Our Insights
How to Solve Motivation Problems - Insert Trust into the Equation
Recently I’ve had some pretty low-energy conversations with people working in organisations. It could be the political climate, it could be the time of year, it could be the weather… I’m not going to try to interpret the detail of what’s behind these conversations, suffice to say there’s a lot of people around who seem to be experiencing a distinct lack of motivation. However, when we do get to talking about the ‘why’ of all this, the word I hear more often than I should is TRUST - there seems to be a definite lack of trust out there. Google Trends reckons this word is searched for some 4 to 5 times more than 'Motivation'. Trust - Motivation, what’s the connection? Let me give you my take on all of this. I’m going to start with something we know about motivation and use that to look at how trust becomes a player. There are many process theories about motivation, but the one I tend to reach for is Vroom’s Expectancy Theory of Motivation. It’s a relatively simple Motivation Equation, it’s only got three moving parts which makes it easy to collect evidence in a workplace setting when looking to answer questions about why people are / aren’t motivated in particular circumstances. I often apply it with clients who are wondering if a particular new initiative will work (will our people get behind this?), or, retrospectively helping clients to understand why a particular new initiative didn’t work (why didn’t our people get behind this?). Obviously the former of these is the most desirable, the latter is by far the most expensive. What Vroom says is focused on what individuals expect in the future. Specifically, that an individual’s motivation is affected by how much they value any reward associated with an action (Valence), how much they believe that by putting effort into something they will be able to generate good results (Expectancy) and how much they believe that generating good results will result in a reward (Instrumentality). Importantly the reward may be either intrinsic (like a sense of fulfilment or achievement) or extrinsic (money or promotion). This is usually expressed as the Motivation equation M = V * I * E So where does Trust come into this? Let me add this key word into how the equation is usually explained. Valence: is pretty straightforward. How much does the individual or group value the potential rewards? Hint: go and ask them! Expectancy: How much they TRUST do they place on the information that their additional effort will help them achieve the target results? Instrumentality: How much TRUST do they have that the rewards will actually appear should they achieve the target results? Put like this trust becomes somewhat pivotal in motivating people to do what leaders want them to do. At that point I usually see the lightbulbs going on - that in order to get people to do what they are told, they need to trust the leader who’s telling them to do it. Now we’ve got a different question to answer: How do we build trust in our leaders? I can easily answer that one in the negative - you don’t build trust in leaders by telling people that they are worthy of trust. It’s here that the term “walking the talk” is usually introduced by somebody, and that tells me that many clients get this in principle, but may be struggling with the practice of making it happen. My answer usually emphasises the need for shared experience - there is nothing quite like having stood shoulder to shoulder with a leader in a challenging situation to build trust in their ability to perform. The trouble is that challenging situations - where the consequences of failure could be drastic - are not places for experiments in leadership practice. This is where authentic and engaging experiential learning environments are worth their weight in gold. The consequences of failure are perhaps a little embarrassment and certainly a lot of learning, but crucially the increase in interpersonal knowledge is the stuff the trust is built upon. Very often in organisations there is an assumption that certain development experiences are for leaders, and other development experiences are for the people they lead. Think how many trust-building opportunities are lost by playing to the ego that exists at the top of the organisation - and how crucial that lack of trust could be when the leaders need the workforce to follow them. My prescription is to work in vertical slices and put the teams / groups into shared learning situations where they can experience one another performing. More complex tools like T-Trade and Minefield lend themselves perfectly to these learning outcomes, though it may well be advisable to use a preliminary exercise like Colourblind, Webmaster or Simbols to build some initial trust / familiarity.
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The Art of Representation: Preparing teams to speak and act for each other
There are situations in the life of every team when their work and views need to be represented by sending a team member to an external meeting. This may be a hierarchical situation where the team leader is required, or a matter of specialism where a subject matter expert needs to represent their colleagues. Either way it's imperative that the team trusts that their representative will effectively demonstrate the work and professionalism of the team. Equally it's important that the representative themself is given the message that the team trusts them in the role. The meeting may well happen away from the team, behind closed doors, so there can be no in-the-moment reinforcement of this trust relationship. It's something that is best developed in the safety of an experiential setting - but what's the best tool to address the issues of psychological safety involved? At the simpler, shorter end of a range of possible interventions is Team Fusion . Importantly this rotates the representative role around the team so everybody experiences relying on that representative, and also being the one who is being relied upon, several times during the activity. There is a strong emphasis on making good decisions on behalf of the team, communicating these decisions and resultant actions, and basing these decisions on the learning derived from preceding colleagues. It's a very easy activity to administer, and the transfer of learning from activity, to debrief, to workplace implementation is direct and impactful. This makes it a great starting place for a facilitator taking early steps in using experiential tools, or line managers introducing something useful and engaging to team meetings. At the other end of the range is T-trade which is one of the most powerful tools I know for looking at how different parts of an organisation need to operate in a co-ordinated manner when they are under severe operational pressure. In these situations each function needs to trust the others to make and communicate decisions that might have short-term negative impacts across the organisation e.g. if sales unexpectedly open up a new market it will require manufacturing to change what they are doing, or conversely, a shortage of components may need sales to rapidly shift their targets. In each of these cases the result may be uncomfortable, but positive outcomes will only be achieved if there is a bond of trust and common purpose across the functions. In both of these activities the underlying requirement is for every individual to be working towards relationship building - within and beyond team boundaries. Trust will only flourish in the psychological safety of good relationships, and this is not something that can be achieved through familiarity alone. It's far better to allow teams to explore and hopefully extend the limitations of their mutual trust, especially when they are relying on the quality of represention they receive from colleagues.
