Mastery and Intrinsic Motivation

Every quality manager wants to build a team of avid learners who continually improve. To do that, the quality manager must first build his or her own competency in the quality field to develop personal mastery. The quality manager also must hone his or her teaching and coaching skills while leading his or her team and develop the team’s quality skills.

This creates a quandary because the quality manager’s success in developing his or her team’s quality skills is not something the quality manager can directly control. After all, learning is not something done to the learner, but something the learner does. So how can the quality manager ensure his or her team puts forth the necessary effort to learn the right things? The answer lies in mastering the skillset of management.

Management is a practice, which means mastering it requires developing skills through on-the-job experience. To develop his or her team’s skills, the quality manager must master the key skills of designing and implementing learning programs.1

How is mastery achieved?

Achieving mastery in any skillset generally requires accumulating thousands or tens of thousands of hours of deliberate practice, which can take decades.2Deliberate practice is the mental and emotional (and sometimes physical) struggle—spent mostly in solitude—completing practice activities just beyond the practitioner’s current capabilities.

What about talent? Achieving mastery doesn’t happen faster for people who are born with superior learning abilities. Most practitioners who invest the time in deliberate practice will see the resulting improvements.

The level of progress toward mastery often depends on the time the practitioner spends on deliberate practice activities.3 More advanced learning activities, better feedback and improved mental representations can help speed the process.

Motivation

Why do some people commit to such a massive investment of time and effort? One word: motivation. Practitioners who progress to the mastery level must rely on a sustaining source of motivation to endure the many hours of practice required.

Simplified views of motivation, such as pursuing pleasure and fleeing pain, do not explain more complex human behaviors, such as when people intentionally increase their discomfort and forego pleasure for a long time to achieve mastery.

Motivation generally can be classified into two types: extrinsic and intrinsic (see Table 1). Extrinsic motivation is driven by external rewards and consequences, such as carrots and sticks, while intrinsic motivation is driven by a person’s internal urges in the absence of, or despite, external rewards or consequences. Extrinsic motivation is the stimulation of behavior that leads to separable outcomes while intrinsic motivation drives behavior because the activity itself is the reward.4

Whether motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic depends on its relationship to the person. For example, money is a common extrinsic motivator, but well-known businessman Warren Buffet described it as an intrinsic motivator when he said, "It’s not that I want money. It’s the fun of making it and watching it grow."5 For him, the activity served as its own reward.

Nurturing intrinsic motivation is a skill in and of itself. W. Edwards Deming identified nurturing intrinsic motivation as a key management responsibility.6 In addition, intrinsic motivation is a better predictor of school, work and physical performance than extrinsic motivation.7

From the quality manager’s perspective, developing his or her team’s intrinsic motivation to achieve mastery in statistics, quality engineering or quality auditing, for example, begins with the quality manager’s understanding of the team’s sources of intrinsic motivation.

Sources of intrinsic motivation

Many people have studied why people do what they do. In their article "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions," researchers Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci identified autonomy, competence and relatedness as intrinsic motivational factors.8

Author Daniel H. Pink built on this idea and categorized intrinsic motivation into autonomy, mastery and purpose.9 Many of the experiments supporting these categories looked only at the effects of autonomy on someone’s intrinsic motivation to perform a simple task, such as solving an interesting puzzle for a few minutes.

But if not all intrinsic motivation is the same, being intrinsically motivated to spend a few minutes solving a puzzle is different from someone being intrinsically motivated to devote decades of his or her life to achieving mastery.

This provides useful insights but doesn’t answer the key management question: Why do people choose one path over another when investing their time, effort and resources to achieve mastery? How can this insight improve the management techniques used to increase the likelihood of someone achieving mastery?

Looking at the qualities that make humans unique in the animal world gives insight into sources of intrinsic motivation. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain exists in animals as a survival instinct, and mammals have further developed social desires and abilities. Humans have the unique ability and drive to:

1. Link their minds with others to form networks of collective wisdom where the quality of group decisions exceeds what they are able to achieve with individual decisions alone.
2. Share their memories, insights and foresights to consciously improve themselves and others.
3. Override their immediate urges to pursue remote rewards.10

These can be described as intrinsic motivation driven by connection, contribution and gratification (see Table 2).

Connection

Connection is the desire to belong, be accepted, be in the know, understand, share and hear stories, live vicariously through heroes and grow closer through common enemies. Ryan and Deci proposed relatedness as a separate source of intrinsic motivation and described it as belongingness and connectedness with a sense of being respected.11

In their book Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, Deci and Richard Flaste cautioned against autonomy with isolation or alienation over connectedness and relatedness.12 Humans use their unique capacity for mindreading—knowing what others think, believe, desire, feel or know through predictive or reactive mental tools such as empathy—to support the social connection motivation.13

A quality manager could require his or her team members to improve their personal mastery in a particular area to achieve some higher purpose, give them full autonomy to implement and disappear until the tasks are completed. Even though this would be highly autonomous, the likelihood of these actions fully motivating a team is low because it would create disconnection. Instead, the quality manager would be better served by establishing regular and genuine personal connections with the team.

Contribution

Defining purpose as an intrinsic motivator also runs the risk of misinterpretation and opens the door to disconnection. In practice, the quality manager could associate objective with purpose and assume decreeing an objective would motivate his or her team.

David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, described management by objective (MBO) as "a system in which overall objectives are clearly stated and agreed upon, and which gives people the flexibility to work toward those goals in ways they determine best for their own areas of responsibility."14

According to Deming, the problem with MBO is "that the performance appraisal or merit rating focuses on the end product, not on leadership to help people." He suggested it be called "management by fear."15

Purpose has been variously defined as "making an impact on the world beyond the self,"16 contributing to something great and enduring17 and "the intention to contribute to the well-being of others."18 If the underlying intrinsic motivator is contribution to a purpose, this is better explained and captured by the term "contribution" than the term "purpose."

