To continue on the theme of reciprocity in management and leadership training:
A colleague, Michael Bertenshaw, recently sent me a very scary photo on my phone of him with dyed hair and the worst glasses in the world. He was on a film set playing Ralph Miliband – as in real life his two sons vied for the Labour leadership.
The programme “Miliband of Brothers” went out on 24th September. I, for one, was watching, for two reasons.
1. To find out if Ralph Miliband really did look like that and if so why didn’t a kindly person say something.
2. To find out more about this Marxist theorist who put his finger on the button at the heart of matter when it comes to the subject of motivation in management and leadership training.
This is what he said:
Human labour cannot be dispensed with, and this also counts for the growth within advanced capitalism of a vast ‘industrial relations’ enterprise, whose purpose is to elicit from wage-earners the ‘positive’ attitudes, the ‘loyalty’ and co-operative spirit which the collective, ’socialised’ process of production requires, but which the dynamic of capitalism serves to undermine.
And so, yet again, I’m drawn back to the question of why a workforce will bother to go the extra mile when the greater financial benefit goes to the people higher up the food chain. Bearing in mind the differential, money, in itself, doesn’t always do the job if the respect is not there for those who serve.
I’ve just come back from Manchester where I was working on a performance management and appraisal programme for a medium sized FMCG company. The first question I asked them was:
What’s the point of managing anyone’s performance or appraising anyone?
If people management is solely about trying to force human behaviour into consistent processes in order to be able to squeeze an extra drop of blood out of the workforce and measure and evaluate results, why would people buy into it? Our appraisal and performance management systems will remain tick box exercises while wage earners are cynical about their purpose.
The same goes for training.
In our management and leadership training we often find people are sent to us by HR departments because they are not coming up to snuff in some way. Their appraisal has revealed they are falling short and that’s not good for productivity. Why would they do anything more than go through the motions? Where do we find buy in?
Cialdini’s Law of Reciprocity says that if I do something for you, you will feel the pressure to return my gift. (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini). The greater the perception of the gift the greater the return will be.
So my thought is this:
Why not look at performance management and appraisals, primarily, as things that can be gifts for the staff in gratitude for their work? In this way authentic praise and acknowledgement are not reluctant duties – the slices of bread that sandwich the critical message – but essential ingredients of a relationship where the individual is recognised for their worth and potential. Management and leadership training courses are not required as remedial measures but offered as genuine opportunities for autonomous growth and personal development for the individual.
If there are areas where people are not doing their jobs effectively it’s worth taking the time to find out why (let’s call it a coaching approach) and asking them what they need in order to be supported through the challenge.
In giving out it’s surprising what comes back.
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