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FIGHTING THE EXTINCTION EFFECT: POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT

Many of the guidelines I've just given with regard to negative reinforcement apply equally well to positive reinforcement. Good positive Consequences should be delivered in a timely manner, they should be appropriate, and they should be given consistently to anybody who performs the Behavior. Beyond that, though, there are some guidelines that apply particularly to positive reinforcement that I want to go into now.

In my company we make a distinction between extrinsic positive reinforcers and intrinsic, or "naturally occurring" reinforcers, and we tell our clients the Consequences that grow naturally out of the work environment are almost always more effective than the extrinsic variety. In a lot of places we work, this sets the conventional wisdom on its head, so it's important to emphasize it here.

An extrinsic reinforcer would be something like an annual Christmas dinner for employees, a team picnic, or tickets to a play or other entertainment offered as a reward for good performance. The expectation of these kinds of rewards can be motivating, sure, but there are some problems involved with using them exclusively, because they tend to get institutionalized and expected, and so they come to be seen not as Consequences but as mere perquisites of the job. The first time you invite your department to a holiday bash as a reward for services rendered, they may see it as real reinforcement. But the second and third time you do it, the event is going to start seeming like the norm, and the motivating benefits will go down, because people will begin to get the idea that they've got the annual party "coming" - whatever their performance has been.

Not that traditions like Christmas parties and team picnics can't serve a useful function in the workplace. They can. They can help to create that atmosphere of community that generally helps Involvement, and helps to make people identify their personal satisfactions with those of the team at large. Such traditions are just not especially useful as reinforcement, that's all.

For example, I know of a small New England computer company where the management-initiated practice of Bonus Day has been in place for about ten years. "The first couple of years," a production supervisor told me once, "Bonus Day was a blast.
It meant not only that you got your year-end bonus, but also that you drank a lot of beer and had a great time celebrating a productive twelve months. By the third or fourth year, though, people started to expect it. They knew that, whatever the year's productivity had been, the beer would still be flowing. So they started taking it as a given, and they didn't push themselves to make it happen. Pretty soon the beer blast was happening even in lousy years, and by that time it was just a hollow gesture. We're thinking about doing away with the tradition."

Why was Bonus Day in this company becoming a hollow gesture? Because it was no longer tied to real performance improvement. In addition, it violated a principle called differential reinforcement (which I'll talk about later) because it gave everybody in the company the same reward, regardless of his or her personal contribution to the team. In other words, it was a "noncontingent" or "unnatural" perk of employment - it
happened every year, no matter what else had gone before it.

To motivate people to peak performance, you have to concentrate on what we call "naturally occurring" or contingent rewards - that is, rewards that are dependent upon specific Behaviors, and don't "just happen" in a vacuum. A contingent reward, when you think about it, is the only kind of a reward that can really be called a Consequence. It's also the only kind of reward with true motivating power.

There are as many examples of contingent or naturally occurring reinforcers as there are people and situations in your work environment. Just one example: Think of the "hairs in the oil" problem that I was talking about earlier. Say you are supervising the line where that problem occurs, and you tell the foreman that he's got to be more attentive, right now, to the lubrication purity of his line: that's the Antecedent that you give him to modify his Behavior. And say that he does modify his Behavior. Say that, at the end of the following week, when you check your Recording graph to see how the problem is going, you find that "hairs in the oil" is down by 40 percent. It's time to give the foreman positive reinforcement for his good Behavior. How are you going to do that? What naturally occurring reinforcers do you have available that are going to motivate him (and his team) to continue to improve their work?

Actually, I get asked this question all the time. Managers who are just not used to giving good Consequences are constantly shrugging their shoulders at me and saying, "I just don't know what to do so he'll continue to perform well." I tell them they've got an unlimited number of things they could say or do. They could:
1. Verbally praise the person
2. Write a note of commendation to the plant or department manager
3. Post the person's name and/or picture on a bulletin board or in a company newsletter
4. Give him an opportunity to address a meeting
5. Ask him to join you for lunch
6. Give him time off
7. Offer him a choice of a new work assignment
8. Treat his team to coffee and donuts

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The point is that, if you want a newly learned good Behavior to keep coming, you've got to let the person who's done it know that you've seen it, and that you appreciate his work.

Now, all the examples I've given here, you'll notice, relate directly to the work environment. We call such Consequences "naturally occurring" reinforcers, in fact, because they develop naturally out of the job itself. That's why they're so effective.

Employees like such intrinsic rewards because they allow them to make the connection between better work and more satisfying work. I've already said that people want to do a good job when given the chance; if you give them immediate, contingent strokes for doing that, they're going to be all the more eager to continue.

