Adapted from “The Progress Principle: Using Small Win to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work” by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).
Article | Fri, 01/06/2012 – 00:00
By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer
To understand what makes people happy, motivated, productive, and creative at work, we have been studying what we call inner work life—the confluence of emotions, perceptions, and motivations that occur continually throughout the workday. When inner work life is positive, people feel happy, have positive perceptions of their work and those they work with, and are highly motivated by the work itself. When inner work life is negative, everything is reversed. In our quest to find the forces that rule inner work life, we discovered that lower-level, local leaders —such as team leaders—can be surprisingly powerful. The route to this discovery was an interesting one.
Because inner work life is usually not observable, we knew that, to learn about it, we would have to study people’s inner thoughts. To that end, we asked 238 people working on 26 creative project teams in seven companies to complete a diary form at the end of each workday over the course of an entire project. The major question on the diary form asked people to describe an event that stood out from the workday. Along with the diary narratives, we collected data on a number of other measures, including creativity, productivity, emotion, and motivation. In the end, we had nearly 12,000 event-of-the-day narratives, revealing people’s thoughts and feelings about their work, their colleagues, and their organizations.
We made two major discoveries. The first was the inner work life effect: People are more creative, productive, committed to the work, and collegial when their inner work life is positive. For instance, when people are in a good mood, they are more creative. Not only are they more creative on the day they are happy, but they are also more creative the next day, even when we control for their mood on the next day.
But what makes for good inner work life? When we looked at the days when people’s inner work lives were at their best, by far the most common event that occurred was simply making progress on meaningful work. In fact, progress occurred on 76 percent of best days. And it wasn’t only huge breakthroughs. We found that, very often, small steps forward were sufficient to boost inner work life. That was our second discovery, and we call it the progress principle.But there is a dark side. Setbacks in the work had the greatest negative effect on inner work life.
The lesson from our research is clear—if you want workers who are fully engaged, productive, and creative, then you must do everything in your power to support progress and to remove obstacles that can lead to setbacks for the people who work for you. We identified two pairs of action types that managers can take to support progress and inner work life; catalysts/inhibitors and nourishers/toxins. Catalysts directly support progress in the work, while their opposite, inhibitors,derail progress. These include things like supplying needed resources. Nourishers, actions that make people feel valued and respected as human beings, directly support inner work life; their opposite, toxins, poison it.
Many people think it is obvious that people will be more happy and engaged when they are making progress. But when we surveyed 669 managers about how important supporting progress is, we found out differently. We asked managers at all levels from companies around the world to rank order the importance of five motivators, including support for progress. The other four items were straight from conventional management wisdom: recognition, incentives, interpersonal support, and clear goals. Supporting progress came in dead last. In fact, only 5 percent of managers picked it as their No. 1 motivator. Moreover, when we looked at the teams and companies that took part in our research, we saw that most managers acted like supporting progress was a low priority.
We had expected that the people at the top of an organization would have the greatest influence over inner work life, by supplying or withholding the catalysts and nourishers. C-level executives definitely did have an impact. But we were in for a surprise. Our study revealed that—holding other factors equal—“local” sources of catalysts, such as team leaders and immediate coworkers, had a stronger influence on inner work life than “broad” forces such as top-level managers and organizational systems. This certainly doesn’t mean people were impervious to the effects of these broad forces, but it does mean local leaders have special leverage on the inner work life of a team. In fact, they can be a more important day-by-day source of the catalyst factor than top managers. By analyzing the team leader actions that led our research participants to see their team leaders as supportive (or not), we identified a set of catalyst leverage points.
As a team leader, do. . .
Gather information constantly that could, in any way, be relevant to the team’s work.
Involve the team in making important decisions about the project.
Develop contacts with people outside the team who could be important sources of information and support for the project.
Sell the project; fight for a good project if it is threatened.
As a team leader, don’t. . .
Fail to disseminate project-relevant information to the team.
Micromanage; don’t stifle team members’ autonomy in carrying out their work.
Fail to motivate and inspire the team by what you say and, especially, the example you set with your own work habits.
Avoid solving problems or cause problems through your own timidity or arrogance.
Fail to provide clear, appropriate, meaningful assignments and goals.
Because of their close working relationship with subordinates, team leaders also have an especially powerful impact on inner work life through the Nourishers they provide or fail to provide. In fact, they may have even more power than top managers to create a supportive or debilitating work environment for members of a team. They can even attenuate the negative impact of an unsupportive upper management. If you are a team leader, our research identified direct actions you can take—or avoid—if you want to support your team’s inner work life through nourishers. Even if you are not a team leader, you can apply the same tools—whatever your level in your organization.
As a team leader, do. . .
Show that you respect people and the work they do.
Recognize and reward the accomplishments of your people.