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How to Develop Effective Team Leadership
There are many definitions of team leadership, but, at their heart, most will feature the need to somehow define a goal for the team, and then ensure that the team feel enabled to work towards that goal. There's a simplicity here that may be very easy to describe, but difficult to achieve if the leader is to stay in the 'sweet spot' that lies between a hands-off approach and micromanagement. It's very likely that actively demonstrating where this sweet spot lies will be singularly more effective than finding the words to describe it. Working experientially there are two activities I find to be particularly useful in structuring an effective demonstration of what's needed here; which one I choose largely depends on the complexity of the workplace situation I'm gearing- up the team to face. If I'm working in a situation where I simply need the team to efficiently pool the knowledge they hold, I don't want personality and status to deflect them from this task. We need to hear what each individual knows without interruption or bias so that the team process is smooth and direct. Sharing in this way is the quickest way to firstly reach agreement on an objective and then go on to achieve it, and it's a process that is perfectly demonstrated using the Workstations activity. I don't want to spend a long time with a team getting them to trust and value the contribution of colleagues, Workstations allows me to move quickly to illustrating this process. If, however, I'm working in a situation that is more complex and dynamic, particularly one where knowledge is emergent, I need an activity that lasts a little longer so that needs and understanding can change and develop. Here I might turn to Minefield, particularly if I'm working with more senior leaders or representatives of more than one team or function. Within any organisation knowledge develops at different rates. This knowledge might be specific to a particular function, but there's always going to be content that will inform the work of other parts of the organisation. I need people to consistently scan what they're finding out, and to recognise what might have value elsewhere (and this might include partners outside of the organisation), then to understand the relationships and channels they need to move the information effectively. With Minefield I can recognisably simulate this environment; allowing teams to build understanding of their operating environment, collate knowledge, work against a budget to place a value on this knowledge, and to consider the extent to which they need to collaborate with other teams. Ultimately the group will achieve a score, and it's a feature of Minefield that this score is a direct evaluation of how accurately they have assessed the situation and managed the knowledge environment. It's an activity that generates strong emotions and powerful learning, making the transfer of learning back into the workplace both direct and insightful. As a leader I want my team to have all the tools and permissions they need to self-manage their knowledge environment; achieving that degree of autonomy is something I'm prepared to invest time and energy in achieving. Working with experiential learning tools like Workstations and Minefield has got to be a strong consideration for this investment.
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Practicing Before the Pressure: Building Negotiation Skills that Stick
The literature of Leadership Development has many advocates for an approach characterised as ‘learning on the job’. Strong voices that tell us that the best way for leaders to hone their skills is through the visceral, first-hand practice of leadership itself. I’ve got some sympathy for this viewpoint, there are some parts of leadership development that benefit from an ‘in at the deep-end approach’. Not least that it’s a great way of recognising the adaptability and resilience needed to do the job well, and it blows away the idea that you can learn leadership straight from a book. But I’d suggest that there are other parts of the leadership role that need to be developed through a structured process of learning, and high on this list is negotiation. The very last place I’d want my leaders to be learning negotiation is during a negotiation. Being effective in developing leadership negotiation skills gives us a real challenge as designers and practitioners, “how can any learning environment authentically build the factionalism, passion and jeopardy that are the essence of important negotiations?”The answer is that they can’t - no simulation or role play can build that level of intensity. It's a requirement that needs a different kind of solution. What we need is an approach that allows us to work towards a set of learning objectives that cover: Developing effective approaches to interest-based negotiation that go beyond win-lose mindsets. Anticipating the actions and intentions of the other parties in order to enable proactive negotiation. Observing and reflecting on the role that personality plays in negotiation. Rehearsing the skills needed to deliberately and productively raise and lower the tension during negotiations. Recognising the needs of all parties at key stages in a negotiation. An accessible and effective approach that will deliver these potential learning objectives is this: a. structure an experiential learning experience that encourages participants to care about the result and be so engaged that they go beyond role playing and demonstrate authentic patterns of behaviour b. then structure an honest and open performance review that allows every participant to put themselves into the shoes of the other side For requirement a. it’s clear that there is a need to choose an experience that best reflects the type of negotiation in which the participants are likely to be engaged i.e. reflecting their workplace role and responsibility. At RSVP Design we would probably select T-trade for senior leaders, Post-it or Minefield at management level and Hollow Square for those needing fairly basic negotiation skills. For requirement b. it is important to structure a post-activity debrief that allows each person or group who has been involved to ask questions of the other party. The facilitator can do this in an open manner by inviting questions such as “Is there anything you would like to ask the other group(s)?” Alternatively the facilitator can ask each person or group “What do you think that the other group was trying to achieve? What was their strategy?” then asking whether this was indeed the case. Either of these structures, used as part of a debrief, allows the participants to make informed connections between the intentions and behaviours of those who were across the negotiating table. The insights that we’re trying to achieve are about building understanding of positive intent during negotiation. It’s very rare that people in negotiations behave in a way that doesn’t have a positive intent, and trying to understand what this is is an extremely useful way of thinking i.e. ask yourself this question “(Stated in the positive) What is this person trying to achieve?” The result is that rather than answers such as “They are trying to stop me achieving the position I’ve given them” you end up with a positively stated, and usually more specific, alternative such as “They are trying to achieve a compromise result that’s somewhere between our positions”. Learning to negotiate effectively needs quality practice. It’s a multi-person, multi-positional, dynamic exchange that places great demands on the levels of interpersonal insight that each party brings to the table. As previously stated, the very last place that I’d want my leaders to be learning negotiation is in a negotiation, so I’m a very strong advocate of investing in their development.
