner work life is driven by events at work – events that signify progress, events that support the work itself, and events that support the person doing the work.

Events that support the work itself are second only to the progress principle in their ability to affect the inner work life of folks in your organization. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer use the term catalyst to describe things that facilitate the completion of work and the term inhibitor to describe the absence or negative form of a catalyst.  It’s very important to keep in mind that “catalysts and inhibitors can have an immediate impact on inner work life, even before they could possibly affect the work itself.” (p. 102).

Catalysts and inhibitors are a direct product of an organization’s culture, which “is created largely by the words and actions of leaders, beginning with the organization’s founders.” (p. 108). The three main aspects of culture that shape specific catalyst and inhibitor events at work are (p. 109):

• Consideration for people and their ideas. Do managers at all levels honor the dignity of employees, value their ideas, and serve as examples of civil discourse?
• Coordination. Are systems and procedures (e.g. performance evaluation) designed to facilitate coordination or competition between individuals and groups?
• Communication. Open, honest, and respectful communication is perhaps the most powerful force for sustaining progress, coordinating work, establishing trust, and helping people understand that what they think and do matters.

One of my favorite sayings from Bob Sutton is “the law of crappy systems trumps the law of crappy people.” The most effective way to change the culture of any organization is to change its systems, the way it works. The first and most important change must occur between your ears – a discontinuous change in thinking about your role as a leader and your relationships with your constituents.

Change the way you think, and you will change the way you behave. Change the way you behave, and you will change the way others think and feel about you and ultimately how they behave toward you. Change the way you and your people relate with each other, and you can partner with each other to fix the crappy systems. Continually fix the crappy systems, and you can begin to affect positive change in the culture of your organization.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Related Posts:

Leaders Invest In Their Employees

Even The Best Policies Can Have Unintended Consequences

A Culture Of Communications, Not Complaints

The most effective way to affect the inner work life of those around you is to help them make daily progress in meaningful work. In their book “The Progress Principle,” Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer go so far as to say “any manager’s job description should start with facilitating subordinates’ daily progress.” (p. 89). They believe this progress principle should become a fundamental management principle, and I agree.

The authors strongly emphasize that your efforts to support the progress of folks around you should focus more on avoiding the negative than accentuating the positive. Your influence is most effective when it is used to eliminate obstacles rather than create supports, because “small losses can overwhelm small wins” (p. 92). Bad leaders and the damage they cause have more impact than help of good leaders.

The power of setbacks to diminish happiness is more than twice as strong as the power of progress to boost happiness. The power of setbacks to increase frustration is more than three times as strong as the power of progress to decrease frustration. (p. 92).

Leaders also need to be aware of how they rob meaning from peoples’ work. In their research, Amabile and Kramer identified four actions that managers should avoid because they negate the value of work (p. 96):

1.     Dismiss someone’s ideas

2.     Make employees doubt the work they do is important

3.     Assign people to work for which they are overqualified

4.     Keep people from assuming full ownership of their work

In addition to meaningful progress, positive inner work life is also influenced by what Amabile and Kramer call catalyst factors (events supporting the work) and nourishments factors (events supporting the person). I’ll discuss catalysts and nourishment factors in future posts, so stay tuned!

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Related Posts:

Meaningful Work: The Role Of Servant Leadership

Leadership Integrity, Value Congruence, And Employee Engagement

Leading Potential

I love the concept of inner work life from the book “The Progress Principle“. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer describe inner work life as the “perceptions, emotions, and motivations that individuals experience as they react to and make sense of the events of their workday.” (p. 20). Based on the work of Richard Hackman, Ed Lawler III, and Greg Oldham, we’ve known for over 40 years that how folks think and feel about their jobs affects their performance. We can change how folks think, and consequently how they perform, by making improvements to the work that they do.

Inner work life follows a very similar chain of logic. Employees perform to the extent they are motivated to do so. Given that employees know what to do, how to do it, and when to do it, we have a reason to expect that they might choose to perform. Motivation to perform is strongly affected by what an employee thinks and how he or she feels about work. Perceptions can lead to emotions, and emotions can affect perceptions, and both affect motivation.

If you want to affect the motivation of your employees, you have to improve how they think and feel about the organization, the work they do, co-workers, themselves, and you. The choices you make as a manager influence the events of every work day, and it’s workday events that drive employee performance through employee motivation, emotion, and perception.

The fact that you can help improve the performance of your employees by the choices you make as a manager is great news! It’s your responsibility to learn how to partner with your employees to continually improve the work environment. In future posts, I’ll share with you more specific thoughts from Amabile and Kramer on how to avoid negative and promote positive events at work.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Related Posts:

Five Beliefs Employees Hold About Leaders That Cause Silence

Meaningful Work: The Role Of Servant Leadership

Leader Lab: Want Your Employees To Display Positive Emotions?