When needed, provide emotional support to those who work under you.
Create opportunities for the development of friendship and camaraderie in the team.
As a team leader, don’t. . .
Act dismissive, discourteous, or patronizing.
Display apathy toward your team members or their projects.
Obfuscate roles, responsibilities, and formal relationships, or change them haphazardly.
We all want workers who are engaged, creative, and fully productive. The progress principle describes how to do that. First, use nourishers to support the inner work lives of the people who work under you (and for that matter, your colleagues). Second, support progress every day through the generous application of catalysts. Your organization and its people will share the benefits.
Adapted from “The Progress Principle: Using Small Win to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work” by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).
Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School. Her studies have focused on creativity, motivation, and performance in the workplace. She has a Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University. Steven Kramer is an independent researcher, writer, and consultant. He has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Virginia.
Imagine someone that’s clearly just going through the motions in their job – slumped in front of a computer with no obvious desire to be there, no drive, no initiative or creativity. You’re imagining someone that’s disengaged, and clearly not performing to their potential.
And according to a recent Gallup study, the global levels of disengagement are alarmingly high. As reported by Human Capital Magazine, 82% of Australians, 76% of New Zealanders and 72% of United States workers were not fully engaged in their current role. In Singapore and China, that figure rises to an incredible 98%. Moreover, about one fifth of those surveyed were actively disengaged to the extent that they expected to spread their negativity to others.
Lowered productivity
The primary effect of all this is seen in significantly lowered levels of staff productivity. Harter et al. (2003) report a number of studies directly linking individual job satisfaction and individual performance (Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985; Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton, 2001), which certainly rings true. In other words, the more you care, the more you try.
This, in essence, is the disengagement disaster – where a lack of engagement leads to a lack of effort, a lack of effort then leads to a lack of productivity. A lack of productivity soon becomes a lack of profit.
Other implications of disengagement
In fact, the story gets even worse, for there’s much more at stake than just productivity. Consider the following rather harrowing list of other implications of disengagement in the workforce:
Disengaged staff show higher levels of absenteeism (not to mention presenteeism)
Disengaged staff are less helpful towards their colleagues
Disengaged staff are less helpful towards customers
As we’ve discussed in earlierposts, being disengaged actually physically weakens one’s ability to think creatively and problem solve
It’s famously hard to retain staff who aren’t engaged with their job, and the costs of staff turnover are huge
It’s much harder to recruit quality staff for a disengaging position
And all of the above builds a downwardly spiraling culture of mediocrity, lack of effort and half-halfheartedness. “Their heart’s just not in it…”
The way forward
So what to do? Well, the good news is that there are steps that employers can take towards raising the engagement levels of their staff, beginning with putting time into the relationships between management and workers, and understanding their concerns. And if you’re an employee that’s found yourself in a job that you don’t enjoy, there are some positive steps that you can take too to gain more fulfillment from your position, such as proactive goal setting and developing a sense of purpose in your role.
So stay tuned! We’ll be addressing all of these solutions in detail in future blog posts soon.
References
Harter, J., Schmidt, F., & Keyes, C. (2002). Well-being in the workplace and its relationship to business outcomes: A review of the Gallup Studies. In C. Keyes & J. Haidt (Eds.), Flourishing: Positive psychology and the life well-lived (pp. 205-224). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Iaffaldano, M. T., & Muchinsky, P. M. (1985). Job satisfaction and job performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 97, 251-273.
Judge, T. A., Thoresen, C. J., Bono, J. E., & Patton, G. K. (2001). The job satisfaction-job performance relationship: A qualitative and quantitative review. Psychological BulletinM/rm>, 127, 376-407.
Imagine: you’re crawling home from work on the motorway after a long and stressful day. The roads are congested and the weather is gloomy. Every time you switch lanes, the traffic grinds magically to a halt, as all the other lanes begin to flow freely. The radio cuts to a commercial. It’s windy.
And then it happens.
The idiot in the big SUV across from you won’t let you in. But you need to take this exit. You can feel the anger – the rage – swelling up from deep within you, as he still won’t let you in. How are you going to respond? Will you yell something? Will you lean on your horn? Will you gesture at him?
What about other situations in life? When someone or something hurts you, how do you respond?
Venting only makes you angrier
If you would usually react in one of the ways described above, then you’re certainly not alone. But a number of studies have shown that venting your anger in the form of an outburst will actually only serve to make your anger worse. Dr Dianne Tice, from Florida State University, describes it like this:
Anger that is expressed angrily begets more anger. Letting it out is like throwing gasoline on a fire. The only way to handle anger is to control it, and then either use it or forget it.
Jeffrey Lohr, from the University of Arkansas, puts it this way:
Punching pillows and breaking dishes doesn’t reduce subsequent anger expression. That, the research shows clearly.