Contribution describes the sense of being needed and providing meaningful help and support to others. The intrinsic motivation to contribute can fuel the internal drive over the long term to continue improving and achieving higher levels of mastery in ways that matter.

Someone could perform the same acts of contribution to others but be driven by extrinsic motivation, such as the desire to receive praise or reward. For the very same acts of contribution, being motivated by the act of improving the outcomes of others qualifies as intrinsic motivation.

As an intrinsic motivator, contribution manifests itself through the combination of two emotions: pride and happy-for emotions.

In their book The Cognitive Structure of Emotions, Andrew Ortony, Gerald L. Clore and Allan Collins define pride emotions as those resulting from "the approval of one’s own praiseworthy action" and happy-for emotions as "being pleased about an event presumed to be desirable for someone else."19

More praiseworthiness and unexpectedness increase pride emotions. Doing more presumably desirable things for people who are deserving and well-liked yields higher happy-for emotions.

On a practical level, the quality manager promotes higher levels of intrinsic motivation by telling a team member where his or her contribution is needed and how it is impactful, and supporting that ability to contribute rather than merely stating the team member’s purpose, objective or result.

Framing a task as a genuine contribution better nurtures the source of intrinsic motivation and acknowledges the value of the individual.

The quality manager also should be aware that if a team member is the best in an area of meaningful contribution and suddenly is surrounded by others who are better, the team member’s sense of contribution will decrease. In that case, he or she would want to find a different way to contribute or rely on another source of intrinsic motivation to continue improving.

Gratification

The promise of future mastery taps into the human ability to imagine what has not been experienced and override immediate urges to pursue distant rewards. Mastery has been defined as the desire to get better at something that matters20and the sensation of "a greater command of reality, other people, and ourselves."21

Author Robert W. White identified competence as a key motivational driver and defined it as a person’s capacity to effectively interact with his or her environment.22 Deci and Flaste elaborated on competence as an intrinsic motivator by including the level of challenge required to bring a sense of accomplishment.23

The challenge qualifier provides greater insight into the true source of intrinsic motivation. Ortony, Clore and Collins defined the compound emotion of gratification as "approving of one’s own praiseworthy action and being pleased about the related desirable event." Praiseworthiness, unexpectedness and desirability all affect the intensity of gratification.24

People have sailed across oceans, climbed mountains and trekked to the poles driven, in part, by the challenges and misery encountered along the way. Surviving higher levels of danger can increase a person’s sense of accomplishment after the task is completed. Standing on top of Mount Everest, for example, feels much better after overcoming the trials and tribulations along the way than if you landed in the same spot by helicopter.

The fact that the journey wasn’t necessarily enjoyable can seemingly disqualify gratification as intrinsic motivation because the actual time spent preparing for and en route to the destination wasn’t done because the tasks were enjoyable themselves, but for some future reward.

This reward is intrinsic, however, because the high levels of effort and pain, and low likelihood of success, contribute to enjoying the moments of success after they are achieved. This delayed gratification and promise of future gratification can sustain the practitioner through unenjoyable periods as he or she moves toward success. He or she may achieve mastery or progress toward mastery driven by the external achievements along the way, but the actual source of intrinsic motivation is the promise of emotional gratification, which is internal.

Managing for intrinsic motivation

Managing intrinsic motivation is a skill. And, as with any skill, the quality manager must invest time and effort to practice, reflect and make improvements to, over the course of decades, achieve mastery.

This starts with the quality manager increasing his or her awareness of and nurturing his or her own intrinsic motivation. By understanding the nature of connection, contribution and gratification as the sources of his or her own intrinsic motivation, the quality manager is better equipped to nurture the internal drive of his or her team to learn and improve, and eventually achieve mastery.

Being knowledgeable of intrinsic motivation helps the quality manager avoid the common pitfalls of inadvertently destroying it. Encouraging internal competition or reducing the time spent building productive relationships can decrease the sense of connectedness with others.

Replacing a team member’s area of unique contribution with alternative options could come at the expense of the member’s intrinsic motivation. Implementing extrinsic rewards for activities for which team members already enjoy the promise of gratification could distract from and potentially replace the underlying intrinsic motivation.

Group success is an interdependent effort that requires productive interactions among members. Juggling the complex and dynamic realities of groups complicates the quality manager’s job. The quality manager must facilitate productive connections among team members and establish a personal connection with them so the quality manager is aware of individual members’ intrinsic motivation levels.

As situations change and contributors come and go from the team, the quality manager must be aware of the effect on the other team members. Do they make productive connections with each other? Do they see the effect of their contributions decrease because other contributors are added and thus they lose their intrinsic motivation to contribute? Has the team lost sight of the fruits of its labor?

Being aware of this possibility and looking for early warning signs of compromised intrinsic motivation will help the quality manager identify and deal with the issues before they get worse. This also should help the quality manager empathize with team members.

When mistakes happen, rather than blaming the team member for not caring or lacking intelligence or effort, the quality manager can move beyond pointing fingers to increasing intrinsic motivation by handling the situation in a supportive and respectful way. This ultimately leads to improved team development and organizational learning.

Of all of the skills a quality manager must master, managing for intrinsic motivation should be near the top of the list. By supporting deeper connections, acknowledging team contributions and enhancing gratification, the quality manager can increase his or her team’s intrinsic motivation to master the skills it needs to succeed.

The design and implementation of his or her team’s learning programs depend on the quality manager nurturing the team’s intrinsic motivation. Only an intrinsically motivated learner will make the personal sacrifices required to engage in repetitive, solitary practice to reach mastery.

