Thinking beyond carrot and stick?

“For all their expertise in figuring out how things work, people are often painfully aware of how much of human behavior is a mystery. People do things for unfathomable reasons, that are opaque even to themselves.” – Gary Wolf.

More so, being at the top of the hierarchical pyramid of power – the leader – is all the more taxing as it entails the burden of figuring out the perfect, even remotely so, set of motivations and inspiration, didactic or empowering, to model the behavior of the team that best meets the requirements to achieve the collective vision. In isolation, you are the director of your own behavior, but when it drills down to leadership, you are what your team is and how it behaves in a certain set of situations.

In the world of business, small businesses in particular, leaders are often at a loss in figuring out the tactics and models in order to steer the team’s behavior, motives, and habits collectively in the right direction. The habits of individuals are normally entrenched deep within their system. Individually, people have a deep-rooted set of beliefs that steer their actions which, in most cases, are not aligned with the collective whole. Mostly, these people are not adept enough to understand that, most of the time, the collective set of actions of a team can be misaligned with their individual beliefs and still lead to a positive outcome as a whole. This is where the role of the leader comes in molding the behavior of the individuals and aligning the collective habits of the team.

We may infer from this that the leader of the pack, the alpha, has to come up with a certain set of actions, enforced or subtle, to model the team’s behavior. These actions can broadly be divided into two categories, Reinforcement, and Punishment, both of which can be further subdivided into negative and positive. Many people get confused about the difference between reinforcement and punishment, especially between negative reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement is increasing desirable behavior and punishment is decreasing undesirable behavior. Positive reinforcement or punishment is when a stimulus is added to increase or decrease a behavior. Conversely, negative reinforcement and punishment are when a stimulus is removed to increase or decrease a behavior. Analyzing both modes of stimulus sheds more light on the differences - and utilization of both in modeling the team’s collective behavior. So if you're wondering what type of stimulus people respond to best, join the legions of behavioral experts who say that developing a positive workplace environment — and one that promotes urgency towards achieving collective goals — is right up there with drafting a business plan: critical to your success as a business owner.

Assessing the traits of a cohesive team and positive workplace is the building block from where you can start your journey to choose the right stimulus. No workplace can supply the excitement and energy of a theme park, at least not every day. But it should feature certain characteristics to provide the context in which positive culture can thrive. Positive workplaces are those in which the people are motivated and driven toward a collective vision, while also being motivated and encouraged in a personal capacity, not feeling burdened and stressed out by negative feelings. They are able to freely express themselves and the environment thrives on healthy competitive work culture.

Reinforcement, as briefed earlier, is increasing a desirable behavior. Desirable behavior, here, is identified by the user as the one that aids in steering towards the collective, desirable goal. An individual may have a preference to act in a certain way, but, to achieve the collective target, and mold the bearings of the subject to a preferable outcome, a stimulus is added or subtracted when that desirable action is performed. This stimulus is generally termed a “Pattern Interrupt” – jarring but effective stimuli – that forces the individual to change his routine, resulting in the development of a habit, or changing an existing one. Prevailingly, as supported by almost all behavioral researchers, reinforcement, particularly positive reinforcement, is considered the most effective way to model the collective behavior of the team without introducing negative sentiments and resentments.

Punishment, as opposed to reinforcement, is an action where a stimulus is removed or added to decrease a behavior. Although, arguably, considered a lesser form of behavior modifier, is often used by many conservative leaders, and more so with an apparently positive outcome. However, these positive outcomes are short-sighted, and normally come along with the baggage of negative sentiment and decreased morale, in the long term. Negative reinforcement is NOT the same thing as “punishment.” Punishment implies that you receive a penalty for doing something you’re not supposed to do — whereas negative reinforcement implies not receiving a penalty for doing something. For instance, if you misbehave and your mom spanks you, that’s punishment: adding a bad stimulus when you did something bad. If your late comings to the office are ignored because you were a superstar performer, that’s negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement occurs when an aversive stimulus (a ‘bad consequence’) is removed after a good behavior is exhibited. The difference is subtle, but very important.)

We are then faced with a difficult question that has baffled behavioral psychologists for decades; Which is more effective, positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement? Remember that star that you received from your teacher that you received on being on time every day to class? That’s positive reinforcement. In a similar way, your detention was revoked because you were on time for your class for the whole month, which is a way of negative reinforcement. In the former, the star is a stimulus that was added to increase your punctuality. Whereas, in the latter case, the nullification of the detention is a stimulus that was removed, again, to increase your punctuality. A stimulus was either removed or introduced to increase a certain desired behavior, both being a case of reinforcement, positive and negative respectively. To reiterate, Negative reinforcement is not to be confused with punishment. There is a subtle difference between both.

To conclude, between the two behavioral modifiers, the generally accepted model is reinforcement, as compared to punishment. However, some may still argue in favor of the latter. The pressing question is, then, do you think positive and negative reinforcement are equally effective? To answer, it all comes down to pain versus pleasure. Most would agree that running from painful circumstances is exhausting. It’s annoying. It’s the exact opposite of seeking pleasure. Negative reinforcement might be actually far more effective for sparking initial habit change. In the context of the example above, imagine that you got fined $50 for every day you came late. You probably don’t have to spend any time researching to know that you’d very quickly stop coming late. But here’s where things get interesting: If you were continually penalized for coming late, the negative reinforcement would eventually stop working. You’d become resentful of the constant punishment. Maybe you’d switch jobs. Long-term negative reinforcement doesn’t get the job done — and that’s where we bring back positive reinforcement. If you allowed the new routine to take place, and you replaced the punishment for coming late with an incentive for over-performance, it will help in maintaining the habit.

Negative gets you started. Positive keeps you going.