Freedom, flexibility, autonomy…good things right? To have a voice in how you manage your day and feel in control of your work. The need for autonomy is not just an ideal it’s a critical and key performance indicator. The freedom to choose, the flexibility to spend time on the things that are most important to us and the autonomy to approach things in your own way is a prerequisite for engagement.

This has been shown in many studies, one of my favourites was conducted in 1975 at Arden House, a nursing home in Connecticut by Ellen Langer and Judith Rodins and shows extraordinary results.

They wanted to understand the effects of enhanced personal influence on the wellbeing of elderly residents who were living virtually choice-free. At the time Arden House was a well-run large home with approximately 300 residents, the staff ensured every care was attended to. Langer and Rodin chose two floors to study, the second and the forth, because of the similarity in the residents physical and phycological health, length of stay and prior socio-economics status. Baseline health measurements were taken of the residents within the study and, whilst the subjects could not be randomly assigned to the experimental treatments, the treatments were randomly assigned between the two floors, giving rise to two groups:

1) The Responsibility-induced group

2) The Comparison group

First the groups were given a talk by a member of the nursing team to introduce the study. Group 1 were told that they had influence over many things at the home, like how they wanted their rooms arranged, when they wanted visitors, how to spend their time, that they were at liberty to offer up complaints and suggestions for change. In other words, ‘it’s your life and you can make of it whatever you want’. This group were also told that a film would be shown two nights a week and they had the choice to attend or not. Finally, they were given the option to choose a plant from a variety on offer and were told that it was their responsibility to care for the plant, as they wished.

The comparison group were told that their rooms had been laid out for them as nicely as the staff could do them, that a film would be shown twice a week and they would be told which day they were scheduled to see it, and, just like the other group, they’d be given a plant as a gift from Arden House, but their plant would be cared for by the nursing staff. The major difference between these two groups is the emphasis on their sense of influence, choice and control. The responsibility-induced group had a level of control over their environment while being in the care of staff, whereas the comparison group had minimal responsibility for themselves. There was, however, no difference in the amount of attention paid to the two groups.

The results were astonishing and went beyond Langer and Rodin’s expectations. In 93% of the responsibility group, providing them with a greater sense of control showed improvements in activity and self-reported happiness in as short a period as three weeks of the experiment, versus 71% of the comparison group, who were rated as more debilitated in the same period. More importantly, however, when Langer and Rodin returned to the home 18 months later, they found that twice as many of the comparison group had died in relation to the responsibility group.

The idea that just having a plant to look after or choosing when you want to see a film can extend life is extraordinary, almost unbelievable, but the experiment has been repeated since and yielded the same results.

Langer went on to study how giving greater control to hospitalised patients had a positive effect on their medication levels. Choice and a sense of control have a ripple effect. Greater choice helps keep self-esteem intact, deepens the motivation to connect to others and take part, and support a sense of purpose.

Does ‘Human Resources’ have a bad name? On the surface can it be read as levelling humans to a commodity, a resource to be used and organised? Does the title create a suggestion of a focus on control that is both in opposition to, and undermines the work done by those within Human Resources (HR) seeking to build trust, growth and inclusion?

What if we simply switched the words around? To create a title that defines the outcome aligned to what is most important.

How about ‘Resourcing Humans’. A shift in meaning to that of resourcing every individual to thrive through a relentless pursuit of the optimal conditions for wellbeing and intrinsic motivation that lead to high performance and innovation. To embed truly inclusive environments and cultures of trust that are human fit. To accurately detail the purpose of the function, and the desire of those working within.

We are at a truly unique time in our history. The global pandemic has been unprecedented for us all and it collides with many other significant factors that were already affecting the way we live and work. As we try to find our way in this uncharted territory we have to carefully plan for the many challenges and risks ahead of us. But, in this new realm, we also have a huge opportunity to reshape our working world. To become conscious architects of the experience we want to have and want our people to have. To give rise to the human organisation.

