Why Are So Many Employees Disengaged?

This ‘Psychology Today’ article is grrrrrr8. Not just because it declares the obvious – that most employees are disengaged. Your first question should be, Why?” The answer is:

“The number one factor the study cited influencing engagement and disengagement was ‘relationship with immediate supervisor.’”

The article also addresses the second question that doesn’t get asked that often – WHAT’S WRONG WITH THESE IMMEDIATE SUPERVISORS?!

Often shouted by bosses is the phrase, “Recruit attitude; Train skill.” That makes sense. BUT most don’t do it although they do say it. It’s even more true of recruiting frontline leaders – the ones whose relationships are the most critical for the business. And what should those attitude qualities being recruited look like. Psychology Today says:

“the qualities companies traditionally look for when selecting and developing managers and executives are often not conducive to building positive, productive, engaged employee relationships.”

The problem is that employers are recruiting for skill not attitude, despite many saying the opposite. They’re hiring or promoting people into leadership roles because “they’re good at their jobs” or “they deserve a promotion” and leadership roles are the only promotions available. Other options might be better for those people. They deserve something but not to be given a role for which they’re not suited. It doesn’t help them or those they end up leading poorly.

So, a primary focus for Brain-Based Bosses should be redesigning your recruitment processes to attract and snare frontline leaders who have a demonstrated track record of repeatedly being inherently good at building (and maintaining) positive, productive, engaged employee relationships. Then ensuring they’re developed as leaders as soon as practicable, with emphasis on those relationship skills. (Professional relationships – not relationships as Fonzie would have seen them. If you don’t know who Fonzie is, Google him…)

Feedback: What Happens In Vagueness Stays In Vagueness

Here’s a blog post about the dangers of non-specific feedback. The blogger references the work of psychologist Carol Dweck who I also quote in my book ‘The Brain-Based Boss’ on the subject of fixed versus growth mindsets. Here’s an excerpt:

The work of psychologist Carol Dweck is germane here. What she’s found is that, when children are praised in abstract–”You’re so smart” or “You’re so creative”–rather than concretely about how they improved their performance–”You put in an enormous amount of work, and it paid off”–the feedback is diminished. How come? Because the child takes from the teacher or parent the idea that she is innately smart or creative, and that she doesn’t need to work at it–so she doesn’t.

On the other hand, very specific feedback–especially about something an individual can control–can work wonders.

Quite rightly, the blogger points out that general statements such as ‘Good job’ might make you feel better and make you think that you’re dishing out some positive feedback but it needs to be more than merely positive to be useful and conducive to enhanced productivity. That phrase would need to:

• be said at the time the specific action warranting praise occurred or as immediately afterwards as possible.
• be said to the specific individual performing and controlling the praiseworthy action that you’d like to see more of.
• contain a few more details and expectations than 2 words of generality (what exactly was the bit that was good?)
• some connection to a greater goal, the wider team or higher purpose.

So, here’s some specific feedback to several new Twitter followers I’ve gotten recently – If you’ve only got 17 Twitter followers yourself, best not describe yourself as a ‘social media guru.’

Can Crowdsourcing Improve Employee Performance?

This recent item from CBS News considers how looking to co-workers for feedback might be an improvement on the traditional linear boss-worker performance reviewer-reviewee relationship. According to a study it cites, 45 percent of HR leaders don’t believe that employees’ annual performance reviews accurately reflect the quality of their work. As an employee, I certainly never believed that (unless it equaled or exceeded my own expectations.)
The article doesn’t go into the practicalities of how it could or should be done but they stipulate 3 benefits:

1. Capture feedback continuously
2. Widen the circle
3. Feedback is genuine

For all its downsides, the traditional one-on-one approach is simple. (But is that sufficient reason to keep it alive?) Probably all the benefits of a peer-to-peer feedback system could be incorporated into a traditional approach – if the manager could be bothered getting out and seeking and aggregating the feedback. Which is, of course, where it falls down.
The aggregation is important to keep it honest and timely so it’s not just all warm and fuzzy cuddle feedback but open and honest corrective feedback too. As grand as crowdsourced feedback would be if it could be practically done, there definitely needs to be a means of keeping a practical ratio of positive and negative.

Psychologist Marcial Losada’s 1999 study looked at communication in teams, particularly the ratio of positive to negative statements. Various teams were tagged as being high, medium or low performing teams based on profitability, customer satisfaction and evaluations from management. The lowest high performing teams has a ratio of positive to negative statements of 2.9013:1. (For us non-academics, let’s round that to 3:1.) The highest performing teams averaged around 6:1. But there were diminishing returns and eventually a negative effect. Some of the worst performing teams had an 11:1 ratio so everyone must have been so busy hugging and bestowing warm fuzzies on everyone else, that no one ever did any actual productive work. That level of positivity is over-the-top, unrealistic and evidently not productive.

