Supporting the Case for Empowering Employees with Relatedness and Autonomy

On reading Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, I was struck by many of the themes he develops to do with memory, motivation, habituation and human interaction. In addition to thoroughly recommending the book, I’d like to share an excerpt with you, see below, from pages 149 to 152. This excerpt discusses 3 examples of the impact on performance and effectiveness looking through the lens of willpower, relatedness and autonomy.

The first example discusses an experiment looking at willpower as a finite resource. The second is an example of offering workers increased autonomy within a car manufacturing plant and the third cites inclusive work practices at the global franchised coffee store, Starbucks.

It is clear to see the connection of these to the SCARF model from the neuroscience of leadership and Daniel Pink’s work in intrinsic motivators in the workplace. What is intriguing is how much of this confirms the emerging paradigm in today’s organisations of collaborative and authentic leadership. The correlation is striking. When people feel included, respected, and regarded the more likely they/we are likely to contribute, participate, and persevere. I trust you find this as though provoking as I did.

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Excerpt from:

The Power of Habit
Charles Duhigg

Chapter 6
Starbucks and the Habit of Success

Pages 149-152

Mark Muraven … professor at the University of Albany, set up a new experiment. He put undergraduates in a room that contained a place of warm, fresh cookies and asked them to ignore the treats. Half the participants were treated kindly. “We ask that you please don’t eat the cookies. Is that OK?” a researcher said. She then discussed the purpose of the experiment, explaining that it was to measure their ability to resist temptations. She thanked them for contributing their time. “If you have any suggestions or thoughts about how we can improve this experiment, please let me know. We want you to help us make this experience as good as possible.”

The other half of the participants weren’t coddled the same way. They were simply given orders.

“You must not eat the cookies,” the researcher told them. She didn’t explain the experiment’s goals, compliment them, or show any interest in their feedback. She told them to follow the same instructions. “We’ll start now,” she said.

The students from both groups had to ignore the warm cookies for five minutes after the researcher left the room. None gave in to the temptation.

Then the researcher returned. She asked each student to look at a computer monitor. It was programmed to flash numbers on the screen, one at a time, for five hundred milliseconds apiece. The participants were asked to hit the space bar every time they saw a “6” followed by a “4”. This has become a standard way to measure will power – paying attention to a boring sequence of flashing numbers requires a focus akin to working on an impossible puzzle.

Students who had been treated kindly did well on the computer test. Whenever a “6” flashed and a “4” followed, they pounced on the space bar. They were able to maintain their focus for the entire twelve minutes. Despite ignoring the cookies, they had willpower to spare. [The contention being that willpower is a finite resource].

Students who had been treated rudely, on the other hand, did terribly. They kept forgetting to hit the space bar. They said they were tired and couldn’t focus. Their willpower muscle, researchers determined, had been fatigued by the brusque instructions.

When Muraven started exploring why students who had been treated kindly had more willpower he found that the key difference was the sense of control they had over their experience. “We’ve found this again and again,” Muraven told me. “When people are asked to do something that takes self-control, if they think they are doing it for personal reasons – if they feel like it’s a choice or something they enjoy because it helps someone else – it’s much less taxing. If they feel like they have no autonomy, if they’re just following orders, their willpower muscles get tired much faster. In both cases, people ignored the cookies. But when the students were treated like cogs, rather than people, it took a lot more willpower.

For companies and organisations, this insight has enormous implications. Simply giving employees a sense of agency – a feeling that they are in control, that they have genuine decision-making authority – can radically increase how much energy and focus they bring to their jobs. One 2012 study at a manufacturing plant in Ohio, for instance, scrutinized assembly-line workers who were empowered to make small decisions about their schedules and work environment. They designed their own uniforms and had authority over shifts. Nothing else changed. All the manufacturing processes and pay scales stayed the same. Within two months, productivity at the plant increased by 20 percent. Workers were taking shorter breaks. They were making fewer mistakes. Giving employees a sense of control improved how much self-discipline they brought to their jobs.

The same lessons hold true at Starbucks. Today, the company is focused on giving employees a greater sense of authority. They have asked workers to redesign how espresso machines and cash registers are laid out, to decide for themselves how customers should be greeted and where merchandise should be displayed.

“We’ve started asking partners to use their intellect and creativity, rather than telling them ‘take the coffee out of the box, put the cup here, follow this rule,” said Kris Engskov, a vice president at Starbucks. “People want to be in control of their lives.”

[Staff] Turnover has gone down. Customer satisfaction is up. Since Shultz’s return, [long time CEO who retired and returned after several years: Schultz reinstated practises he had established previously] Starbucks has boosted revenues by more than $1.2 billion per year.

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In our conversations here at PF concerning aspects of workplace relationships, performance leadership, communication and leadership it is interesting to note how many models and schools of thought are supporting one another, such as we see here.