References

1. Henry Mintzberg, Managing, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009.
2. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
3. Ibid.
4. Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, Plenum Press, 1985.
5. Roger Lowenstein, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, Random House, 2008.
6. W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press, 1994.
7. Christopher P. Cerasoli, Jessica M. Nicklin and Michael T. Ford, "Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Incentives Jointly Predict Performance: A 40-Year Meta-Analysis," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 140, No. 4, 2014, pp. 980-1008.
8. Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions," Contemporary Educational Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2000, pp. 54-67.
9. Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Riverhead Books, 2009.
10. Thomas Suddendorf, The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us From Other Animals, Basic Books, 2013.
11. Ryan, "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions," see reference 8.
12. Edward L. Deci and Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, Penguin, 1996.
13. Matthew D. Lieberman, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, Oxford University Press, 2013.
14. David Packard, The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company, HarperCollins, 1995.
15. W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis, MIT Press, 1986.
16. David Scott Yeager and Matthew J. Bundick, "The Role of Purposeful Work Goals in Promoting Meaning in Life and in Schoolwork During Adolescence," Journal of Adolescent Research, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2009, pp. 423-452.
17. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, see reference 9.
18. Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Scribner, 2016.
19. Andrew Ortony, Gerald L. Clore and Allan Collins, The Cognitive Structure of Emotions, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
20. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, see reference 9.
21. Robert Greene, Mastery, Penguin Books, 2012.
22. Robert W. White, "Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence," Psychological Review, Vol. 66, No. 5, 1959, pp. 297-333.
23. Deci, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, see reference 12.
24. Ortony, The Cognitive Structure of Emotions, see reference 19.

This article originally appeared in Quality Progress April 2018.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Accelerating Learning

We all wish we could learn more quickly.  As managers we wish we could accelerate the learning of our teams.  In some ways, we cannot shortcut the process of accumulating knowledge and skills over the long term.  But as we learn how to learn, we discover that some methods of learning are better than others.

Someone recently asked why engineers should earn more than teachers.  My reply was that the two are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, any great engineering manager is also a great teacher.  A manager is only as good as their ability to teach their team.  We can take this a step further to say that the best learners do not passively get taught.  Most learning is self-learning.  The better we can teach ourselves, the better we learn.

An old proverb goes something like this, "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."  Some medical schools use the method of SODOTO, “See One, Do One, Teach One.”  If we delve deeply into this and expand upon it, we have a framework, not just for learning a concept but for accelerating the achievement of mastery.

See One

You start with observing the right approach to what you want to learn.  This could be an expert demonstrating a skill, the prevailing theory on the optimal approach, or a story of what worked.  As humans, we have added to our collective wisdom from generation to generation by passing along knowledge through story.  Stories make powerful connections to us as we learn vicariously through the experiences of others.  This is good for understanding what to do, but not necessarily how or why it was developed. 

If we are going to go beyond what is considered the best, we need to be able to advance the theory.  To do this, we want to know how we arrived at the theory.  Anyone who learns the complete history of the topic holds the advantage.  William Duggan delves into this in his book, The Art of What Works.  Researching lessons from history gives us insight into what has worked for others in the past. 

Napoleon became one of the most successful generals in history because of his extensive knowledge of the history of warfare.  Later Patton took his knowledge of the history of warfare to another level.  When the Wright Brothers decided to try to achieve heavier-than-air flight for humans, they started by researching everything they could find on the history of flight. 

When Jeffrey Katzenberg went to work at Disney in the 1980s, he discovered the archives that Walt Disney kept on making movies and telling stories.  He began to stay up at night to absorb all he could and started applying what he learned to the films that rejuvenated the Disney brand such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.  I highly recommend the book Disney War by James B. Stewart.

Barry Diller, former CEO of Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox, started his career in the William Morris Agency when he discovered their archives.  He spent three years devouring what was essentially the history of the film industry, which gave him an edge over anyone else his age.

When I made the career leap from financial services to manufacturing, I decided to learn everything I could about the history of quality.  That’s how I discovered Walter Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, and Taichi Ohno, some of the people most responsible for the most important advancement in management during the 20th century – the quality revolution.  I thought I was going to learn about quality, and I ended up learning about management.

Every year I read business biographies, listen to business podcasts, and watch business documentaries.  I also read business theory to give myself some basis for interpreting all the stories I absorb.  All these stories help me weed out a lot of the bad advice that is available.  The stories also help me communicate tips and techniques to my team because I can readily give compelling examples of others who have used those techniques to great success.

I will add that one of the best ways I have found to enhance the See One stage is to take notes.  I find that taking notes with a pen and notebook works far better than electronic notes.  When I have a conversation with a client on the phone, I will take notes directly into our CRM rather than have to spend the extra time transcribing later.  When I am in learning mode, I prefer a physical notebook or journal.  For some reason, this seems to give me a closer connection to what I am writing, so I can better absorb and remember later.

Notebooks seemed to be far more common in the past than they are today.  Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Walter Chrysler all kept notebooks.  When I was 12, I read the biography of Robert Louis Stephenson, and learned that he carried a notebook in his pocket, so I started keeping a notebook ever since.

Do One

In this stage, you put what you learned into practice.  Management and many of the microskills that make up management are not learnable through books alone.  You must experience the thoughts, feelings, and distractions that come along with doing.  Learning negotiation by reading a book is different from feeling the adrenaline rush and shaking hands that come with going through a high-stakes negotiation where the pressure is on while the level of agreement and certainty are low. 

One of the best reasons to do is to better deal with the real pressure that comes along with doing.  I love to watch the Olympics because these people have spent years preparing for an opportunity that comes only once every four years and may never come along again for the rest of their lives.  The future path of their lives comes down to a few minutes of performance, so the pressure is high, and some can deal with it while others crumble under the pressure.  I think back to this when I feel the pressure rising in my life, and I welcome the pressure.

Doing is about experimentation.  Experimentation is also about improvement.  As a runner, I read about techniques, but until I do them I do not actually know how they feel.  I have to do it, feel it, and then get some sort of feedback that validates that this sensation equates to the optimal technique. 