We are not steam kettles
So what’s going on – isn’t it just common sense that “letting it all out” is an important step in dealing with negative emotions?
Not so, says Stefan Klein in his fascinating book The Science of Happiness. He asserts that this common misconception about the need to release anger (or tears) arises from an outdated nineteenth-century notion that the brain is like a steam kettle, in which negative feelings create pressure that needs to be released. But Klein says that this is simply not true:
Over forty years ago, controlled studies showed that fits of rage are more likely to intensify anger… Our heads do not represent steam kettles, and our brains entail a much more sophisticated system than can be accounted for by images taken from nineteenth-century technology.
Ancient wisdom
Of course, looking for ways to avoid outbursts of anger is anything but a new idea. Jesus told his disciples to “turn the other cheek”; Paul encouraged the Roman church to “overcome evil with good”; and Buddha taught that “hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love”.
Of course this is not to say that anger has no place at all – used well it can spur us on to positive change, or to helping others. For example, in this context Daniel Goleman talks about constructive anger. But anger in the form of venting or rage tends not to resolve any underlying misunderstandings or disagreements.
Summary
So the next time somebody cuts you off in traffic, or won’t let you change lanes, maybe take a moment to think about the negative effects of venting your anger. You’ll certainly feel better afterwards if you can manage to keep your cool!
In a future article we’ll look at some practical and helpful steps that you can take for resolving your anger positively.
If you’re an employer (especially if you’re my employer), I want you to go out right now and buy a box of chocolates for your staff. Then while you’re handing them out, why not make a point of letting everyone know just how good they’re looking today?
Just so long as your staff weren’t expecting it, you’d most likely see that their work was significantly better today – that they seemed more attentive and focused, and could come up with more creative solutions than usual. Pretty cool, huh?
Isen’s study
That’s what Alice Isen from Cornell University showed in a study of how positive affect (or emotion) influences clinical problem solving (Isen, Rosenzweig & Young, 1991). In the study, two groups of third year medical students were taken through a diagnosis problem where they had to decide which one of six hypothetical patients was most likely to be suffering from lung cancer. However, positive affect had been induced in one group first by telling them that they had successfully solved an anagram problem.
What Isen found was that even though both groups reached the same conclusions, the happy group reached their conclusions significantly more quickly than the control group. And the only difference between the two groups was their state of mind!
So what was going on?
The importance of dopamine
When you receive an unexpected reward, several different parts of your brain start releasing a chemical called dopamine, which is renowned for its many effects on how we think and feel. In fact, many drugs like cocaine, and to a lesser extent nicotine and alcohol, work largely by flooding the brain with dopamine. But as Ashby, Isen and Turken (1999) discuss, dopamine also has a very positive influence on our ability to think creatively and solve problems.
Dopamine facilitates the stimulation of individual neurons in the brain, and this makes it easier for the brain to do all sorts of things, from moving muscles to learning new languages. As Stefan Klein puts it in his bookThe Science of Happiness:
…once in the brain, [dopamine] has seemingly miraculous powers. It helps control our alertness and attention. It stimulates curiosity, the ability to learn, imagination, creativity and sexual drive… Under its influence we feel motivated, optimistic, and full of self-confidence.
So when Isen’s happy group tackled the diagnosis problem, all the dopamine that had been released into their brains was giving their problem solving skills and creativity a natural supercharge. How about that!
Implications
The implications of Isen’s study are huge. Imagine what it would be like to radically lift the energy and problem solving abilities of your staff, friends or family just through giving small unexpected gifts? Wouldn’t you want to work or live in an environment where everyone’s glad to be there, and firing on all cylinders?
I guess the only caveat is that is this example, the gift needs to be unexpected for the effect to work – so you wouldn’t expect this to keep working if you tried it every day for a week.
But I’m not expecting anything this afternoon.
So why not head out to the store now and buy those chocolates, tell your staff how amazing they are, make them feel great, and as a result see them work more productively, efficiently and creatively!
References
Ashby, F. G., Isen, A. M., & Turken, A. U. (1999). A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition. Psychological Review, 106, 529-550.
Isen, A. M., Rosenzweig, A. S., & Young, M. J. (1991). The influence of positive affect on clinical problem solving. Medical Decision Making, 11, 221-227.
Klein, S. (2006). The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy-and What We Can Do to Get Happier. Marlow & Company, New York.
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Today’s video is a brief explanation of the functions of dopamine:
We’ve all been there – staring forlornly at the carpet on the floor, or gazing blankly out the window at the wind in the trees – and wondering when on earth that speaker is going to sit down and shut up.
But it doesn’t have to be like that!
Effective public speaking is a skill that can be learned by almost anyone, and can revolutionise your sales or corporate presentations.
