We Need More Carrots and Fewer Sticks in the Workplace
Carrots help you see in the dark (Vitamin A!), but also see the light ahead.
The title of this article is a paraphrase from a colleague of mine. Recently we talked about how a lot of the work we’d been doing as a team was pushing people to act a certain way through punishments, but that we would have probably had more success had we operated with rewards.
🥕and 🥢
From a very young age, we learn which behaviors are rewarded. A detour into psychology might be helpful.
People use the carrot and stick metaphor because I guess all behavior change is thought of as riding a metaphorical horse?
The psychological behavioral types of conditioning are divided into Classic and Operant Conditioning. Classic is the “Pavlovian” kind; ring a bell, feed the dog. After a while, you ring the bell, the dog still drools, even if no food is presented. As a child, maybe it’s the sound of the garage door opening meaning a parent is home from work. Or getting your jacket on means you’re going outside. You start to see causality in the world, and your brain makes associations.
Operant Conditioning, on the other hand, is either:
- Positive Reinforcement (Do a good thing, get a carrot)
- Negative Reinforcement (Do a good thing, I stop poking you with the stick)
- Positive Punishment (Do a bad thing, get hit with a stick)
- Negative Punishment (Do a bad thing, I take away your carrots)
As you might imagine, positive reinforcement is touted as “the most effective way” in most psychological circles to bring about behavior change. But each of them has their place in the world.
Why Sticks don’t really work (hint: 🐘)
Changing a person’s behavior is a lot less like riding a horse and a lot more like riding an elephant. The elephant can be steered only so much, but once pushed too far, the rider has almost no power to do anything and is at the whim of the elephant and the path they’re on.
This metaphor comes from psychologist Jonathan Haidt and it’s expanded very well in the book Switch by the Heath Brothers. The writers detail numerous case studies of effective behavior change, all through the lens of “Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant, Shape the Path.”
You’ll notice a pretty large lack of sticks in this book, and with good reason. Sticks can be effective in dire situations, but in nuanced behavior change scenarios, a stick demotivates the elephant. And a stuck elephant might as well be an immovable mountain.
Back to the Workplace
If you want people, who are already getting some sort of extrinsic motivation (pay) to do something, giving them additional extrinsic motivation can be good, but giving them extrinsic punishment is doomed to fail. They are, after all, on the same team as you, and they are not a beast of burden you can push one way or another.
If you want behavior change, you’re going to have to go about it by giving good direction, keeping folks motivated, and making the easy way the right way. It can be more work but will be way less demoralizing (and more effective) than “thou shalt” means of behavior change. Forced marches are a good way to send at-will employees looking for work elsewhere.
But the best motivation you can give to anyone, especially coworkers, is intrinsic motivation. Daniel Pink writes in Drive that high intrinsic motivation is what makes people exceptional. Inspiring that intrinsic motivation in your coworkers is the best way to get them to do something; essentially, making the carrot come from within. And no one in the history of existence has ever punished someone into wanting to do something. So only through positive reinforcement, usually some sort of recognition or opportunity, will you get the sort of behavior change you want without demoralizing your workforce.
In closing: we need fewer sticks and more carrots; otherwise we have a lot of tired riders and motionless elephants, sitting around on a twisted and confusing path, while another company or group is eating our lunch.