I first heard of “The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins To Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work” by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer at Bob Sutton’s blog, where he called it “a masterpiece every manager should own.” I got my copy of the book free from the publicist. I don’t think it is a masterpiece, but I do think it is the most important evidence-based management book I’ve read this year; consequently, I do think every manager should strongly consider moving this book to the top of their reading list.

The book focuses on something the authors call the inner work life effect: “people do better work when they are happy, have positive views of the organization and its people, and are motivated primarily by the work itself.” (p, 47). They go so far as to claim their research shows “as inner work life goes, so goes the company.” (p. 3). That’s a bold claim that I’m not sure is supported by the data in their one study; however, I do believe it is supported numerous related studies on employee attitudes, emotions, motivation, and performance published in leading peer-reviewed journals over the last 30 years.

The book also highlights the power of events that are part of every workday. The power of events is great news for us as managers, because we can take planned, systemic action to control events that impact the inner work lives of our employees. Here are the main points that the book explains in detail (pp 8-9):

1. The types of events – what we call the key three – stand out as particularly potent forces supporting inner work life, in this order: progress in meaningful work; catalysts (events that directly help people work); and nourishers (interpersonal events that uplift people doing the work).

2. The primacy of progress among the key three influences on inner work life is that we call the progress principle: of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work.

3. The negative forms – or absence of – the key three events powerfully undermine inner work life: setbacks in the work, inhibitors (events that directly hinder project work); and toxins (interpersonal events that undermine the people doing the work).

4. Negative events are more powerful than positive events, all else being equal.

5. Even seemingly mundane events – such as small wins and minor setbacks – can exert potent influence on inner work life.

The authors admit that their research does not establish causality – which is very difficult to accomplish. “Were all of these inner work life changes caused by daily progress and setbacks, or might some of them have caused progress or setbacks in the first place? There is no way of knowing from the numerical data alone.” (p. 79).

I love the concept of catalysts: events that support progress and positive inner work life. The authors identified seven consistently effective catalysts (pp 104-105): 1) Set clear goals; 2) Allow autonomy; 3) Provide resources; 4) Give enough time, but not too much; 5) Help with the work; 6) Learn from problems and successes; and 7) Allow ideas to flow. Please note these ideas are not new - they can be found in one form or another in most contemporary approaches to leadership and are evidence-based.

The book also provides a very helpful daily progress checklist that you can use to review your daily managerial actions and plan for the next day. I think it is brilliant. I concur with the authors when they state:

The aim of the checklist is managing for meaningful progress, because that is your real job inside the organization. This may require a significant mind-shift. Business schools, business books, and managers themselves usually conceptualize management as managing organizations or managing people. But if you focus on daily progress in meaningful work, managing people and the entire organization will become much more feasible. (pp. 174-175).

This book is packed with both sound philosophy and evidence-based advice. Anyone and everyone can benefit by reading this book, because “whatever your level in your organization, even if you lead only by your work as a good colleague, you bear some responsibility for the inner work lives of the people around you…you can become a better contributor to the climate and success of your organization. (p. 181).

Related Posts:

Evidence For The Causes And Consequences Of Work Engagement

Meaningful Work: The Role Of Servant Leadership

Empowering Work Relationships

The September 2011 Leadership Development Carnival is up at our friend Dan McCarthy’s Great Leadership blog. Dan has framed this as the back to school edition, and you can find my contribution in aisle two, paper supplies. My article is entitled “Five Beliefs Employees Hold About Leaders That Cause Silence.” There are a lot of great articles in this carnival, so I would encourage you to take some time to check it out. Thanks once again, Dan, for all your hard work putting this together.

Some fascinating new research on the effect of goal setting on group performance was recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (full citation below). The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 131 previously published studies on goal setting.

Goal setting and group performance by BretSimmons

The results show that the worst thing you can do for group performance is to set nonspecific goals. Even easy, specific goals are better for group performance than nonspecific goals. Setting specific difficult goals has the best effect on group performance. Specific goals supported by specific metrics send employees unambiguous and consistent signals about expected performance behaviors.

The most interesting finding to me was that “egocentric goals (aimed at maximizing individual performance) undermine group performance, whereas groupcentric goals (aimed at maximizing the individual contribution to the group) enhance group performance” (p. 7). Goals that force team members to compete with each other undermine group performance.  “When group performance matters, egocentric goals would best be framed as to emphasize the individual contribution to the group” (p. 8).

Select people that value collaboration over competition.  Train them in the knowledge and skills they need to work better with others. Challenge your teams to set high standards for their shared performance, and reward the members that do the most to help the team succeed. Think very carefully about the message you send by rewarding individual performance when the team fails.

Full citation: Kleingeld, A., van Mierlo, H., and Arends, L. (2011). The Effect of Goal Setting on Group Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology.

Related Posts:

High-Performance Work Systems Affect Employee Attitudes And Group Performance

Goal Setting: A Few Anecdotal Observations

More Evidence For Servant Leadership And Team Performance