EDITION 1: Improving Discretionary Effort

Thanks for joining my newsletter. I hope it provides you with some simple and effective ways to improve your leadership skills and that it will be a resource you can share with your team members.

What is a psychometrician? Think of me as a behavioral statistician. I build assessments that measure people’s knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Over 40 years ago, I got fascinated with the idea that behaviors could be measured. Most of the behaviors I measured were focused on leadership, and the outcomes that they produced were everything from productivity, profitability, turnover, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and discretionary effort. Over time I refined the behaviors that I measured and collected data from millions of assessors and hundreds of thousands of leaders from across the globe.

This newsletter will always be based on the analysis of data; rather than believing in my observational expertise, my goal is to show you the statistics behind the kind of leadership that enables others to become extraordinary.

EDITION 1: IMPROVING DISCRETIONARY EFFORT

The Problem

Every employee makes a critical decision when they start work every day. Are they willing to give all their energy and effort possible to accomplish goals, or are they willing to do the minimum amount of work that keeps them employed? The value of high levels of this discretionary effort is increased productivity. For example, if ten employees give only 10% additional effort, that is equal to one additional employee for which you pay no salary.

The Solution

The competency that has the most significant impact on employees' discretionary effort is the ability to set stretch goals effectively.

Now, I know when people hear the phrase "stretch goals," they want to run for the hills. People don't want to do hard things right now. But there is a science to setting the type of goals that will have people thanking you for the development experience and not regretting they're a part of your team.

Step 1: Understanding Discretionary Effort and Stretch Goals

To demonstrate the impact of setting stretch goals to increase discretionary effort, I analyzed data from 97,654 managers. In the dataset, I looked at evaluations of managers by their direct reports. Why? Direct reports are the people that managers can influence the most, and they are most familiar with the skills and capabilities of the manager.

·??????Each direct report was asked to evaluate the extent to which they were willing to give additional effort and go the extra mile in their current job.

·??????Direct reports also rated their manager on their effectiveness at setting stretch goals.

The managers were divided into quartiles based on their effectiveness at setting stretch goals. It's apparent in the graph below that for managers at the bottom quartile, only 18% of their direct reports were willing to give additional effort. Those rated in the top quartile had three times as many direct reports willing to give extra effort. As a leader and manager, having the ability to effectively set stretch goals is a critical skill and has a big payoff.

Step 2: Approaches to Improving Discretionary Effort

When it comes to inspiring employees to give more effort there are two approaches that represent a large spectrum.

Protectors

·??????Some leaders have a strong desire to take care of and protect their direct reports. They show a strong consideration for the health and welfare of every one of their employees.

Challengers

·??????Other leaders feel it is their role to challenge their direct reports and encourage them to achieve difficult targets.

I initially assumed that those leaders who preferred to challenge their direct reports would be more effective at setting stretch goals. Examining data from over 113,000 leaders, I found that my assumption was correct. The challengers were more effective than the protectors. Still, the group that was the best at setting stretch goals and increasing discretionary effort was the group that scored high on both challenging and protecting. Results showed this group scoring in the 88th percentile on setting stretch goals had significantly more employees with high levels of discretionary effort.

Step 3: Gather Data

It's time to assess the approach you take to set stretch goals. This type of assessment is called a Forced Choice Assessment. For some of the questions, you may think you fall more in the middle, but you must choose. The assessment will take 10-minutes, and you can access it by going to this link below.

Step 4: Analyze Your Results

Are you more of a challenger or a protector??The scores here range from –7 protector to +7 challenger.

Employees want a manager that they believe has their best interest at heart, but most people perform better when challenged and asked to do something difficult. In self-assessment results, we collected 40% of the leaders were protectors and 60% challengers.

Another dilemma for leaders is whether they should use an autocratic or a collaborative approach in getting others to accept a challenging assignment. Most people would prefer the collaborative process where everyone in the team agrees on the goal but often, the collaborative approach results in the goal being less of a stretch and more of a compromise. Most people automatically resist doing difficult things. The key question in selecting the right approach is, “Will the team agree and be committed to taking on a difficult goal?” If the answer is no, then the autocratic approach will work better. We found that 48% of the leaders preferred an autocratic approach and?52% a more collaborative approach.

Step 5: Learn Which Behaviors Drive Discretionary Effort

Many leaders believe that to accomplish stretch goals, all that is required is to come up with a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal."?The term "BHAG" is an acronym Jim Collins and Jerry Porras coined in the book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. While coming up with the stretch goal is a starting place, the process of getting others to embrace the goal and accomplish something others thought was impossible requires leaders to utilize four skills. These skills were discovered by analyzing data from thousands of leaders, some of which were very effective at setting stretch goals while others were ineffective. Looking at those who were the most effective, we identified the four critical behaviors that were the most influential at enabling a leader to set stretch goals.

1.????Driving for Results. Stretch goals, by definition, are difficult. And most people need a push to get started. Leaders who effectively drive for results establish deadlines, hold others accountable, and assign specific tasks to others.

2.????Inspire and Motivate Others. Along with a push to get started, leaders also need to pull. People need some inspiration to do something difficult. Often inspiration comes from doing something that is important and will significantly impact the organization or other people.

3.????Solve Problems. Accomplishing a difficult goal requires more than just hard work and brute force effort. Often problems need to be resolved, things need to be fixed, and more efficient and innovative processes need to be created. Leaders need to look at what is getting in the way of achieving success and finding a better path.

4.????Strategic Perspective. Often when people are working hard to accomplish a difficult task, they focus inward, look down, and concentrate only on that task at hand. It helps if leaders remind others of the longer view and help people see where the organization is ultimately headed.

In the self-assessment, you were evaluated on your preference for engaging in these four different behaviors and your effectiveness at executing each. Improvement on any behavior will help you to improve your ability to establish stretch goals which will increase discretionary effort.

I have created a development guide to help you build an action plan for improvement. To obtain a copy of the development guide that will only be available this month, go to the following link to download it.

Let me know in the comments below your thoughts, experiences, and questions about this research on increasing discretionary effort.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Psychometrician,

Joe Folkman

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