We cannot and should not return. What was has gone. And because the way we were working was simply not working, we need to take this chance to change the trajectory we had set a course for. Productivity has not increased for decades. Workplace stress has increased and engagement levels have plummeted resulting in an estimated £73bn in lost productivity in the UK and $7 trillion worldwide[1]. The return on investment from engagement is well known, researched and documented. Engaged individuals are 87% less likely to leave and deliver greater innovation, better decisions and deepened collaboration. And, above all, because engagement is directly correlated to wellbeing, those intrinsically motivated by their roles are far less likely to become ill. Organisations, on the other hand, with disengaged staff experience up to 100 times more errors and significantly higher levels of safety incidents, greater levels of presenteeism, absenteeism and attrition. Workplace stress is now listed as the 5^thleading cause of death. The combination of factors leading to this frightening statistic include long hours, uncontrollable workloads, work-family conflict and job insecurity[2]. Whist this has a huge impact on health care costs and the economy, by far the worst cost is to every life and every family affected due to, what has become for so many, a toxic way of working. But, one that is preventable.

We can do things better. We can start to ask the right questions. How can and should the workplace serve us? How can we best resource our people so they can be their best? What are the optimal conditions for human performance and wellbeing? How can we pursue stakeholder value rather than shareholder value, even for those without a voice such as the environment. We can apply the real science and DRIVERS® of human motivation to find and implement sustainable solutions.

We work tirelessly to find, attract and recruit the best talent. Once they arrive full of energy and enthusiasm we so often unintentionally cuff them. We place rules, policies, targets and performance metrics tightly around them limiting capacity to grow and deliver what we recruited them for. Their performance is unwittingly constricted to mitigate for potential disobedience. Creativity does not happen in confinement. We talk of trust, of inclusive cultures but we have accidently setup workplaces that are more often about control and only exacerbate exclusion. We have effectively established rational containment centres with many unintended consequences, rather than the optimal human health and performance spaces we need.

So much of the foundation for the current workplace performance management system (at least the pre-pandemic one) was borne from a past century that bought men from the farms into the factories. Control was deemed as paramount to ensure compliance and efficiency. Humans were dispensable and leaders were dictatorial. Central to much of economic theory at this time was a focus on the wrong doers and the rule breakers. It espoused that we are ultimately self-serving and self-interested. Rather than homo-sapiens we are described as homo-economicus, purely rational transactional beings. This theory promotes individualism rather than our inherent, and protective, social and communal nature. It’s teachings have seeped into our current workplace processes and procedures to curtail innovation rather than free it.

The unintended consequences of our legacy systems of performance measurement and management can be far reaching and often unseen. We think we are doing the right thing to support performance but we get the exact opposite. Just over 2 decades ago the Boston Firefighting department noticed they had a problem. Back then the firefighters had unlimited sick leave. The administrators noticed, as they analysed the sick time, that Fridays and Mondays were most often the days where individuals would call in. So they bought in a policy which ruled that firefighters could only have a limited number of days of sick leave annually. Any more time taken their pay would be docked. This led to widespread anger and resentment. In fact most had not been calling in sick when they were not ill, and felt that the trust in them had been unjustly removed. On Christmas day and New Year’s day masses of them protested by calling in sick only to have their bonuses removed. In the year following the policy’s inception, the number of sick days recorded more than doubled. Individuals started to see sick leave as part of their entitlement and would use up any outstanding days of leave towards the end of the year by calling in ill so as to not lose the time.  Something they would never have dreamt of doing in the past. The policy made good people do the exact thing it was written to stop. Whilst there were more than likely a small percentage of individuals calling in sick when they weren’t, the policy punished everyone, placed an assumption of distrust across the workforce leading to reduced moral and a diminished sense of obligation to the fire service. The Fire Chief removed the policy 18 months later, but whilst the policy was swiftly removed the damage remained.

‘Trust arrives on snails back and leaves on horseback’

I fully appreciate we have come a long way since the first industrial revolution style of leadership and management, but I argue that we have not come as far as we like to think we have. We still create rule upon rule through policies that unconsciously replicate outcomes akin to the Boston fire service’s experience. Take the flexible working policy for example. True flexibility is giving autonomy, choice and agency through trust to your people to deliver their work where, when and how they can best do so.  But each rule imposed, from how much working from home is allowed to the limits on types of flexible working, removes and undermines trust. If we have shown one thing through the Covid-19 crisis, we can and do deliver, self-organise and can be trusted to work. We don’t need rules in place to do so – we need trust.