Teach One

I really learn when I teach.  You could say that I learned this the hard way.  The point in my life when I hit rock bottom was when I was 20 and living in New York City with no job and $50 left in my pocket.  My parents were living in their van traveling the country, and I had no idea how to contact them.  During the end of that cold December I had walked into one retailer after another to fill out job applications, but everybody was winding down from the holidays and more likely to be laying off than hiring. 

I spoke to a friend who had directed one of the plays in which I had acted, and he told me about a teaching position at the high school where he taught.  It was for Algebra, Geometry, Earth Science, Biology, and Physics.  The other teacher had left halfway through the year, and they needed somebody.

A million reasons why I couldn’t do it raced through my head.  “But I don’t have a teaching license.”  Apparently, that was not a requirement because it was a private high school.  “But I don’t have a degree.”  He said that didn’t matter because I did graduate from an acting conservatory.  “But I never took Physics before in my life.”  He said they wouldn’t care.

If I had any other option, I never would have thrown my hat into the ring.  I had been eating less to save money, and my insecurity level was high.  But I was desperate (and hungry).  I got an interview, and I was honest about myself.  He said I got the job.  They must have had no other options either.  I had always loved math, and I had found science to be very intriguing, but I was far from being able to teach the subjects and far from being qualified to stand before some kids who were only a few years younger and portray myself as an expert. 

On the first day, I tried to hide the fact that I was in my panic zone.  Did I mention that this was an all-boys school?  Oh, yes, the energy level was high.  They were polite to the other teachers who were older and wiser.  But they were so rowdy with me that the principal made regular visits into my class.  As soon as he would enter, they would quiet down.  I survived the first day.  One day they asked me what pH stands for.  I had to look it up in the book, and somebody complained to the principal that I had to look it up in the book, so he had a talk with me about that.  Then I survived the first week.  Then I survived the first month.  Each night, I would study the lesson for the next day. 

In the beginning I had been spending a lot of time learning the topic where I had to be an expert.  I had tried repetition to learn and practiced like I would practice lines as an actor.  Then about a month into this experience something crazy happened.  As the weeks passed, that process compressed, and I jumped straight from getting introduced to a new topic to immediately teaching that topic.  I had just read something in physics, and realized I felt like an expert even though I had never known about that topic only a few minutes earlier.  This sparked a self-learning technique that I still use to this day. 

What did I do?  I read it once to get a general introduction to the idea as if it were someone else’s words.  Then I read it a second time as though they were my own words, and I was trying to explain it to someone else. 

This is a variation on an acting technique.  I had once taken an acting class with Alan Arkin who told us to first read the script with no preconceived notions.  In other words, read it first with an open mind.  Just take in the information in an accepting way.  Then you make the words your own.

Now when I come across something I like and want to absorb as a part of my learning, I repeat it in my head as if I am teaching someone else. 

If we are all learning, we are all teachers because we teach ourselves, and as we develop, we pass along our knowledge and skills onto others.  That is how we connect with others and contribute to our collective advancement.  We owe our knowledge and abilities today, in large part, to the discoveries others have made and passed along to us.  Our responsibility is to learn from our history, improve upon it, and pass it along for the next generation.  If we can accelerate not only our own learning but also the next generation’s learning, we can accelerate our collective learning.

How to Coach Your Team into the Learning Zone

Last summer when we took a family vacation at a kid-friendly resort, I looked around the lazy river, pool, and slides and noticed that every child was running around while every adult was either sitting or lying down.  I told my brother-in-law that was the reason why the kids were in far better shape than the adults.  As a result, in some micro way, the kids were growing while the adults were deteriorating.  The kids were actively playing in a way that constantly pushed themselves to explore new limits, triggering growth in their bodies and brains.  By contrast the adults were looking for their Comfort Zone. 

Real growth and improvement happens, not in your Comfort Zone but in your Learning Zone.  I have previously written about the Learning Zone here.  This is about cultivating skills.  The companies which learn and improve more rapidly improve their odds of surviving and thriving.  If you want a company that engages in continual improvement, you need a team of continual learners.  That means your team needs to enter the Learning Zone.  This is an uncomfortable place to be.  Going into the Learning Zone exposes you to disappointment, insecurity, pain, failure, and loss.  It can contradict the goals you have established for happiness, the easy life, and safety. 

After reading Daniel Coyle’s book “The Talent Code”, I started looking at the world in a new way.  Where I used to see habits or preferences, I started seeing skills which were either developed or undeveloped.    Many problems and challenges can be related back to skills.  I used to be skilled at eating ice cream.  When I was a vegetarian, I was skilled at avoiding red meat.  I used to be unskilled at waking up at 5AM every day, but with practice over time I have grown quite skilled at awakening early.

We cannot un-practice skills we no longer want.  We can only practice new skills we do want.  This type of practice is called deliberate practice or deep practice.  We only truly engage in deliberate practice when we enter our Learning Zone. 

I recently completed my fifth New York City marathon.  When I started running as an adult, I just pounded my feet on the pavement with no technique. That is like hitting my fists on piano keys and claiming I could play the piano.  The proper training puts me in my Learning Zone.  Over time my body has made changes I never imagined or expected.  Since childhood I struggled with asthma, and once while travelling in southeast Asia, I was afraid to go to sleep because I thought might not wake up.  I started running again as an adult, and now I have gone 11 years with no breathing issues.  I have more energy.  I feel more connected to my body.  This concept has made me a healthier person, a better father, and a better manager. 

What can you do as a manager to get your team into their Learning Zone?  In short, you want to treat the Learning Zone as a skill they will develop.  Share the Learning Zone model with them so they understand it, connect the theory to their real-world situations, and motivate them frequently over the long term.

What is the Learning Zone?

People need to know that the discomfort of growth and development is a good thing.  Some part of our nature rejects what is uncomfortable and unknown because of the associated danger.  We need some guidance on discerning good discomfort from bad discomfort.

