Adrian Gostick

At a large casino we work with, managers were recently given the recognition tools to enhance employee engagement. Using our A Carrot A Day recognition training and our company’s performance award systems, the worst performing units rose their employee engagement scores a whopping 10 percent in just a few months. However, despite those amazing results, a few managers still held out. They just would not using the recognition system, so upper leadership had 300 pounds of fresh carrots delivered to these managers’ offices as a gentle reminder to appreciate great work.

I worked with a great group of European business people a few weeks ago. One of the men, a young accounting supervisor from the Netherlands, had come to realize the value of sincere appreciation. He told me this story:

He had been asked to head up a corporate move and worked several weekends and evenings to ensure the project was successful. After the move was complete, he expected a thank you from senior leadership for his great work, but there was only silence. Finally, a month later, 750 Euros appeared in his paycheck (about $1500). “The money was nice, a generous amount really, but I would have been much happier with a thank you from someone in management and maybe a bottle of wine,” he said.

As we travel frequently in Europe, we hear this type of comment more and more often. Management believes cash is king in motivating employees, and yet here’s one sharp young man who was disappointed he didn’t get personal acknowledgement for his hard work.

It’s long been a tactic used by sports coaches, business leaders, and sales managers to position your team as the underdogs about to bring down the championship team/leader in your industry/top performer.
You explain that your team is David and you are taking on Goliath. That gets people pumped, right?

Not so fast.

According to research published this month in T+D magazine, groups work about 30 percent harder when competing again lower-status competition. In other words, we put in more effort when we are competing against those we know we should beat.

One of the researchers, Nathan Pettit from Cornell University, explains the psychology. He says members of a team understand the embarrassing implications of being outperformed by a lower-ranking team, thus they work harder. Also team members believe it is possible to not only beat, but dominate the lower-ranking team, and that self-fulfilling prophecy tends to lead to better outcomes. However, when competing against a higher-ranking team, team members studied perform only at expected levels. The researchers surmised that members subconsciously realized that losing would not result in a loss of standing for them.

What are the implications for us as managers? Pettit says, “managers may want to carefully consider creating performance comparisons between groups of different statuses as a potential way of eliciting increases in effort.”

For your team, let your people know they are the best. Let them know that they can beat any competition, and chances are they will.

I had an interesting question from a client this week: Can you define the ideal employee?

While my first instinct was to respond with a wisecrack (me/Steve Jobs/Mother Theresa), instead I pointed to our survey of 200,000 people for The Carrot Principle that showed engaged employees:

•Consistently put in extra effort
•Are motivated to contribute to the success of their team and organization (they care about the team and not just themselves)
•Are always looking for better ways to get the job done
•Get a strong sense of personal accomplishment from their work
•Have a positive attitude about work
•Receive a lot of recognition for their great work

While it’s a good list, it’s admittedly not all-inclusive. For instance, you could argue an ideal employee is ethical, capable, intelligent, dependable, etc. But for a short list of characteristics, these six provide a pretty good analysis of a person’s ability to excel in your organization.

In fact, right now, why don’t you think about each of the members of your team and ask if they live these six; and then ask the same question about yourself.

Early one morning this week, two guys were talking loudly in the next aisle of lockers at the gym, and I couldn’t help overhearing. Here’s part of the conversation:

Matt: You still working at Mountain Lumber? (I changed the name, but it’s a large retailer.)

Jim: Oh yeah, and listen to this. I’ve been telling them I want a certain day off for two months. I go in yesterday and sure enough, when I look at the schedule, Cathy has got me working that day. I tell them I’ve been asking for that day off forever, and she says it’s too late. She says I should have told her when the schedule went up on the weekend, but I have my days off on Saturday and Sunday so how could I have known? She said that was my fault. It was my responsibility to check the schedule the day it goes up.

Matt: Huh. So what do you do?

Jim: I told them (he coughs) I might come down with the green flu that day. They can fire me if they want. That way I get 18 months of unemployment.

Matt: Or they could just make your life miserable.

Jim: (Grunts in agreement) They put me on the counter yesterday. That’s the worst. I have to be the highest paid guy ever to work the register.

Unfortunately this kind of dialogue happens thousands of times a day around the world. In our 200,000-person research study for The Carrot Principle, we found a vast majority of employees view their managers as little more than “time keepers” and “task masters.” Very few employees saw their supervisors as motivators. And very few believed their managers were understanding or sympathetic to their personal issues, and yet that issue alone has been reported as the third most important in employee work satisfaction (after recognition and communication).

In the best work places, employees call their managers “relevant” to their positive work experience. They say their managers are considerate of their goals inside and outside of work, and because of that understanding they give more discretionary effort and stay more committed.