“First, we need to relinquish the fact that people are rational. Recent research has shown emotions hold more sway over our decisions than reason; we turn to logic merely to justify our choices after the fact.” (Ellen Gibson, Business Week).
This excerpt is one of the summaries to a review of Management Rewired: Why Feedback doesn’t Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science, by Charles S. Jacobs.
If you’ve read the latest Workpuzzle blogs by Ben Hess (1,2) trying to rationalize his coffee addiction, you have witnessed, first hand, this principle at work. He is physically, and therefore emotionally attached to coffee, and continues to look for evidence to justify his addiction. He does a pretty good job of this, I might add.
What Jacobs details in his book has actually been conveyed previously in countless other ways – Jacobs has just written a book using the latest brain research to justify a well found truth. The truth is that people respond more to their emotions than they do to rational motivations.
It’s long been known, for instance, that people respond best when they are performing meaningful work and striving to do their best, and when managers don’t manage out of reward and punishment. Professor John Seddon from the University of Cardiff in his work, Freedom from Command and Control, states that:
“Dysfunctional behaviour is ubiquitous and systemic, not because people are wicked but because the requirement to serve the hierarchy competes with the requirement to serve customers.”
When management becomes out of control,
“…people’s ingenuity is engaged in survival not improvement. By causing managers and staff to lose sight of their customers, they can ultimately contribute to putting the organization out of business altogether.”
In Gibson’s article, The Stop-Managing Guide to Management, Gibson explains:
“Whether we’re a chimpanzee or a corporate employee, we don’t like being controlled by others. Instead of trying to alter behaviors by fiat, he recommends that managers stop managing. Employees should set their own objectives, critique their own performance, and come up with their own strategies for improvement. People are self-motivating, Jacobs says, especially when they feel they’re doing meaningful work. (In case this strikes anyone as a dubious assertion, the author points out that engaging tasks stimulate the brain’s dopamine system and deliver the same ‘high’ we get from food and nicotine.)”
So what’s a boss to do?
“Managers are better served by using subtle tactics to influence employees. Understanding that people are strongly motivated by emotion, he recommends that leaders create evocative ‘narratives’ about an organization’s mission. For a small startup, it could be as basic as a David-vs.-Goliath plotline.
Here’s an example of a rewired manager in action: A team with a specific goal feels it’s understaffed. Jacobs suggests the manager defer to the team’s point of view rather than react irritably. Acknowledge that the team is shorthanded, he advises, then convince members that adding staff would dilute their accomplishment.
The book draws parallels between the couch and the cubicle. The goal of the talk therapist is to guide the patient away from self-defeating mindsets. But it’s hard to imagine the average boss having the patience to apply these techniques, and Jacobs acknowledges that his approach takes more effort than employing carrot and stick. Even so, reading Management Rewired might soften the touch—and boost the effectiveness—of many a corporate drill sergeant.”
Keep in mind that most of you who have been raised under the reward and punishment system, with little exposure to the more subtle motivations, are emotionally attached to that way of relating, and will find ways to justify that management style. But if you do this, you’ll be rationalizing something that’s not good for you or your team, much like Ben continues to rationalize his coffee addiction.