The most powerful tool I have found in getting people into their Learning Zone was to show them what the Learning Zone is.  What is the Learning Zone?  The Learning Zone is, by definition, not the Comfort Zone.  It is not easy. It requires your full attention and effort.  It is a mental struggle.  It can be an emotional struggle.  It is sometimes even a physical struggle.  Why?  That struggle initiates the message in your brain that you need to improve in some way. 

The Learning Zone is a sweet spot to hit somewhere after you leave your Comfort Zone and before you hit your Panic Zone.  This will depend upon how much skill you have and how great the challenge is.  As you develop the skill, you will require greater challenges to hit your Learning Zone.

How many words per minute can you type?  That depends in large part upon how many hours of deliberate practice you put into developing the skill.  That holds true for any skill.  A signal for a task you have never done before might move through your brain at two miles per hour.  The signal for a task you have practiced for years could travel through your brain at 200 miles per hour.  I share this video with the team, so they understand this.

Now when I run, I focus on my technique and the subtle adjustments necessary to improve my technique.  I do not read, watch television, or listen to music while I run because those distract me from improving my technique.  I see runners in the park with headphones and at the gym watching television.  Are they focusing full attention on improving their technique, or are they distracted?

This mental model is an easy-to-remember visual which helps people understand that being uncomfortable is a good thing because that is where they learn and grow the most.  When I show them the model, I like to share some examples of times when I was in my Learning Zone and times when I was in my Panic Zone. 

Then I like to talk about moving among the zones.  The idea is to develop two skills.  The first skill is that transition from Comfort Zone to Learning Zone.  The feeling of moving from the Comfort Zone into the Learning Zone can feel quite wrong even though it is quite right.  The second skill is the ability to move from the Panic Zone back into the Learning Zone.  Again, I share examples of doing this.  I was once coaching someone through an important negotiation and could tell they were in their Panic Zone.  They took a break and went for a five-minute walk outside to pull back into the Learning Zone.  I find vigorous exercise helps pull me back.  In both cases, practice helps improve these skills over time.

Bridge the Gap

Once your team understands what the Learning Zone is and why it is important, you must help them build their ability to go into their Learning Zone.  To do this you will help them bridge the gap between the concept and their own personal experiences.  I start by asking questions:  When were you in your Learning Zone?  When were you in your Panic Zone?  Where are you now?  Asking this question on a regular basis helps get them thinking about it more and they get better at assessing their current state.

If they are bored, they are in their Comfort Zone, which means you, as their manager, are not providing enough challenges for them.  This is important feedback for you.  My daughter’s elementary school, like many now, gives books and reading assignments based upon the child’s reading level.  This helps ensure they are reading at the appropriate level, like the way music, martial arts, and many other skills are taught.  Unfortunately, math and science are not yet taught this way, but in time they most likely will be.

If your team says they are overwhelmed and stressed out, they are in their Panic Zone.  Learning is far less likely to happen with intense levels of fear and other emotional distractions.  The quick fix is to reduce the challenge level.  The long-term solution is to increase the skill level.  As I gained more responsibility in my career and life, the level of pressure, uncertainty, stakes, and disagreement grew.  Sometimes an increase would feel like too much at first, but as I learned to deal with it and went on to the next level, what once felt unbearable later felt like a walk in the park.

In general, you want to frame the journey as a small continuation of what is already being done.  I took some improvisation classes at The Upright Citizens Brigade where we had to practice “Yes and…” exercises.  The idea was to continue the flow and direction that others were going.  The idea is to build a joint momentum together.  I once had a director who was expert at framing instructions as “Do more of that.”  In the movie Stand and Deliver, real-life high-school math teacher Jaime Escalante told his drop-out prone students that math is in their blood because their Mayan ancestors came up with the concept of zero when the Greeks and Romans could not. 

Motivate your Team

As much as possible, you want to get people excited about going into the Learning Zone.  Motivation is less about giving long speeches or imposing incentives or consequences and more about connecting with other people, making meaningful contributions, and gratification when unexpected accomplishments are achieved.

People connect with other people through the power of story.  Filling the mind with stories of examples from history of people who have achieved success is a reliable source of inspiration.  When my four-year-old son watched Rocky, he pretty much spent the entire movie working out.  As a manager, my tactic is to keep sharing one story after another week after week of people who went into their Learning Zone and built up their skills.  I have shared hundreds of stories and dozens of videos with my team, such as this, this, this, this, and this.

People are motivated by the ability to make unique and meaningful contributions.  If you had a unique skill that nobody cared about, you would have less motivation than you would if you discovered that skill was a huge benefit to a lot of people.  When I am relieved to have somebody on the team who makes a meaningful contribution because they have some skill I do not have, I make sure to acknowledge their contribution, express appreciation, and remind them that I am relieved to have them because they are able to do something I cannot.

Gratification is the sense of accomplishment which is intensified by the difficulty in getting there.  When times get challenging, I remind the team about where we are going and how great we will feel when we get there.  I love to use the analogy of climbing Everest.  The journey is miserable, but the payoff is great, in part because of all the suffering along the way.  If the whole process were easy, the end would not bring the same sense of accomplishment.

When I was young, my parents taught me that when we are ready to stop learning, we are ready to move on toward dying.  I recently heard that a long life is less dependent upon a low-stress life and more dependent upon how engaged we are.  This is easy to believe because when we engage our efforts, our brains and bodies respond with some sort of growth.  We used to believe that our capacity to learn diminished as we age, but that belief has been debunked.  Our brains are extremely adaptive, and some parts of the brain will expand or contract depending upon what we are learning even as adults.

My parting message to you on this topic is that as a manager, you lead by example so step into your Learning Zone on a regular basis.  Do it in new and unexpected ways.  Share your genuine challenges with your team.  This has the added benefit of expressing your vulnerability, which deepens your connections with others and makes for a stronger team.