The New EQ-i 2.0 Experience

The new EQ-i 2.0 provides the best, most scientifically proven assessment tool in the industry. MHS (the publishers of the EQi2)  prefer to talk about the EQ-i 2.0 in terms of providing a new experience rather than a new product.

Why a new experience? It’s an experience because the EQ-i 2.0 provides users with an array of services and offerings, all delivered through an easy-to-access online portal. This new experience provides both, a newly updated emotional intelligence assessment as well as the additional services that increases the user’s ability to maximise the numerous ways EI can can be applied.

Like any good development process, MHS didn’t come up with this overnight. In order to really understand what this experience should look like, they needed to get their information straight from the source – emotional intelligence advocates and users of the EQi all over the world. This was their process.

They listened

They spoke to over 700 consultants and trainers, who told them what the ideal emotional intelligence assessment experience would look like. They communicated with them through online surveys, interactive webcasts and one-on-one feedback. They then compiled these findings so that we could generate a whole host of preferred service offerings and features.

They created

They created a revolutionary new experience that leverages the scientific rigor and predictive capability of the current EQ-i assessment and combined this with everything the market demanded. An easy-to-use assessment with updated norms and cross-cultural application? They created: help with marketing the benefits of emotional intelligence to end customers. They provide:  a platform to connect with like-minded emotional intelligence professionals.

They delivered

With the EQ-i 2.0 experience, users gain access to all of these benefits and become more accessible, more insightful, more connected and ultimately more confident in the eyes of their customers.

They integrated each and every significant customer request into our new EQ-i 2.0 experience.

MHS say they truly believe in the end result, and know that the EQ-i 2.0 can benefit the emotional intelligence assessment industry in ways that will change it forever.

In an age when success in business means exploring possibilities rather than following a set of rules, how can leaders encourage creativity and collaboration in their teams?

The key is to understand what drives human behaviour. Leading international brain researcher Evian Gordon asserts that the fundamental organising principle of the brain is to minimise threat and maximise reward.

Evian Gordon

When we feel threatened, the limbic (flight or fight) part of our brain takes over and it’s almost impossible to be efficient, productive, creative and insightful. We literally can’t think properly, and instead become stressed, cautious and disengaged.

Successful leaders focus on creating environments where their people are moving toward reward, are working together and are ‘in the flow’. They understand the principles of engagement…

Founder and CEO of Results Coaching Systems David Rock says there are five qualities that enable us to move toward a reward response, or ‘engagement’. He calls this the SCARF model:

David Rock

1. Status — where you feel you are in the pecking order
2. Certainty — how well you can predict the future
3. Autonomy — having choices
4. Relatedness — feeling safe with people
5. Fairness — having fair exchanges with others.

Status is important for the creative process — or being in the flow, as influential humanistic psychologist Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi calls it — because in this state there is a loss of ego (status) and feedback is fluid. Understanding the role of status can help leaders avoid organisational practices that stir counterproductive threat responses among their people.  It can be as simple as asking a team member to give feedback on their own work, rather than giving them your feedback.

Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi

Meanwhile, uncertainty registers in our brains as an error or alarm – something that needs to be corrected before we can feel comfortable again. So encouraging creativity and collaboration is about reducing uncertainty, and therefore minimising threat, such as by setting clear goals with your team. Going with the flow, after all, is not about losing direction or control.

Smart leaders also give their people autonomy – encouraging them to make decisions and be self-sufficient . One of the problems with micromanaging is that it creates a threat response, and this inhibits collaboration and ‘flow’ or creativity.

Quality social connections, or relatedness, also enable our brains to move toward reward. When we experience interconnectedness – striving toward the same goals, being on the same ‘wavelength’ – oxytocins (the pleasure chemical) and dopamine (the reward chemical) are released in our brain. It’s the neurochemistry of safe connectivity.

Fairness is also vital, because the perception of unfair treatment can lead to people sabotaging each other – not communicating vital information, making decisions without involving others, not being cooperative, and certainly not collaborating. And that will stop the creative process dead in its tracks!

Encouraging creativity and collaboration in your team could be as easy as choosing your SCARF…

We’ve been developing our particular style of facilitation and learning for many years. Recently we’ve been discussing the elements of andragogy, noting the importance of the ‘hands on’ approach in adult learning. We know our work has to be grounded in theory, it has to mean something to the people with whom we’re working and it has to be applicable and useful. What makes it truly exciting and memorable for people is the diverse nature of the experiential forms we use.

We just love the fact that ‘hands on’ works. It transforms, involves and engages people. And we know this is a must if we’re going to be able to influence any sort of meaningful and lasting change.

Dan Barber gives a wonderfully inspiring presentation on the love of fish and the future of food when grown by farmers who are experts in relationships. Ultimately this talk is about recognising the whole system and what can happen when a business is built with the whole system in mind.