Why Incentives Are Irresistible, Effective, and Likely to Backfire Ken O'Brien was an NFL quarterback in the 1980s and 1990s. Early in his career, he threw a lot of interceptions, so one clever team lawyer wrote a clause into O'Brien's contract penalizing him for each one he threw. The incentive worked as intended: His interceptions plummeted. But that's because he stopped throwing the ball. Years ago, AT&T executives tried to encourage productivity by paying programmers based on the number of lines of code they produced. The result: programs of Proustian length. Incentives are dangerous, and not just because people game them. Take Merrill Lynch. Why are we so bad at anticipating the effects of our well-intentioned incentive plans? But the Midwestern students wrongly predicted that California students would be happier with their lives in general than Midwestern students. Focusing illusions even distort our judgments about ourselves. And this brings us back to the incentive puzzle. To be fair, there are some contexts where one variable dominates.
Carl Rogers Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an influential American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach (or client-centered approach) to psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1956. The person-centered approach, his own unique approach to understanding personality and human relationships, found wide application in various domains such as psychotherapy and counseling (client-centered therapy), education (student-centered learning), organizations, and other group settings. For his professional work he was bestowed the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology by the APA in 1972. Biography[edit] Rogers was born on January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Theory[edit] Nineteen propositions[edit]
Coaching for Team Performance - Team Management Training from MindTools Improving Productivity by Improving Relationships Building great teamwork. © iStockphoto Teams are the force that drives most organizations. Whether it's a functional team, a team of managers, or a project team, people get most done when they work together effectively. So when members of a team don't work well together, performance and productivity can suffer. That's not good for anyone. Have you seen hostility, conflicting goals, and unclear expectations within your teams? So how can you help your team improve? Team Coaching Team coaching helps people understand how to work better with others. To coach your team, focus on interpersonal skills and interactions instead of on individual development (as you tend to do with individually-focused coaching). People must learn to work together and understand how to relate to one another – otherwise the team's output will be less than it could be. Note: Understand Team Dynamics Some people can be "pushier" than others. Establish Behavior Expectations
Challenging the Presentation Paradigm with the 1/1/5 Rule A measure of how bad presentations in academia can be is the sheer number of tips and strategies we’ve suggested on ProfHacker, in a recurring series called Challenging the Presentation Paradigm. One of these techniques I’ve used in my classes for several years is the Pecha Kucha format. With 20 slides at 20 seconds per slide, a Pecha Kucha is, as Jason writes, necessarily “SHORT, INFORMAL, and CREATIVE.” However, as I’ve found out the hard way, a Pecha Kucha format does not necessarily mean students will avoid text-heavy slides, one of the major causes of DBP (Death By PowerPoint). That’s why I’ve begun implementing what I call the 1/1/5 rule for all student presentations. Here’s how I describe the 1/1/5 rule to my students: In addition to the time constraint of the Pecha Kucha, your presentation must also follow the 1/1/5 rule. The 1/1/5 rule is just a small tweak, but it has made all the difference. Have you tried similar techniques in your classrooms? Return to Top
Motivation Overview Anybody who's interested in understanding, predicting, or influencing individual behavior must start with a basic understanding of human motivation. Why do people behave as they do? This question has interested behavioral and social scientists, as well as everyday people for hundreds of years. Previously, we discussed attribution theory. This theory has been designed to explain how people attempt to explain the motivation of others. Is motivation Internal to the individual (dispositional) or the result of External (situational) forces? This overview will attempt to clarify some of these issues related to motivational processes. Energies Behavior- What initiates a behavior, behavioral pattern, or a change in behavior? There are a number of approaches to the study of motivation, each containing a number of specific related theories. These theories emphasize the role of stable dispositions in explaining the variability among individuals in the behavioral patterns. Need Theories. Worth.
How Does Dysfunctional Behavior Influence Team Performance - TCU - The Neeley School of Business October 13, 2008 How Does Dysfunctional Behavior Influence Team Performance – and What Can You Do about It? Research by Dr. Michael Cole Dysfunctional behavior can substantially harm work team functioning and diminish organizations' success. As a recent study shows ( Journal of Applied Psychology , September 2008), dysfunctional behavior creates negative emotions among team members which, in turn, diminishes team performance. With the increasing use of teams, team performance has become a critical component of organizational success. To date, research has devoted limited attention to the effects of dysfunctional team behavior. Teams differ in the way they deal with their members' negative emotions. What does this mean from a practical perspective - for the effective management of dysfunctional team behavior? In spite of such efforts, organizations are unlikely to fully eliminate all dysfunctional behavior in their teams. To resolve this dilemma, two strategies seem viable.
Negotiating Happiness: Managing Peoples’ Predictably Irrational “Focusing Illusions” - Part 1 “All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.” -Baruch Spinoza Many animal species appear to display the emotional states of happiness and unhappiness. Unique to human beings, however, is the active, conscious, and compelling pursuit of happiness as a life purpose. People devote considerable time and energy to planning, discussing, and conniving over how to obtain the sense of wellbeing and satisfaction that forms the core of happiness. Conflicts over differing ideas of happiness can be intense; one person’s dream for a perfect life or world is invariably another’s idea of hell on earth. The Science of Happiness: The Construction of Focusing Illusions in the “Messy” Human Brain The pursuit of happiness is closely associated with the advent of human consciousness. Daniel Kahneman, along with other cognitive psychologists, has termed this thinking a “focusing illusion.”
When Good Incentives Lead to Bad Decisions Among the culprits contributing to the recent financial crisis were bank loan officers who approved mortgage loans that were doomed to fail. Many of these frontline workers were motivated by bonuses and other incentives to approve quantity over quality. Critics decried their voracity. But new research suggests there was something at work beyond simple greed, setting the stage for deeper exploration of how incentives shape not only what we do, but also how we perceive reality. “The question of incentives is fundamental to economics.” "The question of incentives is fundamental to economics," says Shawn A. In a new research paper, coauthored with World Bank economists Martin Kanz and Leora Klapper, Cole explores how various performance incentives affect lending decisions among bank loan officers. More surprisingly, they found that incentives actually have the power to distort loan officers' perceptions of how a loan will perform. An experimental field study Altered perception About the author
Groups and Teams | McGraw-Hill Answers The effectiveness of teams may be measured based on the extent to which the team achieves its objectives and performs on behalf of the overall organization. Previous research has, at times, failed to note the ways in which teams are embedded in overall organizations. Consequently, studies of team effectiveness may not have revealed a complete picture of the nature of team success. For teams to be more effective, they must overcome some of the problems and dysfunctions that groups in general encounter (see this summary above). Long-standing models of team effectiveness include creating the right environment where support, commitment, goals, Reward Systems, communication systems, and physical space are all in sync to allow the team to work in a productive atmosphere. Tasks should be designed to be interdependent, Team Size should be kept as small as possible, and members should be selected based on both being motivated and competent.
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