Trust is the real performance currency. It is the basis of the psychologically safeworking environment that switches on our reward mechanism and sparks intrinsic motivation. We need to stop assuming people will abuse the system. We have built fences and blockers for the very small minority that may fall into this category by curbing everyone’s potential. Instead we need set up mindsets and pathways for success from the very start and trust that if the conditions are right the engagement will follow.

Human leadership is a messy art. We are not wholly rationally beings but, we are brilliant given the right conditions. We don’t have to go back, we can choose to reshape, reinvent and reimagine our working world for the better. We have the knowledge and the tools to make it happen, the rest is simply a choice to change.

So let’s switch to ‘Resourcing Humans’, because we can make workplaces fit for humans rather than keep trying to fit humans into the workplace.

Click here to learn about the Human Leadership talk and learning series, that delivers science based tools to establish truly inclusive cultures of trust and human-fit workplaces.

About the Author

Susanne Jacobs MBA, Chartered FCIPD, FCMI

Susanne Jacobs founder and CEO of The Seven. She is an organisational behaviour and performance specialist, focussing on trust and intrinsic motivation. Her work is based on over a decade of research into the neurobiology of human performance and what truly motivates people to think and act differently. Susanne delivers knowledge and practical tools that are easy to grasp and apply so an organisation can achieve cultural change and strengthen human leadership capability.

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[1] Galllup. State of the Global Workforce 2019

[2] Dying for a Paycheck. Jeffery Pffefer. Harper Press 2018

Goals that are over-stretching, unrealistic and have no core personal purpose that adds value to your life will inevitably fall by the wayside. A sense of purpose is neurologically rewarding, intrinsically motivating us to keep going and to strive for success. Purpose is the reason volunteers continue to volunteer and artists create. A pursuit of a goal or a day’s work without purpose is draining – effort without meaning is simply hard work.

Purpose and daily meaning play an important part not just in our motivation but in our health and happiness. A study published in the Lancet looking at subjective wellbeing, identified that eudaimonic wellbeing (sense of purpose and meaning in life) is associated with increased survival[1]. Okinawa in Japan is one of the nine Blue Zones’ – cultures identified and studied because inhabitants live measurably longer healthier lives. In the Okinawan language they have the word ‘ikigai’, translated as ‘the reason I wake up in the morning’. A sense of purpose is amongst the aspects all the Blue Zones have in common and the project lists it as worth up to seven years of extra life expectancy.[2] So, for those resolutions you have listed for yourself what is the reason for each, their true purpose? What would a change in weight, fitness or job really mean for you? By tapping into the real purpose you will fuel your motivation.

A sense of purpose in our work is essential for engagement and for organisations with a clear purpose it delivers demonstrable returns. The power of purpose is often underestimated in the workplace as a critical driver of engagement, innovation, client/customer service, collaboration and performance. Mission statements go up on walls and over-stretching targets are dealt out in the hope of increased productivity, but rarely do these carry a clear link between individual contribution and the true meaning of the work. The result is work done in isolation with a sense of disconnect and, at worse, futility. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, notes how “enduring great companies don’t exist merely to deliver returns to shareholders. Indeed, in a truly great company, profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life, but they are not the very point of life.” So what’s the formula for the lasting endurance of an organisation? Collins continues: “To make the shift from a company with sustained great results to an enduring great company of iconic stature . . . discover your core values and purpose beyond just making money.” [3] Jim Stengel of Proctor & Gamble commissioned a study of over thirty thousand brands with a focus on twenty-five top performing ones. The in-depth study found that all the top-performing brands were fulfilling a higher order purpose[4]. Furthermore, Collins, over the course of a six year research project with Jerry Porras,[5] found that long enduring and highly successful organisations all had a clear sense of purpose built around a core ideology beyond making money that differentiated them and provided a deep and meaningful identity to all employees. For organisations with clear purpose and values, the ‘what’ and ‘why’ is accessible. Decisions become faster, easier and clearer.

Purpose creates a lens through which the world is viewed and moves are made based on their relevance to and alignment with that viewpoint. Questions such as cut costs, outsource, pursue a different market are simpler to answer if the result of them being put into action would be to violate the purpose? Purpose directs and unites people through a common reason and desire to progress, which provides that intrinsic reward.

