Reading time: 4 minutes

How to become good leaders

In 2018, companies spent 3.4 billion dollars in order to train their top people to become good leaders. Only in rare cases, though, their efforts have paid off. Why?

The answer comes from Organizational Cognitive Neuroscience (OCN), discipline that combines studies on brain functioning with the internal dynamics of a company. What is important to know is that a faltering leadership is not caused by a lack of talents, let alone laziness, bad organization or inefficiency. The reason is the “cognitive gap”, the human abyss between what we know and what we actually use in the workplace.

There are different causes: faulty reward systems, fierce competition, exhausting goals, wavering motivation, inhuman workloads and endless meetings… Basically, you know what you have to do, but cannot do it.

A manager that works hard to be a great leader worries about the engagement of the team, because he knows that recognizing another person’s value is what motivates them. But sometimes it’s easy to be absorbed by activities that are not related to the role one has, forgetting about the team engagement, the motivation and the rewards. You’d love to do it, but something more urgent requires attention and time.

Still, the manager that aims at the top has followed an impressive number of courses that taught him how to use his abilities at his best, how to be an uncontested leader. Yet, he forgot the most important teaching: what really motivates people. Him included.

In these situations, an invisible advisor that whispers in his ear that he should congratulates his teammates would be enough. Sometimes two lines of an email can do miracles, it can give strength and confidence to introverts, before a meeting, pushing them to speak and improve their feeling of inclusion.

This suggestion is in fact a gentle push, a nudge. And nudges can make an enormous difference on the behaviors that we present and can make the difference between what we know and what we actually use in the workplace. Much more than standardized training courses.

What is a nudge?

The term was the idea of two professors, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein: “A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.”. Interventions that lead people to more efficient decisions, preserving their individual freedom of choice. We usually oppose strong pushes, because they are not bound by any law, if not common sense. A nudge is like a warning, it’s the alarm that activates when we forget to put on our seatbelts, as well as the directions given by your GPS.

The power of nudges, that is the power of a positive influence on behavior, is such a game changer that big companies, as well as governments, have set up the so-called nudge units. These are real task forces with the goal of creating strategies that will let them reach their company goals, with less effort and more success, make the workplace more functional to the wellbeing of the workers, motivate them, work on trust and take decisions easier.

Everybody, even veteran managers, tend to fall to bad old habits, focusing on task they should delegate, forgetting to give effective feedbacks, choosing the wrong communication style and losing time to unimportant activities.

Strategies to motivate employees

The answer rarely is more training. OCN, and nudges in practice, showed that focusing less time and money on training courses for managers and more resources to the application of skills one already possesses is the key to success. With today’s digital technologies, it is easier than ever to organize nudging campaigns to incentivize positive behaviors. Motivating co-workers and employees is one of the task of the leader. It seems easy, but it isn’t. It’s useful to remember the basic rule of OCN: motivation does not come from money. Money matters, but it has a marginal role in the value scale. The most important thing is finding a goal, a purpose in the task one is assigned.

Dan Ariely, professor of Behavioral Economy at the Duke University, demonstrated this in an experiment. He asked volunteers to build some Lego Bionicles for money. The subjects already knew that, once they built them, they would have been destroyed. At first, the volunteers accepted the condition, but, after a dozen of broken Bionicles, they forfeited.

The reason was the loss of motivation. They couldn’t see a real reward for their effort: “Destroying what they built in front of their eyes” explained Ariely “I destroyed the happiness they got from that activity”.

What motivates us is having a clear reason of our actions, why we do what we do. If you’re bored or if you think you lack motivation, Ariely suggests trying to answer these two questions: “What meaning can I find in what I do? And in what way the work I’m doing is helping others?”

It’s the definition of a “why” that motivates and consequently makes us happier and more satisfied. It makes us work better and we don’t give up or lose interest in the long term, taking decisions seems easier and less risky. Even the most unpleasant task seems useful, necessary and important. A bonus in the paycheck usually does not improve productivity, in fact often it has the opposite effect. As it has been demonstrated in an experiment conducted in an Intel factory, where employers handed out bonuses at the start of their employees’s work period to motivate them to improve the chip production.

What would have happened if, instead of a monetary bonus, a family-sized pizza would have been sent to their home? What would have happened if, instead of a tangible reward, employees would have received a message from the boss that said: “Great work”? These were the results: the pizza coupon increased productivity by 6.7%, followed by a 6.6% increase with the written message. The bonus had the worst result, with an increase of only 4.9%.

Strangely enough, when our work is acknowledged and valued, we’re willing to work for a lower pay. If a company knows how to offer its employees opportunities that have a meaning and create a relationship, then those employees are more likely to work hard and the trust in the company stronger.

It’s necessary to understand the behavior one wants to change, keeping in mind individual values, needs, desires and priorities, before even attempting to change it. Recognizing behaviors is crucial, given the complex environment in which people make decisions. The more we know in depth the individuals we want to motivate, the more we will succeed in creating architectures that lead to effective decisions. Nudges make all of this possible!

Laura Mondino