The Strengths Blog March, 2010

“Reward the behaviour you want repeated,” is one of the basic rules of psychology. The principle applies whether you are encouraging people in a team, organisation or the wider society. Here are three tips for making this happen.

1) You can clarify the behaviour you will and won’t reward.

Good leaders have different personalities – but they have one thing in common. They give clear messages about how they expect people to behave. They follow this credo and are prepared to accept the consequences. Let’s explore how you can take this step as a leader.

Start by clarifying the behaviour you do and don’t want people to demonstrate. You may want people to take responsibility, be positive, set clear goals, encourage each other, do superb work, deliver great customer service, keep their promises or whatever. You may not want people to avoid responsibility, be negative, do poor quality work or whatever.

Clarify these contrasting behaviours – then do two things.

First, be a positive model. People learn from what you do, not what you say.

Second, communicate the behaviour that will – and will not – be rewarded.

This latter point is optional. Some leaders prefer to simply ‘live the message’ and, in this way, embed it into the culture. Other leaders prefer to state the rules at the outset.

I adopted the latter approach when becoming youth development officer for a football club. The players were talented but lacked discipline. For example, they argued with referees and team mates during matches.

So I explained they should encourage each other and be courteous towards officials. One star player tested this in a match by arguing with the referee, so I substituted him immediately. Despite his protests, people got the message. The players learned to channel their energies in a positive way.

Imagine you are a leader who wants to set a new tone in a team or an organisation. Describe the kinds of behaviour that you will and won’t reward. Try completing the following sentences.

2) You can reward the behaviour you want repeated.

Different people encourage others in different ways. You may see somebody doing something well, for example, and have a special word with the person.

Be super specific about the behaviour – or the principles – you want them to repeat. The more specific you are, the more likely people are to repeat the behaviour. When working as a football coach, at half-time I said to one winger:

“The way you beat their full-back 3 times in the first half was excellent. You dummied to move in-field, changed direction to go down the right wing and put in dangerous crosses. I want you to do that again at least 5 times in the second half. It’s up to you how you beat the full-back. But I want you to get to the by-line and put in at least 5 crosses. Is that okay?”

Companies also sometimes give clear messages about the behaviour they want people to demonstrate.

Federal Express used their staff newsletter to highlight acts of ‘legendary service’ – such as drivers trekking across fields of snow to deliver parcels to customers.

Air Miles, the loyalty card company, held corporate wide events where staff voted for and awarded valuable prizes to colleagues who ‘lived the values’.

Let’s return to the situation where you want to reward certain behaviour. How can you encourage people to do more of these things in the future? Try completing the following sentence.

3) You can act decisively regarding the behaviour you don’t want repeated.

How to act when somebody steps over the line? Each person will have their own approach, but here are the three options.

a) You can give the person a positive alternative.

You can say, for example: “In the future can you please do (x) rather than (y) The reason is _______” This gives the person a positive way forward in the future.

b) You can act immediately and practice ‘zero tolerance’.

You may feel it is vital to do this if a person’s behaviour contravenes a team’s agreed ‘rules’. It is important to ‘never walk past a quality problem’, otherwise you have said it is okay.

c) You can give the person a warning, outline the consequences of repeating the behaviour and be prepared to follow-through.

You may believe that it is vital – and moral – to give the person another chance. The key is that you, the person and the rest of the organisation know that you are serious and will follow-through.

Hence some leaders practice the approach of, for example, ‘three strikes and you are out’. You will pursue this approach in your own way, so try completing the following sentence.

“Reward the behaviour you want repeated,” sounds an over-simple philosophy. But I have seen it work in many situations – such as running a therapeutic community or creating a customer-focused business. People soon get the message about the desired culture and ‘the way we will do things round here’.