So at this time of reflection, whether at work or outside of work, think about your ikigai and its source of value to you.

Happy New Year!

Click here for further reading on this subject and the other DRIVERS© of intrinsic motivation and trust.

R E F E R E N C E S

1. Subjective wellbeing, health, and ageing, Prof Andrew Steptoe; Prof Angus Deaton; Prof Arthur A Stone; The Lancet published online November 2014; Volume 385, No. 9968, p640-p648, 14 February 2015
2. Blue Zones, Power 9 https://www.bluezones.com/2014/04/power-9/ accessed 12 July 2016
3. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap..And Others Don’t, Jim Collins, Harper Collins, 2011
4. GROW, Jim Stengel; Crown Business, NY; http://www.jimstengel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/GrowChapterOne.pdf accessed 7 December 2017
5. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, J. Collins and J.I. Porras, Random House Business Books, first published in 1994

 

One of the questions I am regularly asked – often with a sense of desperation – is how to give feedback. It is an age-old challenge, laid at the feet of managers, who carry out the task
with varying degrees of success. How do you feel when someone says: ‘Can I give you some feedback?’ How many times have you had a performance conversation where 95 per cent of it has been focused on what’s gone well, but it’s the 5 per cent of ‘development opportunity’ that remains with you?

There are many models out there that describe how to give feedback, but what most fail to take into account is how the brain reacts and how we really learn. Mistakes are part of life. If we didn’t make mistakes we would never learn or adapt. That’s not to say that we don’t need to mitigate the risk of potential mistakes – of course we do – but we also need to understand how to provide developmental input that really works.

Feedback that triggers our neurological reward circuitry, which increases our capacity for learning and engagement, is possible. It is my research in this field that has led me to build,
and now teach, a brain-friendly model for feedback, which I’d like to share with you. It is a simple checklist using an acronym that we all know, which aims to ensure conversations lead to
development not demotivation – and it’s as simple as AEIOU.

A – And
If I said to you: ‘That presentation was great…’ – what word are you expecting to hear next? ‘But’ or ‘however’? Now what happens to the words that preceded the ‘but’? Our brains hone in on
the threat, which in this case is the criticism that is anticipated to follow, negating the positives. So instead of ‘but’ or ‘however’, use ‘and’. This will feel awkward at first but it works. ‘That presentation was great, and to make it even stronger you could…’

E – Effort
We are rewarded neurologically far more for the effort we put in than the end result. Behavioural economist Dan Ariely refers to it as the ‘Ikea effect’. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t celebrate the success – of course we should – but we should notice the effort and hard work that got the individual and/or team to that end result.

I – Intention
People come to work to do a good job. So first think what their intention was before an error occurred. Was it to cause harm, to damage or to destroy? There is an impact that needs to be
addressed, but first understand the intention.

O – Opportunity
In every genuine error, there is an opportunity to learn. The aviation industry has embedded this into how it operates with systems set up to encourage pilots to log their errors so improvements and learning can happen continuously.

U – You
How are you feeling? What are you thinking? What is your mood? What messages are you transmitting that will either help or hinder the conversation? Is this the right time to talk?

Positive development and growth of those in your team happens when our brains can engage and that happens only when we feel safe to do so. Applying AEIOU is a tool to help do this.

Development is not an annual event held only in the appraisal meeting – it needs to happen every day and in the moment if it is to make the best connections for learning.

In my daughter’s school is a large poster reminding the children every day about the values and behaviour expected of them. It reads:

Always think of others and be kind
Look after each other
Understand and accept differences
Respect success
Be honest
Take responsibility for your own actions
Believe in yourself
I have worked in several schools recently supporting teachers to enhance their resilience and I have seen similar list of words placed in full view for both students and teachers. The words are not simply used for effect they are truly embedded and lived everyday by the pupils and teachers alike and as a parent I see their positive impact. It got me thinking of our workplaces and the varied list of values also pinned strategically for employees to ignore, and how we can learn a lot from what schools are doing.