Climbing the Ladder of Accountability

"Where does that put you on the Ladder of Accountability, David?"  Did one of my employees just catch me being low on the Ladder of Accountability after I had been preaching accountability for over a year?  Yep.  The student was now teaching the teacher.  We had reached a major milestone.  The endless repetition of that same message was starting to pay off.  Then people started questioning each other about the Ladder of Accountability.

The year before we had suffered from a victim culture, so I had created a graphic with a four-rung ladder displaying the four levels of accountability.  I didn’t invent the Ladder of Accountability.  I just tweaked it.  Then I shared it with the team.  The research had shown the high cost of a low-accountability team, but we didn’t even need that because we could tell it was costing us, and we had to do something about it, or it would just get worse as we grew as a company.

We all started talking about it regularly and explored this new way of looking at our interactions with each other. Our CEO had printed out the ladder, and when an employee came to complain to him, the CEO pointed to the printout and asked him where he was on the Ladder of Accountability.  That woke up the employee.  Later in the same conversation, the same employee started to say something that would have been low accountability, and he stopped himself.  He thought of how to think differently, and they shared a laugh.  When an employee would come to me to tell me about an issue, my first question would be, "What do you suggest?"  Some people loved this question because it showed their opinions and contributions were valued.  Others hated the question because it meant they had more responsibility, more work, and more mental effort.  These are the people who love to put the monkey on their manager's back.

We had to struggle to implement the change.  We treated accountability as a skill.  Just like any skill it requires practice.  Practice involves intense struggle.  We had to work together to understand what accountability means and practice together to be able to do it.  Sometimes people had situations but were uncertain what action would be high on the Ladder, so we would talk it through together.  At other times people thought they were taking the accountable action when they were not.  In certain cases, we would look back and think we erred on the side of being too accountable, but ultimately that never turned out to be true.

I cannot say when the shift happened exactly, but at some point, we had absorbed the value of accountability so deeply that new people needed less training on it because they just saw how things are done and fell into line with that.  They had no idea what kind of mental and emotional struggle we had undergone as a company to develop our accountability.  Some people who were low on the Ladder just would not make the changes necessary, and decided to leave.  We even interviewed new candidates who decided to withdraw their application because high accountability just did not interest them.  Today an outsider might see and feel the norms of the group and understand what is acceptable without even being able to place their finger on what exactly it is.

We sometimes need to remind ourselves that not everyone is at the same level.  When we observe behavior low on the Ladder of Accountability by our suppliers and customers, it sticks out like such a sore thumb that we are sometimes surprised that this does not feel so blatantly wrong to them.  Sometimes clients do not appreciate the level of accountability they get with us, which can be surprising, confusing, and even painful. 

Managers who understand and refer to the Ladder of Accountability can identify these situations and adjust their team's approach to improve accountability.  The first step is to share the Ladder with the Team.  We used it as a feedback tool, and people would hear about it almost daily. 

We also used it as a review tool and even a hiring tool.  I tell job candidates about the importance of accountability and share some examples and real stories.  Their reactions speak volumes about where they fall on the ladder.  If they join in and give me some examples, they get it.  If they look scared or try too hard to convince me, they are not a fit.  When someone describes their other positions, their level of accountability is quite obvious.  Did they complain about unfair situations, or did they always take more responsibility and make the most of any opportunity they had? 

Where are you on the Ladder of Accountability?  Where is your team?  Let’s look more closely at each step on the Ladder of Accountability.  Bear in mind that people are not stuck in place.  I have never identified somebody who is and always was at the top level.  Whether they are willing to move up to the next level depends entirely on how willing they are to reflect deeply and engage in the mental and emotional struggle to move up to the next level.

Level 0 – The Powerless Victim

Have you ever dealt with someone who was low on accountability?  On the lowest level of accountability, the team does not get things done without the manager.  I call this Level 0 because accountability is basically nonexistent.  If people are happy to unload their responsibilities onto their manager, they are low on the Ladder of Accountability.  These people delegate up.  They are happy to lighten their own workload by giving their managers more of their work.  If they have no instructions, they will wait until someone tells them what to do.  If something goes wrong, they blame others.  If they are not happy with something, they complain about it and leave it at that.  They deny that responsibility is theirs and do what they can to avoid additional responsibility, but they will do just enough to not lose their jobs.

They can be apathetic, and they can even go beyond victimhood to be outright saboteurs.  They hold grudging compliance and even malicious obedience.  These are the people who will hear something a manager says to the group, secretly disagree, and later whisper in the ears of others to sabotage the effort.

Have you ever worked with someone who was highly skilled at and very comfortable with putting the monkey on their manager’s back?  I once worked with someone who was technically strong but so used to the mindset of a temporary employee that the entire concept of accountability was too foreign to him.  He wanted to throw everything over the wall.  He was so adept at sidestepping ownership that he seemed to be refusing to move up the ladder.  Finally, we had to have a discussion to give him candid feedback.  He turned out to not want to increase his level of accountability.  He liked where he was.  It was safe, comfortable, and he had done well there in his career.

Level 1 – The Good Soldier

On the next level up, some accountability exists.  Rather than wait until being told what to do, people will ask what to do and do it.  Rather than deny any problems exist, the person acknowledges problems.  This person is respectful but not intimidated.  They conduct themselves with a professional attitude.  They are responsive when addressed and reliably follow the letter of the law.  When given responsibility for a task, they respond with a time expectation for when they commit to completing the task.  If they cannot give the time expectation at that time, they will commit to a time when they will commit to completing a task. 

When I share this with most managers, a common reaction is that they would be thrilled with a team that did this.  This seems to be a high expectation for people to achieve and just get to Level 1.  This is true.  Level 1 requires a lot of effort to achieve, but achieving all of this is just enough to get beyond the novice level.  They still have a long way to go to truly master the Ladder of Accountability.