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Are you developing teams beyond a culture of blame?
Even a cursory browse through the huge volume of literature about great teams will reveal that there's an understandable interest in how they just seem to 'get it right'. There often follows a prescription to help other teams follow that path to success. We read about aligning individual contribution, solution-focused communication, building a team-climate that encourages risk-taking, etc, etc. There's an overwhelming focus on developing the positive actions and attributes that facilitate the evolution of good teams into high performance teams. However, there's an observation I want to make at this point - I've worked in a teambuilding role for many years, and most of my engagements have required me to work with the negative attributes of a client team - any approach that simply reinforces the positives doesn't cut it when you're looking to make a team great. Over my career I’ve worked with a lot of great teams, across a broad range of sectors and geographies, and I want to suggest a further, little-recognised, attribute of a great team - how they deal, individually and collectively, with getting it wrong. It’s a bit of a cliche, but great teams really do view mistakes as opportunities to get better. Not in some overly demonstrative way that advertises what an unusual occurrence this is, but in a way that efficiently deals with the mistake, then moves quickly to a positive focus on the learning that has become available through the mistake. It’s that rapid shift from focusing on the mistake to focusing on the learning that is so impressive in how a great team operates. Here’s the sequence that they accelerate through when one or more team members detects a mistake: Recognise the mistake (early) Own the mistake (collectively) Alert everybody who will be affected (pre-emptively) Do what is possible towards recovery (proportionately) Learn from the mistake (positively) There's a growing pressure, driven by both social and mainstream media, to 'name names' and 'find culprits'; we are led to believe that having somebody or something to blame offers a degree of closure. This is very often deflection, shifting our attention away from what's really happening, or away from possible (but difficult) solutions. In the workplace this inevitably has negative implications and moves a team further away from any greatness they might achieve. Take a look at this sequence again. The highly inefficient and destructive phase of “attributing blame” doesn’t appear anywhere. Even during the last phase of ‘Learning from the mistake (positively)’ the word positively tells you what you need to know - there’s no room for the regressive steps involved in determining whose fault it is. That’s not to say that the source of the mistake isn’t identified; in order to learn we need to understand the causes of what went wrong, and if that’s about an individual’s actions then that needs to be recognised. However, the focus is on the future (i.e. the available learning) rather than the past (i.e. the attribution of blame.) The blame-game is endemic in organisations, so one of the things that impresses me most about great teams is the way that they have broken free of its negativity. So how have they done it? A large part of it is about leadership, and we read a lot about leaders having the courage to encourage risk-taking in their teams. However, achieving a team culture which truly embraces this risk-taking depends on every one of the team-members accepting this as their team norm. If even one of those members still wants to play the blame-game, it restricts the rest of the team from making the leap towards learning. Clearly, we need a way to demonstrate the benefits of focusing on the learning instead of the mistake, and to practice the post-mistake sequence of actions set out above. The transition to reframing mistakes as learning opportunities is about rehearsal. Experiential learning tools offer a way of exploring mistakes, both individual and collective, and rehearsing a way of rapidly shifting to a positive learning-focus. In the RSVP Design portfolio Simmetrics has been a go-to exercise through which groups can be encouraged to explore their customary behaviours in mistake situations. In this fast-paced activity mistakes are inevitable, so we facilitate with a view to identifying both the behavioural responses, and also the quantitative pay-back of having a structured and rehearsed response to those mistakes. A further tool that can be used to explore this area of learning, Matrix builds on the learning developed in Simmetrics by giving participants a greater range of tactics they can deploy to respond to perceived mistakes, and also to respond to the chance factors introduced by other people working towards their own goals and objectives. Escaping the blame-game isn’t easy, but neither is developing great teams. Finding the time and space to rehearse the skills and attitudes we need to become a great team is a good place to start on that journey.
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