What’s so special about this magical zone of positivity? Losada says a highly connected team balances internal and external focus while also balancing enquiry and advocacy. If you’ve ever been in a highly negative workplace, you’ll know what he’s talking about. If you do something and make a mistake and you get slapped with blame and negativity, that drives the behaviours of avoidance and defensiveness.

Isn’t that right, you moron?

Kudos – Can Automating Employee Recognition Enhance Employee Engagement?

I was recently contacted by someone from marketing at a company called Kudos - a polite and literate human, not a bot. They asked if I’d blog about their product. This was new to me. There’s no commission nor would I seek one. I don’t use their product – I’m a self-employed sole-charge contractor. I give myself recognition all the time which probably could be a bit more positive than it is, although some days I think I’m way too fabulous.

I knew (and know) not very much about the specifics of Kudos beyond their website and what other bloggers reveal. So, don’t think for a moment I’m formally recommending them at all, or commenting on the reliability or functionality of their offering one way or the other. I’m not because I can’t and I shouldn’t. Plus, as I said, not only am I a a self-employed sole-charge contractor, I also have a history of being flippant with a sideline as a professional stand-up comedian making serious business points using humour as a lever.

So, after that long introductory proviso, I like the idea of Kudos. That’s all I’m even remotely qualified to comment upon.

I like that here is a possible solution to the problem I’ve personally encountered with managing operations that are 24/7 and / or geographically distributed. As I said, I sometimes think I’m pretty fabulous but no amount of fabulousness makes you omniscient or ominprescent. You cannot be everywhere at all times. Tons of things are happening in the workplaces you’re supposed to be leading when you’re, quite simply, not there. You can’t be. And no matter how charged up you are about “catching people doing things right” and how committed you are to ensuring your people get all the positive reinforcement and corrective feedback they need, you, alone, simply cannot.
I paraphrase Tom Peters (I think) a lot when I say the true test of your communication / leadership / whatever is what happens when you’re not around. A challenge I often throw at people I train is how can you be more influential over what happens when you’re not around. The idea of Kudos seems to be a great tool for helping here.

In your absence, employees can give each other feedback online and you can be kept in the loop. If it works and if some tricky bits can be handled well, then this has the potential to be very helpful. If you’ve ever sent an email that someone else has misinterpreted, then you’ll know what I imply by “tricky bits.” And, in the same way as email in some workplaces has laughingly replaced face-to-face communication lies a potential pitfall. There’s no substitute for feedback that is BEST:

B -behaviour based
E -esteem building
S -specific
T – timely

Target behaviours when recognising employees

Sure Kudos would be great if it can create a formal record and trail. It would be excellent if it helps bring together teams spread over time and space. But it would need to be implemented carefully with accompanying training and moderation. Carol Dweck’s research on mindset showed the dangers of how just gushing with praise for the wrong behaviours can be counter productive. (Kids praised for “being smart” avoided challenge later on whereas kids praised for “working hard” sought challenges.) I think that any automating of feedback needs to cater for this pitfall.

The ratio of positive to negative statements in employee recognition

Psychologist Marcial Losada’s 1999 study looked at communication in teams, particularly the ratio of positive to negative statements. Various teams were tagged as being high, medium or low performing teams based on profitability, customer satisfaction and evaluations from management. The lowest high performing teams has a ratio of positive to negative statements of 2.9013:1. (For us non-academics, let’s round that to 3:1.) The highest performing teams averaged around 6:1. But there were diminishing returns and eventually a negative effect. Some of the worst performing teams had an 11:1 ratio so everyone must have been so busy hugging and bestowing warm fuzzies on everyone else, that no one ever did any actual productive work. That level of positivity is over-the-top, unrealistic and evidently not productive. Kudos would need to factor this in too.

Another opportunity for automated recognition systems to be corrupted would be familiar to you if you have teenagers on FaceBook, Tumblr etc. Often you’ll see ‘like for a like’ requests. (Actually, you see that a lot with grown-ups’ LinkedIn recommendations.) They may indeed be genuine reflections of actual positive experiences or they could simply be recognition as a tradeable commodity. Again, Kudos would have to tackle a praise ‘black market.’ (But who am I to criticise? I’m not even sure I spelled “tradeable” correctly.)
There could be, I suppose, an application for Kudos in my current working environment where I frequently subcontract to a few training providers. I don’t have colleagues or bosses in the traditional sense. They generally employ a contractor model but we contractors too have our our needs for recognition (prick us, do we not bleed?) and we are even more problematically spaced out over time and geography. There’s definitely potential usefulness for Kudos or similar in that structure.

I’m not meaning to be negative. I do like the idea of Kudos. I also like the idea of cars and there are road rules and safety systems in place for those. Give it a try. There’s a free offer. Check out that new software smell. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, that’s what I say (despite my stance against meta-amphetamine…)

I’ll keep looking at it. Let me know your thoughts if you’ve had direct experience.