Level 2 – The Committed Solver

At the next level the skilled practitioner no longer asks what to do, but starts to search for and recommend solutions.  Now they are starting to understand how to look at things as an owner rather than as a subordinate.  They take action and can handle the higher levels of pressure that come with higher levels of responsibility and uncertainty.  They have become adept at removing barriers so they can navigate roadblocks.  Their general attitude is, “I will do as much as I can within the existing structures.” 

Can you identify the times in your development when you moved up the ladder?  I recall the point when I transitioned from the You-Tell-Me-What-To-Do mindset to the I-Will-Do-All-I-Can mindset.  I was at a small, microfinance organization, and we were doing an annual strategy exercise for the company, which I had always dreaded in the past.  We broke up into teams and within those teams, each person had an area to focus.  I was assigned innovation, and looked up what that meant and how to do it.  I found myself reading about a lot of inspiring activities that other companies did.  That weekend I read an entire book and several articles.  As I researched more, I found more ideas, and grew more inspired.  When I returned, on Monday to turn in what I had done, I hoped people were satisfied, but they were actually surprised, impressed, and excited.  I came away from that experience wishing every day could be like that.

After that I stopped looking at the clock and leaving at 5 each day.  I started feeling excited about thinking about work on evenings and weekends.  Then I started to think about how to improve things.  I started reading articles and books to get ideas on how to do things better.

Level 3 – The Indispensable Linchpin

The fully committed owner acts with more independence to implement solutions.  They lead up and routinely report on their status.  This person has the I’ll-Do-What-It-Takes mentality.  Rather than work only within existing structures, they create the needed structures.  They inspire confidence and are adept at bringing others up the Ladder of Accountability. 

Once I started to look at things as an owner, I changed.  Every aspect of my products became important and something I wanted to improve.  I also found that I had more respect from other people.  Because I cared more, I also experienced more extreme emotions.  I gave up some sense of safety and the ease that comes with not being accountable.  I was becoming a new person, dealing with new levels of pressure which brought out anxieties I never knew I had.  In many ways, I was growing up.

So how do we implement this in our teams?  First, you accept the current position of the other person.  This removes emotional distractions that interfere with the learning process.  Then you support the understanding.  Expect to deliver the message repeatedly over the long term.  Explaining the specific applications of accountability helps people connect the concepts to their own situation.

I have had to make sure I maintain humility and remind myself that everyone is at a different place in their learning journey.  I was not always at the top of the Ladder of Accountability, and I still have more to learn.  I tend to be very matter of fact about dealing with the Ladder of Accountability.  When a situation happens, and somebody is not fully accountable, rather than initiate frustration within myself by thinking about where they should be, I just acknowledge where they are.  I share with them, that this is their current level, and to go up to the next level, this is what they would do in a situation like this.

What challenges have you had with the accountability of your team?  What have been your biggest difficulty in developing your own accountability? 

Welcome to The Learning Zone: Three People Development Skills for the Manager to Master

Can you honestly say you have mastered the ability to develop skills in other people?  One of your key competencies as a manager is designing learning plans and implementing those learning plans through coaching, feedback, and mental models.  This is a skill which is so obvious when I tell people that everyone agrees, yet managers who have truly mastered this skill are a rare find.  In my experience, managers tell people what to learn, what to do, or how to do something and pretty much leave it at that, which is unfortunate because they miss out on some rich opportunities in contributing to the growth of others and in achieving some rewarding growth of their own.

To guide someone through the learning process, you want them to step into their Learning Zone.  What is the Learning Zone?  The Learning Zone is that place just beyond the Comfort Zone and before the Panic Zone.  When activities are too easy, they do not require as much effort.  People can grow bored and distracted, and learning is limited.  When activities prove too challenging, they push people to the point where panic ensues.  Aggressive behavior or pressure that is too high can arouse the fight or flight instincts, and learning is also limited.  In that sweet spot the activities push the person just beyond their current ability and require full attention and near-maximal effort.  This is where learning happens.

I was once coaching a manager who got frustrated with a more junior employee for not responding to a client issue in the way they had expected.  They lashed out at the junior employee and the conversation grew heated and escalated.  The manager wondered why the junior employee was not learning the “right” way.  It took multiple conversations to help the manager understand they had more to learn.  Their aggressive behavior elicited a defensive response, and no real learning was possible for the junior employee.  Blaming the other person for not learning is the easy way out, but learning is stifled there.  Developing the skill to be frustrated and still guide another person into their Learning Zone is key for the manager. 

Is this easy to achieve?  No, each person’s Learning Zone is unique and constantly shifting.  The Learning Zone begins just beyond the current abilities of that individual at that point in time.  As the current abilities improve, the Learning Zone moves farther out, so the Learning Zone is also a dynamic target.  The learning activities must be continuously altered for the individual to develop mastery. 

The manager must have an intimate awareness of the person’s abilities.  They must establish a deep and frequent connection to the person they are coaching, which can be a challenge in practice.  At the same time, the manager is developing their own ability to develop others.  Developing their personal skills in feedback, learning plans, and learning activities will improve their ability to develop the skills of others.

Skill #1:  Feedback – The Give and Take

Any coach must give feedback so people can adjust based on what they are doing that does and does not work.  The feedback should be honest and respectful.  If the feedback is laced with some kind of attack, aggression, sarcasm, etc., the person will more likely be distracted by the intention or delivery and miss out on the learning opportunity.  The best approach is to come from a genuine place of wanting to support the person.

I have found that starting the feedback with “You want to…” and explaining what works helps the person absorb the message.  I like following it up with “You don’t want to…”  If they have not actually done the undesirable behavior, and I want to preempt it, I might say, “Some people do this, which doesn’t work because…”  Clarifying the impact of the negative behavior helps.  Then I restate the desirable action, and I might even model it.  As much as possible, I try to find the things they did which work well and encourage them to take that farther and do more of it.

