Are You Fully Leveraging the Full Power of Positive Reinforcement and Feedback?
A few years back, we were hired to provide leadership training for 35 leaders in a manufacturing plant. Each leader took our leadership assessments, and the average score for “Reward” was very low - around 28 out of 100. That meant their need for positive feedback was low, creating an assumption that others didn’t need it either. Human nature is to impose our needs on others, so the culture was all business, transactional, and some would say negative, and morale was low while turnover was high. There was little positive reinforcement.
After identifying the lack of positive reinforcement, we challenged the leadership team to each share two moments of positive reinforcement or feedback in the morning and two in the afternoon each day for one week. Statistically, that was 140 moments of positive feedback and reinforcement per day and 700 for the week.
Afterward, in the debrief with site leadership, we learned that the results were astonishing! By Wednesday, the “team” was talking more, teamwork had significantly improved, and productivity was higher, even record-breaking on one day. Leadership had never seen anything like it before this week. Simplified, leadership changed their behavior, the culture improved, employees were re-energized, and plant performance was better.
This story highlights the impact that positive reinforcement and feedback can have on people. As leaders, there are always distractions from positive leadership, with the pressure to be better, improve results, and do more with less. Sound familiar? This thinking conditions leaders to mostly see what needs improvement, what isn’t good enough, and how people could perform better, and it creates a more critical eye on performance. It’s a mindset that develops under day-to-day pressures.
But how do we really achieve results? Through people. People need to feel appreciated, motivated, understood, and have their value recognized. They don’t just want a job but want to feel part of something and connected to their leader. Absent of positive reinforcement and feedback, people are left to interpret their performance, which can create stress, self-doubt, and anxiety. These are all emotions that could be avoided with positive feedback and reinforcement.
Please consider the risks and consequences if your leadership style lacks a steady stream of feedback and positive reinforcement. Could you be unintentionally demotivating people, lowering their morale, or missing out on their discretionary effort? What lurks in the shadows is disengagement, quiet quitting, and potential turnover. Again, no bad intention but perhaps just too busy or distracted to provide enough positive reinforcement and feedback.
Leaders should be careful not to fall into a few common traps. Some leaders think that people are just doing the job they are getting paid for, and positive reinforcement and feedback aren’t necessary. Or they have an experienced person or a SME who knows what needs to be done without the leader’s involvement or feedback. It could be that the leader is just too busy to notice the good things and only communicates about what could be better. Another possibility is that maybe the leader isn’t motivated by positive reinforcement and assumes others aren’t as well.
The Cost of Positive Reinforcement: We challenge any leader to find the expense line on the P & L for positive reinforcement and feedback. Don’t waste too much time, because that line doesn’t exist. Leaders who have the self-awareness around the value of positive reinforcement provide it often as a free and discretionary opportunity to motivate and inspire. All it takes is a little time and self-awareness, and the benefits can be exponential.
The Impact of Positive Reinforcement: Positive reinforcement and feedback is a powerful tool that acknowledges, reinforces, and rewards desired behaviors, achievements, performance, and efforts. The key to providing positive feedback is to make it detailed, specific, and timely. For example, telling someone they did a “good job” can be ineffective and confusing. It can leave that person wondering what exactly about their performance was liked by the leader, or what they want more of. If your feedback is: “I like the way you responded to project emails quickly,” or “You provided daily project updates,” or “You ran tight meetings with an agenda and stayed on topic,” then you will likely get more of that. Our mantra is simple: reinforce what you want more of and, low and behold, you just might get it!
Positive Reinforcement Creates Followers and a Culture in Which People Want to Work: Did you ever work for someone who mostly only provided negative feedback, was all business, lived in the status quo, deflected change, and didn’t motivate or inspire people? When you provide positive feedback and reinforcement, people feel connected to their leader, valued, appreciated, and recognized. The leader and the environment bring energy and positivity, and people want to learn, grow, and perform. When your leadership is known for positive feedback and reinforcement, you will create loyalty, commitment, energy, and motivation. It’s a simple leadership technique that is 100 percent in your control. When individuals receive positive reinforcement, they are more likely to continue demonstrating the desired behaviors and strive for excellence, which often leads to improved productivity and performance.
Catch People Doing Things Right: This is a technique to make positive feedback and reinforcement a process to simply look for people doing things well or right. Have a keen eye to see the good things in people and their performance and shift your focus and attention to seeing positive behaviors and achievements ahead of what could be better.
Conclusion: Using positive reinforcement and feedback is often under-utilized, and something that is 100 percent controlled by the leader. With a little more self-awareness, attention to people and performance, and positive communication, you will inspire more discretionary effort and better performance.
So, here’s our challenge to you. For one week, provide positive feedback and/or reinforcement twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, and then stand back and watch what happens. You might be very surprised and wonder why you didn’t start this long before now.
If you would like to discuss how to more effectively use positive reinforcement and feedback or discuss the results of our challenge with you, please feel free to reach out to Rich at 413-237-9891 or rfrigon@oneononehr.com.
Author: Rich Frigon