The DRIVERS of trust and motivation (see table below) are all impacted by how we interact with each other. We damage another’s relative position when we are uncivil, gossip or micromanage.
We often exclude many individuals when decisions are needed relying instead on our superior leadership expertise. We deliver targets and budgets that over-stretch and overburden, and we try to control the physical presence of our teams through flexible working rules. These, often unintended, behaviours all serve to undermine and damage trust leading to demotivation, distress and reduced performance. The impact is significant both to our wellbeing and to the bottom line. And this is by no means and exhaustive list.

Let’s look at incivility as an example. Christine Porath and Christine Pearson’s work[1] has shown that the number one reason people say they are uncivil to others at work is because they are
themselves overwhelmed and under stress. This sets up a vicious cycle as the incivility spreads, flowing from the top down. Their research has shown that across organisations over two-thirds
of people say that they withhold effort after they experience incivility and 80% loose work time worrying about the uncivil interaction. Think about the last time someone was sarcastic, rude or dismissive towards you. Even if what they said or did was small the impact may have stayed with you for hours, even days as you go over the incident again and again. As Maya Angelou said ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’

But, it’s not just experiencing incivility directly, the impact on performance extends to those witnessing it. Again Porath and Pearson’s research shows that witnesses to rudeness were over 50% less effective on word problems and 28% less creative on brain storming problems. They even created these effects in experiments by simply priming individuals before tasks with impolite trigger words such as, impolitely, bother, interrupt etc. After being primed participants who received these trigger words reduced their selective attentional capacity by up to five times when compared to participants who had not received the trigger words. Those primed participants also reduced their ability to process information, make decisions and problem solve. Think about this in relation to concentration and focus at work. What if this effect happened with a nurse administering drugs to a patient because she had been subjected to incivility from the doctor five minutes before? No joke – in a study of 4,500 doctors and nurses, 71% of them tied uncivil behaviour to medical errors that they knew of! As Porath tells us ‘Incivility robs cognitive resources, hijacking performance and creativity. Even if you want to perform at your best, you can’t’.

So who do you want to be at work? How should and can you and your colleagues take responsibility for how you interact with each other every day? Every interaction has a legacy and we can each be accountable for our words and actions so they support the DRIVERS of trust not undermine them.

The DRIVERS of trust and intrinsic motivation

• DDirectionA clear sense of purpose and meaning.
• RRelative positionMy sense of significance, identity, and position within my group. That my contribution is understood and valued by others.
• IInclusionMy perception of belonging.
• VVoice and ChoiceMy sense that I my view will be heard and that I have choice, autonomy and control over my decisions that affect my life.
• EEquityMy perception being treated fairly and of fairness and equity within my group.
• RReliabilityMy sense of certainty and security in my surroundings, others and my life
• SStretchMy opportunities for growth, learning and achievement through effort.

How did you feel in the last conversation you had? Were your ideas and opinions genuinely heard? Were any of your thoughts questioned? In the last meeting you were in did you feel a sense of being fully in the middle of the conversation or sat on the outside wanting to keep pushing your comments so they would be listened to?

In every conversation our brains scan every word, every rise of the eyebrows, each shift in tone and slight movement in posture. Your conversations work on a continual feedback loop between the brains involved that are assessing whether we are facing a friend or foe and what our social rank is in relation to the other. We have all experienced situations where we have felt a nobody and a somebody each triggering very different emotional responses. The former threat the latter safety and reward.

Our ability to judge our competencies, abilities and thus worth within a group or to others determines our significance and by consequence our value. If we are of value we remain included. If we provide no important contribution we represent a drain on resources and human history dictates that we would likely be excluded. Additionally, being able to assign skills helped us early
humans establish roles and responsibilities efficiently, ensuring the survival of the group as a whole. So the need to analyze our position remains with us and once we understand and sense
our fit we are neurologically rewarded because this represents, to our brains, safety.

The challenge comes when this seeking of external validation starts to form our own internal representation of self-worth. This is especially acute for young people who seek continual approval from peers aided and abetted by social media. How many friends do I show the world I have?, how many ‘likes’ to every comment I make?, and what perfect identity do I extend into the ether of the internet that I’m unable to uphold? These external views can establish self-beliefs – ugly, popular, clever, stupid, beautiful… every one self-limiting.

