Behavioral Leadership Brings the Water

by John Austin in Behavior change, Behavioral Leadership, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Safety

They ought to want to do it –
Behavioral Leadership brings you the water

Some years ago, a worker shows up at my house to fix the cable TV and while he’s working my pre-school aged son takes it on himself to bring the worker a bottle of water from our pantry. The cable guy thanked him and smiled, it was a nice thing to do.

Being a curious behavioral psychologist, when the worker left our house I asked my son why he brought the guy water. Pushing him a little bit, I said, “Isn’t he paid to do this work? Shouldn’t he bring his own water?” My son said, “He’s doing a lot of work for us and he might get thirsty for some water.”

That exchange got me thinking a bit about the inverse actions that we sometimes see in business.

The argument goes something like this: An employee is not meeting expectations on the job. We suggest that perhaps the business hasn’t created the right conditions for success. A manager stands up and says, “All of this hand holding is getting to be too much for me. When does it end? Do you have to reward every person for every little thing they do? Their paycheck ought to be enough!”

Let’s stop, take a deep breath, and think this one through a little more carefully. What if you used the same logic for:

• • your children? …They ought to go to bed on time because I said so…
  • your spouse? …They ought to do the laundry because it’s always been that way…
  • your friends? …They ought to accept me because that’s what friends are for…
  • your boss? …They ought to want me to work on those valued projects because I’ve been here so long…

What these scenarios do not take into account is your role in creating an environment in which the other person (or persons) would ever want to do what you’re asking them to do.

We’ve all seen people in businesses treat their vendors, employees, customers, and even families, carelessly. Behavioral science would predict these kinds of patterns in some situations, especially when we become too busy.

However, it seems to defy logic: These are the very people we rely on to deliver our key results at work and in our personal life and yet we sometimes don’t treat them with the care and attention they deserve. We sometimes rely on people to simply do what they ought to do, without thinking about what it feels like to be them.

In most cases, a little bit of forethought on your part is all that is needed to make others feel good about what you hope they’ll do for you or the business.

This is perhaps why being too busy is a principle cause in the lack of prudence I am describing – when we’re too busy, we often go on ‘autopilot’ and stop thinking about things carefully.

A paycheck, contract, agreement, formal power or job role is usually not enough to bring out the best in people – these are just some threatening ways to keep people in line. We all know that threats tend to bring out compliance more so than excellence.

Your job as a leader, spouse, parent, etc. is to try to arrange things so that the people who interact with you are happy to be doing so.

Perhaps you can take a few minutes to think about some of your key relationships and consider how well you’ve set yourself and your partners up for success and happiness?

When is the last time you “brought someone a bottle of water”?