In two recent posts I’ve discussed the discovery that the most powerful motivator at work is the positive attention provided by a person’s immediate manager. If you missed those posts, you can find out more at these links: ‘How to Motivate People’ and ‘The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us’.
This discovery, amongst other things, prompted the Corporate Leadership Council to observe that, “The most effective drivers of employee performance are often underemphasised, even excluded, from ‘performance management’ as it is traditionally defined.”
When it comes to maximising employee motivation and performance, frontline managers matter much more than senior leaders. And the reason is as old as the history of human kind.
Scientists have concluded that human evolution is very slow. To the extent that physiologically we are no different from our Stone Age ancestors. So Stone Age survival mechanisms are hard-wired into our physiology and mental processes.
To survive in the small communities of the Stone Age, each individual had to work collaboratively with others or die. Consequently, evolutionary pressures meant that the positive attention of others (whose recognition was valued) came to strongly reinforce, or strengthen, behaviour. Conversely, those actions that were ignored, or received negative attention, were less likely to be repeated.
It has been scientifically proven that positive attention, such as praise and recognition, has a remarkable ability to elevate levels of dopamine in the brain, a chemical that is associated with feelings of pleasure and elation.
Smiles, praise and other forms of positive attention spark a dopamine release giving a rewarding feeling which makes employees feel good; it is also crucial to memory and learning. Dopamine creates an internal reward system that makes employees want to repeat behaviour that earns them positive attention from those whose recognition they value.
New research suggests that the dopamine effect is short lived, which is one of the reasons why long term recognition like financial reward isn’t as effective as regular praise. The continued thirst for praise explains why employees who receive a high amount of personal recognition from their immediate manager generally perform better than those who experience relatively more correction and criticism.
What enabled humans to survive the Stone Age are hard-wired into your people. Working with these Stone Age instincts is one of the most underused, yet one of the most powerful, techniques available to frontline managers.