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DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT

When you assess how your team has performed in a given situation, you've got to make the distinction between those who have actually contributed to the joint effort and those who've just gone along for the ride.  This is true whether you're dealing with eagles, mules, or (as is always the case in reality) with a combination of the two.  Too many managers seem to have the idea that, if the team brings in a victory, everybody deserves champagne - and, conversely, if the team loses, everybody should be sent to the doghouse. Anybody who's been on a sports team knows that's unfair in both cases.

You see this unfairness in practice every time a company adds up its quarterly earnings, discovers how the "team" has performed, and then gives out a general kudo, as if every worker and manager had been an equal partner in that performance.  "We did terrific business this quarter," a general manager will announce. "You all did a wonderful job, and we congratulate you." Only thing is, some of the folks he's talking to didn't do a wonderful job. The record performance was achieved in spite of their presence, not because of it. And they know it. People know when they've been sandbagging, and when you tell them they've done a great job when they haven't, you send out all kinds of ultimately demotivating signals.  

To the people who have contributed, it says. "You can get the same good Consequences next time if you only work half as hard." To the people who haven't, it says, "Don't worry about doing your best; your teammates will cover for you." This not only robs them of the chance to improve. It cheapens the rewards for the people who have performed well, and creates bitterness and confusion all around.

The same thing can happen in reverse, when a working group as a whole has not performed, and every member of the group is made to suffer as if it were his or her personal responsibility.  "We fell 4 percentage points last month," the manager yells.
"You've all been falling down on the job."  Not true. Some people have been falling down, some have been doing "at least adequate" work, and some have been knocking themselves out in vain. Simple justice requires that, even when the overall figures are bad, the people who have put in extra effort get positive strokes for their work.

We call this Differential Reinforcement, which is just a more formal method of saying that you should give credit where credit is due. And nowhere else.

Donald Seibert, former Chief Executive Officer of the J. C. Penney Company, wrote a book called The Ethical Executive in which he makes some provocative comments about giving credit. Quoting his predecessor at the company, he says that, "You can accomplish almost anything if you don't care who gets the credit." A wise observation, meant to demonstrate to the rising executive not that credit should be parcelled out indiscriminately, but that the leaders in a decision-making group should always remember the "non-leaders" - the hardworking mules of the team - when they're "passing psychological rewards around." And Seibert goes further. In speaking of his company's brainstorming sessions (a technique I'll get to later), he says:

In a typical freewheeling discussion in most companies, everybody throws out a certain number of thoughts and suggestions. A good boss will keep track of which idea came from which person, and then in his summary he'll compliment the various workers who made significant contributions.

That's Differential Reinforcement. It's Involving every member of your team and then telling each one individually how he or she contributed. And rewarding them accordingly.

Obviously, Differential Reinforcement is not an abstract concept. It's a practical technique for improving performance that you can employ constantly on the job - and particularly in the team meeting settings that I've been talking about in this chapter. It's a great motivational tool for getting people to understand what is required of them as a unit.
Two caveats, though. In using differential reinforcement, you want to be alert to two possible misuses of the method, which can undermine the very thing you 're trying to accomplish. The two biggest mistakes of the Differentiating Motivator are to come down too hard on the "mules" and to ignore the high-performing "eagles."

More on this next time.

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