Taking feedback is a difficult skill every successful manager must master.  This is more than just listening to feedback and not getting upset, though that is important.  The true mastery of taking feedback is listening with an open mind without defending or disputing even if the other person is wrong or disrespectful.  Treat feedback as a gift even when it is not delivered that way.  A friend of mine was CEO of a non-profit and one of the board members began yelling at him and blaming him for a situation.  My friend listened silently until the board member finished, and calmly thanked him for being open with him about thoughts that others were probably thinking but too afraid to voice.  Then he could address the accusations point by point. 

The goal of feedback is to stay connected to what others think and feel about you.  By welcoming candid feedback, you improve your awareness and connection.  As the manager, you also set the example that others will follow, whether you realize it or not.  Once you achieve mastery in taking feedback, you are better positioned to guide others through the skill of taking feedback. 

The alternative is an atmosphere where issues are not addressed and fester until they explode.  Then later everyone wonders how the environment became so toxic.  A culture where people can openly share candid feedback lays the foundation for healthy and productive group dynamics. 

Not only do you need to welcome feedback, you also need to actively seek it out.  This is one of the greatest dangers a manager faces.  The higher up you are as a manager, the more you are at risk of being disconnected from what is really going on below the surface.  Probing below the surface is a very specific skill.  I recommend the manager regularly bring the team together and ask, “How are we working together as a team?”  The tendency in some groups will be to play it safe and not speak openly about issues.  The manager must break through this or risk being sidelined by team dysfunction.

Have you experienced challenges in giving and receiving feedback?  If so, what techniques have you found that work?

Skill #2:  Learning Plans – Translating Feedback into Skills

Feedback serves little use unless it leads to positive adjustment.  Each piece of feedback regarding what does not work reveals some underlying skill which requires development.  If you are receiving feedback, you may have to take the initiative to translate your feedback into needed skills.  If you are the manager giving the feedback, you will want to do this as the next step.  I prefer not to use the terms behavior or bad habits because they can sound like unchangeable actions.  Instead, I frame them as skills because they are interpreted as something which can be improved through practice.

Identifying the skills to be developed requires much more thought than just giving feedback in the moment.  I find this happens best when I am alone and need to reflect deeply on the person now and in the future.  Taking this step signifies to the person that you care enough about them to invest serious time thinking about and supporting their long-term success.  It helps frame the most negative feedback in a collaborative light for a manager / employee, mentor / mentee, teacher / pupil, coach / athlete, or master / apprentice relationship. 

This step also helps focus the feedback.  I generally start with a list of the feedback that I want to share.  The list starts as a stream of consciousness.  If I spend no time preparing for the delivery of the feedback, it will come across as scattered and confusing, so I have to spend the time organizing the thoughts.  Once I start identifying the skills that go with each piece of feedback, I end up grouping the feedback together based on the skill that will address the feedback.  For example, I once had some feedback for someone who had been aggressive with others and said some offensive things.  I categorized these together under the skill of communicating with respect.  This helped me deliver the message in a more concise way, and it helped them understand and remember the message later.

Have you ever had somebody put together a learning plan for you?  What were the best mentoring experiences you have had?

Skill #3:  Learning Activities – Building the Skills

The final component of designing the Learning Program is the list of Learning Activities.  This is where you take one skill at a time and identify an activity that will develop that skill.  I like to come up with three activities for a skill, but some skills require more while others require fewer.  You can use any format that works for you.  I use a table with three columns.  Column 1 is the Feedback.  Column 2 identifies the Skill.  Column 3 details the Learning Activities.  Most practice is solitary practice, so try to come up with Learning Activities that the person can eventually practice on their own.

For example, one employee was very capable with the technical and verbal aspects of the job.  However, his written communication was filled with grammatical errors.  I progressively gave him more challenging activities to improve his grammar skills.  First, I corrected his grammatical errors and explained them.  Next, I began having him make the corrections that I gave him.  Then I started having him find and make the corrections on his own.  Finally, I started asking him how somebody could misinterpret his message and how he could improve the specificity of his language.

The person will have to repeat the activity many times to master it.  I often prefer to introduce one Learning Activity at a time.  This can feel a little daunting to the manager because getting through the Learning Activities can take a very long time.  I once had an employee who had a single incident that translated into six areas of feedback, six skills needed, and 18 Learning Activities.  Each Learning Activity would take a minimum of weeks of repetition to master.  That meant the Learning Activities would take months or years to complete.  This is a good thing.  Development of skills is a long-term journey.

I usually only share about one Learning Activity at a time.  The idea is to not overwhelm the person.  Allow them to focus on mastering that activity before moving on to the next one.  The feedback, the skills, and the Learning Activities should be delivered in short chunks of information instead of long speeches or long meetings.  Rather than meeting for one hour once a week, five fifteen-minute meetings are more effective.  This gives the person more of an opportunity to absorb the message more completely.

The manager must master the skills of designing Learning Plans and follow through to implement those plans.  The disconnected managers of the world will just tell people what does not work or what results to get without providing the support to the team to develop those skills.  The connected manager is more engaged and takes ownership of the development of their team.

When you are interviewing for a new job, I highly recommend asking the hiring manager what specific skills they have developed in their employees.  You can follow up by asking how they developed those skills.  Do they have a solid answer, or are they just searching for something to say?  You can ask them what feedback they get from their employees.  Do they take the follow-up steps to develop their own skills?  Do they actively solicit feedback from their employees, so they can keep their finger on the pulse of their team, or do they blindly assume they are in touch with their team?  Their answers to these questions will help you understand what to expect if you were to work for them.

What skills has your manager developed in you?  If you are a manager, what specific skills have you developed in your team? 

Photo by Mathias Jensen on Unsplash.