But there's another, more mercenary reason that naturally occurring reinforcers like these are (or should be) attractive to managers interested in motivation. It's that they are nearly always free. Look at the list I've given here. The only items on it that are likely to cost a manager any money are lunch and the coffee and donuts - and even those are a hell of a lot cheaper than a year-end beer bash for all employees. One of the most gratifying ironies of using positive reinforcement in business is that the Consequences that seem to matter the most to employees are not the giant bonuses and tickets to the World Series, but the small, intangible evidences of gratitude that any manager can deliver with minimum expense. If you've got the least interest in making your motivation system cost-effective, positive reinforcement like this is a Godsend. There's no other way to increase a team's motivation that gets you so much return for so little time and energy invested.

Amazingly, you still hear resistance to this idea. You hear managers refusing to give out positive reinforcement because "You shouldn't praise somebody for just doing his job." You hear people saying that the only reinforcement that really matters is the kind you can stuff in your wallet. And you hear people claim that the employee who is already performing well doesn't need reinforcement.

All of these fallacies are related, and I can demonstrate why they're inaccurate by relating a couple of brief football stories.

The first concerns the only time in my eighteen-year football career when I called a play that required the quarterback to block. I've already pointed out that the blocking quarterback is about as rare a creature these days as a dope-smoking TV evangelist, and with good reason: we just don't learn that Behavior. Back in 1974, when I had just returned to the Vikings from my stint with the Giants, I had to learn it, and learn it fast. With an 0-3 record behind us, we were facing the St. Louis Cardinals out in Bloomington, and getting nowhere. I knew we had to pull out a surprise play to save the game, and there is nothing more likely to surprise a defense than a play where the quarterback blocks.

The play in question was a reverse where I handed off to Ed Marinaro (the same guy who was on TV's "Hill Street Blues"), Ed handed off to John Gilliam, and I took out a tackler who was trying to get to John. The way I took him out was a little unconventional: I fell down on the ground in front of him, and he tumbled over me.

But what the hell, it worked. John went in for the touchdown, and we won the game.
The next day, watching the films, I was all hyped up for Coach Bud Grant's readout. When it came around to "my" play - the one where I had sacrificed my body for the team - I was all ready to sit back and bask in the glory. It never came. Bud praised everybody involved in the play: Marinaro, Gilliam, the entire line, but not me. After the filming, I asked him why. "You saw my block, didn't you, coach? How come you didn't say anything about it?"

Now, some folks would have said, "Look, Tarkenton, you're the highest-paid guy on this team, and that ought to be enough for you, so can it." Bud wasn't that stupid, but what he said betrayed another kind of "You don't need it" fallacy. "Yeah, I saw the block," he told me. "It was great. But you're always working hard out there, Francis, you're always giving 100 percent. I figured I didn't have to tell you."

"Well," I told him, "if you want me to block again you do."

The lesson is clear. It goes against what a lot of managers seem to believe about the "good" performers on a team: that they'll continue to be good if you just leave them alone. That's bull. If you want somebody who's performing well to keep performing well, tell him so - or extinguish the good Behavior.

The second story involves Max Winter, the president and founder of the Minnesota Vikings, who was one of the most understanding and decent men I've ever worked with. When I retired from the field in 1978, I wrote him a brief letter saying how much I appreciated the guidance and support he had given me during our long association. This was a man who was a millionaire many times over, and who had access to every luxury money could buy. You wouldn't think a letter from a former quarterback would have meant very much to him. But you know what he did with it? I later found out that he had it framed and hung it on the wall of his office. For all his money and success, Max wanted what everybody else wants: recognition for a job well done. That was something nobody's money could buy. And it hadn't cost me a cent.

One last piece of evidence, if there's any doubt left in your mind that you can motivate better with intrinsic rewards than you ever can with hard cash. A number of years ago, Psychological Services of Pittsburgh, a social-science research group, surveyed the attitudes of two hundred and twenty-eight people who had one thing in common: they clearly liked their work. They chose workers at all levels in a number of different occupations - from steelworkers, to shipbuilding engineers, to managers in light industry - and they asked them in interviews to identify what it was that made their jobs particularly enjoyable to them. Remember that these were people who, whatever their status, had very positive attitudes and very high motivation regarding their work.

The results? Of the variety of people who responded, very small percentages mentioned such factors as working conditions, status, and interpersonal relations as reasons for their positive attitudes. A fairly significant percentage (between 20 and 26 percent) mentioned the factors "the work itself," "responsibility," or "advancement." Now here's the kicker. "Recognition" got voted for by 33 percent of the workers, "achievement" was identified as critical by 41 percent - and only 15 percent thought they were happy in their jobs because of "salary." That is a very poor argument for giving your people a paycheck and saying that you've motivated them enough. And it's an excellent argument for using the "naturally occurring reinforcers" that I've been talking about here.

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