We can shout about our relative position in the world through loud brands, material goods, large cars all of which assume a place of ‘I have more’ and somewhere in there presumably a need to say ‘and you have less’. And, we often let our need to make our significance known in meetings and conversations through forcing our views – however professionally we say it we know when we are doing it. It can feel uncomfortable when another questions our words and if we don’t checkin with ourselves we can let our ego’s take the better of us, desperately trying to fulfil our need for recognition.

Conflicts happen most often because of our own defences. When our brains sense a threat to our significance our ego can take over. Conversations become competitions rather than spaces to learn from others. We try to be the first, last or best person to speak.

Self-worth and identity is within us. It is wonderful when we receive external validation but when we don’t it doesn’t mean our own value is invalid. If we can see each conversation as a chance to be amazed, to learn and to share knowledge when asked or appropriate not only will the threat of diminished significance be abated, but connection will be smoother and decisions quicker. It may be a cheesy line but perhaps we should focus on dropping the ‘e’ and letting it ‘go’.

We are living in uncertain times. The U.S election which is testing many of us; the continuing question about the impact Brexit will really have; the weakening of the pound and so much destruction both man-made and geological. Politically, economically and socially we will be living with uncertainty for a long time to come. Uncertainty is in and of itself, threatening because of how the brain positions and interprets it. The unrest we are facing is affecting all our businesses forcing yet more organizational change. And yet, 75% of business change fails to meet its original goals and more often than not leaves behind an aftermath of demotivation and disengagement. One key reason for this is how the brain responds to change which is by default uncertainty.

We crave a sense of certainty and put energy into finding control to mitigate ambiguity. Whilst the tolerance levels of uncertainty and ambiguity will differ with individuals, the brain feels safety when it gets what’s going on and can predict what happens next. Where it is unable to pattern match an event our brain will flag up warning signals preparing us for what could be a perilous situation. After all it’s better to fear the unknown, act now and ask questions later than to walk blindly into potential danger. It is of course why the associated cliché is true. When we are in this state of readiness to meet a possible foe our attention is honed on the threat and our capacity to think broadly is depleted. We put up resistance to change, hoping instead to maintain status quo which effectively puts up human roadblocks that slow and sometimes stop the change process.

What’s the science bit behind this? Our brain continually pattern matches the information it receives from the world with what it has already stored and filed from your experiences to decide what to do. Once it has made a match it guides us to act accordingly to the situation. Imagine a filing cabinet in your head in which all of ‘you’ is stored – your memories, your experiences, everything that has happened to you. The filing system is ordered by association and sub-divided by the categories ‘safe’ or ‘threat’. The emotion experienced with the event is the determinant for the order and category, the chemical librarian if you like. So for someone who was stung badly by a bee as a child, bees will be stored high in the threat category. In the same category because of association, certain places will be filed next to bees – maybe lavender because that’s where you were when you got stung. The association of lavender with bees gives
the brain a frame for avoidance, triggering our threat response even if there are no bees to be seen.

This ‘match–predict-act’ system from an evolutionary and survival viewpoint this carries advantage. The sub-conscious filing system provides the means for very fast analysis and action to keep you on the planet a bit longer, moving you away from perceived danger even before you are consciously aware of it. Uncertainty however, is like a torn map. Without the missing piece the whole landscape cannot completed and the next steps cannot be calculated. In the absence of information we seek to fill in the gaps to make sense of the ambiguity and uncertainty of what is and what’s next. It’s why during change the gossip chain strengthens as individuals seek understanding and evidence for their own interpretation of what it all means. This is termed ‘information seeking behaviour’ – what’s happening now? what’s next?, what does it mean for me? Even if the information turns out to be wrong at the time it provides the brain with immediate comfort because it’s been able to create a temporary certainty.

Change is part of the fabric of life and is continuous in our workplaces. The capability to cope with uncertainty and ambiguity is a skill that can be learnt and one that has a direct performance impact. Its perhaps no surprise then that CEO’s with higher tolerance levels of ambiguity are related to firms with higher financial and market performance. So as we continue to deal with change at work and the uncertainty across the planet, providing tools and knowledge to support individuals to develop a stronger tolerance of uncertainty is crucial for performance and wellbeing.