Workplace 911
I've watched a few episodes of Nanny 911 and with the chaos, out
of control children and seemingly irreparable behavior, it
strikes me as a precursor to Workplace 911. No, not a new
reality TV show, but everyday workplace problems.
You see, kids who don't get their way, who learn to hit,
manipulate, scream and throw things, grow up and go to work. By
the time they're adults, they've replaced their aberrant
behaviors, like spitting, with more socially acceptable ones
like sarcastic zingers and verbal tirades. They're the liars,
the saboteurs, the bullies, and the road-blockers we meet up
with at work. And I've met my share.
But here's the thing. Just as those parents are challenged by
the Nanny to identify and correct what they're doing to
encourage and reward their children's behavior, we need to
challenge ourselves to do the same at work. If you want to be
winning at working, you need to uncover what you're doing to
encourage and reward behaviors that you don't like. You need to
recognize which hot buttons hook you into unproductive
patterning at work and which, like those parents desperate to
contain their children's behavior, reduce your results.
I learned in twenty years of managing there's one key that can
change everything. Figure out what you're rewarding. It doesn't
matter if you're five or thirty-five, whatever gets rewarded
gets done. But, it's not as easy as it sounds. And don't confuse
rewards only with something positive. If a co-worker gets you
irritated enough to yell at him, he may feel rewarded because
he's "gotten to you."
Too often what we think we're rewarding, and what we are, are
not the same. Too often we've set up reward systems that create
the work problems we face. And too often, the behaviors that
exasperate us are the ones we're unknowingly reinforcing.
Say a local pizza company decides to reward drivers for on-time
delivery. Sounds good, but in actuality, they'd be rewarding
speeding and reckless driving. Here's an example from Management
Review, "A freight company that based its reward system on the
number of packages shipped thought productivity was way up until
an internal audit revealed that only 45% of the containers were
shipped full."
How about the Texas school system making recent news? It thought
it was rewarding teachers for raising test scores. But, it was
rewarding numbers over methods. So, one school held back 75% of
ninth graders so lower achieving students would not participate
in tenth grade tests, and the school's staff was rewarded for
achieving their goal.
If you want to be winning at working and stop Workplace 911
behaviors from affecting your results, do two things: first,
model the behavior you expect from others. Respect comes from
giving respect and trust from giving trust. Second, look beyond
the desired outcomes to the behaviors that lead to them. Reward
that behavior, since whatever gets rewarded gets done. When you
find and reward the right behaviors, you'll get the right
results.
(c) 2005 Nan S. Russell. All rights reserved.