In this article, we’ll give you 5 top tips for making sure that all of your presentations are as engaging, enjoyable and informative as possible.
1. Be well prepared
This one might sound like a given, but unless you put enough time into this initial information gathering phase, then both you are doomed to failure and your audience is doomed to hoping that the carpet has an intricate pattern. You must know your subject as well as you can, given the amount of preparation time that you have available.
A good rule of thumb is to spend about 1 hour of preparation for every minute of presentation; this might sound like a lot, but there’s simply no shortcut to developing mastery over a subject. And if you know your subject well, you’re going to feel way more confident, and deliver something much more valuable to your listeners.
It’s also important to spend some time thinking about who your audience is going to be – there’s no point in speaking to a room full of academics in the same way that you would speak to a room full of high school students, and vice versa. What sort of demographic is your audience? What sort of language will convey your message best? How familiar is your audience with your topic? Will there be a range of ages and backgrounds in your audience?
First try and put yourself into the shoes of your listeners, and then you’ll be much better placed to plan both the style and the structure of your talk.
2. Have a point
Again this might sound a little obvious, but I estimate that about 90% of speakers don’t do this well at all – and trust me, I’ve heard a lot of speakers. So listen carefully. Nobody is going to know what you’re trying to convey in your presentation unless…
You know exactly what it is that you’re trying to convey yourself
You tell your audience, in as many words, and several times, exactly what it is that you want them to take away from your talk
Get used to using phrases like “The point of today’s presentation is…” or “What you’re going to take away from this presentation is…”. Also get used to repeating these phrases at regular intervals throughout your talk; make it as easy as possible for your audience to get the point.
Incidentally, another important tip is keep your point as simple as possible; if possible, just stick to one point per talk, and then keep it as simple as you reasonably can. Remember, your aim here is to make everything as easy as possible for your listeners. They can’t read your mind.
3. Build rapport
Ok, so you’ve researched your subject, identified your audience, and refined your point. But even the best prepared talk can still fall painfully flat without this most vital of ingredients. Remember our example at the start: even though the content might have been great, you were still looking out the window at the trees, weren’t you?
When it comes to public speaking, rapport is king.
Rapport is defined as a relationship where all the parties feel that they understand each other’s feelings and concerns well. In a nutshell, if you have rapport with your audience then they will actually care about what you have to say. What you need to convey to your audience is that you actually care about what they think and feel too.
So how are you going to build rapport with your listeners? Your secret weapon here is eye contact, and I cannot stress this enough. Follow these tips:
Do not just write out your speech word for word and read your notes. This is the ultimate death knell to engaging presentation. If you can, try and keep your notes to short bullet points to jog your memory. And if you really want to score top points, then don’t use notes at all – look at your audience the entire time. That’s right, don’t ever look down – not even for a second – and watch as the energy levels of your audience start to soar.
Look directly at individual people for an entire 6 seconds before moving onto the next person. 6 seems to be the magic number here – even in a room full of people, everyone will feel like you’re talking with them. And most people really like being talked with.
This tip may just be the most challenging on the list, and it certainly takes more than a little bravery and a lot of preparation to be able to spend an entire presentation looking deeply into the eyes of your audience. But do you want to do well or don’t you?
If you can really pull this one off, and build some strong rapport with your listeners, then I guarantee that you’ll learn just how rewarding and enjoyable giving a presentation can be.
4. Be brief
On the other hand, if you ever want to whittle away all of your hard-earned rapport to comfortably less than nothing, then speaking too long may just be for you.
Seriously, we’ve all heard talks that just seemed to go on and on to the point where you’ve forgotten what they were talking about in the first place anyway. Even if you were interested at the start of the talk, there always comes a point at which you just can’t wait for it to end.
So don’t be that speaker! Plan to keep your talk to a little bit less than the amount of time available for you. People want to hear quality, not quantity – say something valuable clearly, and then sit down.
5. Practice, practice, practice!
Firstly, practice your talk as much as you can before you give it. This one’s a no-brainer, especially if you don’t want to speak too long and if you want to maintain good eye contact with your audience.
But secondly, remember that unless you’ve got real talent, everything might not go perfectly the first time. What does?
Remember – almost everything in life that’s worth doing doesn’t come easily, and thank goodness it doesn’t. So don’t be too hard on yourself if things don’t always go to plan. And whether your presentation goes well or not, always try to learn something new that you can use to make your next presentation even better.
Summary
So there you have it: be well prepared, have a simple point, build rapport, don’t speak too long and remember to practice. Obviously this list is far from exhaustive, but trust me – if you can master just these 5 skills, then you’re well on your way to becoming an accomplished and admired speaker. No one need ever look at the carpet again.
Good luck!
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For more information about how to build rapport with your audience, here’s a book we love.
