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.

With a recent study showing that up to 97% of Australians aged 16-17 use at least one social networking site, should we be worried? Increasingly children are raised in front of television and computer screens. What are the effects that this can have on brain development? Do websites like Twitter and Facebook contribute to a culture of short term attentiveness?

Baroness Susan Greenfield is a neuroscientist at Oxford University and argues that we should be increasingly wary of how the changing technological environment is affecting the minds of the young. – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Baroness Susan Greenfield is a British scientist, writer, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords. Greenfield, whose specialty is the physiology of the brain, has worked to research and bring attention to Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Greenfield is Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, and Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. On February 1, 2006, she was installed as Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.