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Question Of The Month
What is Legitimate Leadership’s view of incentives?
Answer: Incentives (what we at Legitimate Leadership call ‘carrots’) are not successful motivators – they not only don’t produce better results, they often have negative consequences.
Reimagining The Role Of The Safety Professional, And Safety Leadership Excellence
Given my own experience of how challenging progress on process safety can be in a manufacturing business, and recognising that it is difficult for organisations to be candid at external events, I decided to ‘lift the veil’ in a presentation paper at the IChemE Hazards34 Conference held in Manchester, UK, in November last year.
During 2024 I conducted a series of interviews with anonymous professionals engaged within process safety. Industries included manufacturing, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, oil and gas, nuclear and defence. The perspective was international, with interviewees who worked, or had assets or clients, in the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, APAC, the USA and India.
There is no such thing as a menial job. There is only a job without meaning. A sense of purpose or meaning comes with an understanding of what I do does for others. People come to work for all sorts of reasons which only they decide. A night watchman can come to work for the paycheck or to keep the community safe. Meaning does not come from pursuing it; it is something that ensues as an unintended consequence of a personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself. People are motivated by the ‘give’ not the ‘get’ of the job.
For more information regarding the above, please e-mail events@legitimateleadership.com
Question Of The Month
By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.
Question: What is Legitimate Leadership’s view of incentives?
Answer: Incentives (what we at Legitimate Leadership call ‘carrots’) are not successful motivators – they not only don’t produce better results, they often have negative consequences. Where tasks are non-cognitive and repetitive, incentives can raise output – but even then they effect movement, not willingness. Moreover, the persistent use of ‘carrots’ makes people feel manipulated. Their natural response is retaliation – they manipulate back!
American author Dan Pink argues for replacing incentives with the intrinsic rewards of autonomy (what we call ‘decision-making authority’), mastery (‘coaching for excellence’) and purpose (‘know the ‘why’’). We support Dan Pink’s argument, and we expand on it.
Legitimate Leadership is convinced that what truly motivates people is to work for a boss who is in the relationship to ‘give’ not to ‘get’ from his/her people. The ‘give’ is seven things: care, means, ability, censure, discipline, praise and reward.
To submit your question, email info@legitimateleadership.com
Article: Reimagining The Role Of The Safety Professional, And Safety Leadership Excellence
By Rachael Cowin, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.
Given my own experience of how challenging progress on process safety can be in a manufacturing business, and recognising that it is difficult for organisations to be candid at external events, I decided to ‘lift the veil’ in a presentation paper at the IChemE Hazards34 Conference held in Manchester, UK, in November last year.
During 2024 I conducted a series of interviews with anonymous professionals engaged within process safety. Industries included manufacturing, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, oil and gas, nuclear and defence. The perspective was international, with interviewees who worked, or had assets or clients, in the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, APAC, the USA and India.
These fascinating and free-ranging conversations used some thought-provoking seed questions to dig into what was at issue. Some very common themes emerged with significant relevance to leadership:
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE
Article: How To Inspire People
A recent article in The Economist.
COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: There is no such thing as a menial job. There is only a job without meaning. A sense of purpose or meaning comes with an understanding of what I do does for others. People come to work for all sorts of reasons which only they decide. A night watchman can come to work for the paycheck or to keep the community safe. Meaning does not come from pursuing it; it is something that ensues as an unintended consequence of a personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself. People are motivated by the ‘give’ not the ‘get’ of the job.
OUR SUMMARY OF THIS ARTICLE: You don’t have to scroll for long on LinkedIn to find “inspirational” content. These may amp you up or make you feel nauseas.
But for bosses interested in how to motivate their people around them, there are better options than searching for Steve Jobs quotes.
A forthcoming paper, by Nava Ashraf and Oriana Bandiera of the London School of Economics and Virginia Minni and Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago, finds that this kind of intervention can have dramatic effects in a business setting. A subset of almost 3,000 employees at a consumer-goods firm were randomly assigned to take part in a workshop that helped participants to reflect on pivotal moments in their lives, to articulate what mattered to them and to think about how their current jobs matched their own sense of purpose.
The academics found that taking part in this exercise substantially increased the probability of exits from the firm, particularly among lower performers; increased internal job transfers; and improved the performance of those who stayed in their jobs.
A heightened sense of what is meaningful to individuals provides the best explanation for these outcomes.
READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THIS ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE