I recently talked to a manager – let’s call him Roy – whose company had completed a series of employee satisfaction surveys.  It turns out that although Roy’s unit scored higher than others on overall happiness, there were a few areas in which his unit was lower.  To find out why, the people who conducted the survey had a meeting with the employees in Roy’s unit in which they were asked to talk about the things they didn’t like.

“After that meeting, I am convinced people were more unhappy with work than they were before,” Roy told me.  “Why is that?” he wanted to know.

What Roy’s unit went through is what might be called “trauma sharing”, which is a form of understanding conversation in which people want other people to understand how bad things really are.  There is no purpose to the conversation other than to get the misery out.  In the process, people try to “one up” each other with how their problem or situation is so much worse than anyone else.  The result is a form of emotional contagion in which people become increasing dissatisfied and unhappy.

An alternative to “trauma sharing” is to have people talk about what they like at work and how they could get more of that.  In this case, people talk about the things that give them satisfaction and happiness.  The point here is not to outdo each other, but to share the things that you like about your work: the people, the assignments, the equipment, and humorous interchanges, anything that gives you satisfaction.  The result is a positive form of emotional contagion in which people become increasingly satisfied, animated, and happy.

People’s emotions and attitudes are a product of the conversations they are having.  If they are having conversations about things they find dissatisfying, they will become increasingly dissatisfied.  By the same token, if they are in conversations about things that are satisfying to them, they will be satisfied.  Want to increase your satisfaction at work?  Change what you talk about from what you don’t like to what you do and see what happens.

In the absence of a deadline or due date, all you have is a ‘whenever’.  A ‘whenever’ is something that gets done… whenever they bug you enough for it, whenever you find time to work on it, whenever you feel guilty enough to do it, etc.  ‘Whenever’ is stressful, an ever-looming, unknown burden to be carried around.  ‘Whenever’s’, particularly from bosses, are fear generators – we worry about when it will come due, anxious it will be asked for before we have completed it, concerned about its impact on all the other work we have, and afraid of what will happen if we don’t get it done when they want it (even though we don’t know when that is).

Contrary to a ‘whenever’, a deadline is a tool for accountability and accomplishment.  Deadlines provide information that allows both the person giving it and the person receiving it to know how to plan and do their work.  Deadlines make both the person giving the assignment and the person getting it accountable for getting work done by a particular time, rather than whenever either feels like it should be done.  When we say this is “high priority”, we avoid our responsibility for doing the work necessary to determine by when it really needs to be done.

In some organizations, a “high priority” assignment means it is to be completed within a well known period of time, for example, 24 hours.  In those cases, giving someone a “high priority” assignment is tantamount to saying “Do X within 24 hours”.  But in organizations where “high priority” is not well defined, where managers use it indiscriminately, saying an assignment is “high priority” conveys no useful information for when it should be done, only dread and worry.

In the training session, managers from the one organization pointed out that managers are now saying things like “This is priority 1-A” in an attempt to distinguish their high priority assignment from all the other high priority assignments.  Who are they kidding?  All they are doing is adding confusion while undermining their own credibility and any chance of real accountability.

Do yourself and others a favor, make clean requests and give a due date.

Although there were a variety of answers, there were two underlying themes.  The first was how to motivate people to change.  The second was how to deal with people when they resist change.  It was all I could do to say “If you stop trying to motivate them, you might find they are more cooperative.”

Stop trying to motivate people!? Are you nuts Ford?  Isn’t motivation what leaders and managers are supposed to do?  How do you expect to get people to do what needs to be done if you don’t motivate them?

The answer to that question has two parts.  The first is by making good requests and getting good promises in return.  The second is by consistently following up on those requests and promises in order to build credibility, trust, and accountability.

In many cases, “motivation” has become the code word for convincing, either positively or negatively, people to do something we want done.  Such convincing may involve trying to inspire them, making them feel guilty or obligated, offering them some inducement, or threatening them.  But regardless of its form, convincing people (motivating them) has the effect of reducing people to victims.

How does it make them victims?  Because it says we are the cause of their behavior, not them.  They are doing what they are doing at the effect of “our” motivation.  It is tough to have others be accountable when we say we are the one motivating them – so they aren’t accountable for their behavior, we are.

Why not stop trying to motivate people and let them be accountable for their own motivation?  Make good requests in which you ask people to take actions or produce results by a specified due date, ensure they have the resources needed to do what is asked (this includes time and availability), and that they have an idea of how to accomplish what is being asked.  Let them know you are taking them at their word, ask if there is anything they need from you, and set a time to meet to discuss the outcome.  Then follow through true to your word.

Something happens when people realize their internal state (motivation) is not your responsibility, but is up to them.  They become more willing to engage with you as partners rather than someone you have to convince.

Many managers believe that understanding is key to getting people to act.  Managers spend a considerable amount of time explaining, describing, and discussing things on the assumption that if people really understand what is needed, they will be motivated to do it.  The problem, however, is that understanding alone is not sufficient to get people to act.  People understand that if they want to lose weight, they need to eat less and exercise more.  But that doesn’t get them to exercise.  The same is true with people at work.  Just because they understand the need for something, doesn’t mean they will do it.

If you want to increase the likelihood of people taking action, use REQUESTS and PROMISES.  The intent of a request is to have someone else commit to producing a specific result or completing a specific action by some due date by asking them to do so.  Here’s an example of a request: “This is what I’d like you to do: Have the XYZ report on my desk by 5 PM this Thursday. Will you do that?”  When they accept your request, they make an agreement with you to produce the result or complete the action.  Of course, they can also decline your request or counteroffer.

The intent of a promise is to have you take action by saying you will produce a specific result or complete an action by a specified time.  Here’s an example of a promise: “If you need support on getting the report done, I will assign someone else to help you by the end of today.”

When people accept your requests and you make promises, both of you know what is to be done and by when.  They are no longer left to figure out what you want based on their understanding – you have told them.  Making this switch from “understanding” to “performance” (requests and promises) makes a remarkable difference in managers getting what they want, when they want it.

Flying back from a seminar in California, I read an article by Clive Thompson in Wired Magazine (Issue 17.08) entitled “Forgetful by Design”.  In it, he discusses how we forget most things and that forgetting is really useful.  However, the internet, particularly You-Tube, Facebook, and other sites where all manner of personal information is posted make it more difficult to forget.  Why?  Because we can Google people and find all kinds of things that might otherwise have been forgotten.  The internet, unlike our memory, doesn’t forget.  Even though it might be hard to find, if its posted, its out there.  So, he proposes that we now have to remember not to remember.

What has all this to do with management, leadership, or anything else for that matter?  First, it reminds us that in the absence of some mechanism to keep us from forgetting, we (and others) probably will.  Posting something on the internet keeps it in existence.  It doesn’t disappear.  We might forget that it is out there, but a good search will find it, allowing prospective employers, spouses, and others to recall what we did.

Second, it reminds us that if you want to remember something, or want others to remember something, you have to find a way to keep it in existence.  One of the reasons people keep “To Do” lists is so that they will remember what they have to do.  The same with schedules, they help us remember meetings, appointments, and when we will work on things.  Relying on memory is not sufficient in today’s world.

If you find that people are often late with things, start sending them polite and respectful reminders to see if there is anything they need from you or that you can do to support them.  If people don’t write things down they say they will do for you, send them an email thanking them and briefly outline what it was they agreed to do.  The point here is to give them some support in remembering, since the odds are they will forget.