Mindset of Success: The Science of Personal Leadership Development

Achievement Motivation: How to Frame Goals to Increase Intrinsic Motivation

We all face times when we lack motivation. It turns out that there may be something similar about these times: the language we use to set goals. There are ways of framing goals that boost motivation and ways that sap motivation.

 

Today’s article is adapted from the chapter on building motivation in yourself, your supervisees, and your children in my book The Confident Leader.

 

If you’re a parent, this is particularly important for how you frame experiences with your kids because we learn intrinsic motivation early in life.

 

Enjoy and post questions or comments below.

 

You know goals are important, and may have heard that the best goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-limited. What you may not know how important the language you use to frame your goal is. In 2002, motivation researchers from Rochester, NY and France learned something interesting from how teenagers dribbled basketballs.

 

 

3 Ways to Frame Goals

 

Students were randomly assigned to one of three groups. In the first group called “Performance-Approach,” they were told that their dribbling would be filmed to select those with the best dribbling, and the video would be shown to other students to teach dribbling. The second group, called “Performance-Avoidance” was told the opposite, that tapes of students with the worst dribbling would be selected to help other students learn what errors to avoid. A third group of students, called “Mastery Group” were told that the purpose was to assess the teaching of dribbling, and they would have two attempts to work on improving.

 

The only difference in the 3 groups was these 30-second instructions. Intrinsic motivation was measured by how long students continued to dribble when the evaluator told them they had free time.

 

Which Worked Best?

 

Results showed that students in the Performance-Approach and Mastery Group had equally high levels of intrinsic motivation, significantly higher than those in the Performance-Avoidance group. Three variables explained this:

 

1)   Competence (how capable you feel).

2)   State anxiety (how nervous you are in the moment).

3)   Task absorption (how much you’re concentrating on the activity).

 

When you focus on the prospect of failure (as in the Performance Avoidance group), you feel less confident, become more anxious, and are not engaged in the task.

 

Take Away Points

 

Here are lessons learned from these basketball dribblers:

 

1)   Create Performance Approach or Mastery goals for yourself or others to build optimal motivation and effort.

 

2)   Keep yourself and those you motivate (your supervisees, your employees, your children, your peers) focused on success rather than the prospect of failure. 

 

3)   Boost motivation by recognizing people for what they do well rather than publicly pointing out mistakes.

 

4)   Increase intrinsic motivation by allowing for unstructured time to continue a task.

 

5)   Keep in mind that while mastery goals can be quite motivating, there are times when they aren’t a good idea because they can encourage you to keep going down dead ends, rather than strategically moving on.

 

6)   And if you find yourself going into the Performance-Avoidance mentality, bring yourself back by getting absorbed in the task, and focusing on learning and the process.

 

Experiment with how you frame your goals and see if you feel differently and get better results.

 

Have a look at the book for more research-based tips on improving energy and motivation, making difficult decisions, and being the Confident Leader in your work and life.

The 5 P's to Powerful Presence

Presence is a hard thing to define—it’s something that is felt rather than thought. Imagine someone with incredible presence entering the room… She automatically takes up space and commands attention. Her presence is magnetic, drawing others to her. She holds herself with grace and poise. She is clearly a confident leader in all she does.

Your presence communicates “I have something valuable to add here. If you’re wise, you’ll look at me and listen.” Presence is similar to charisma. The slight difference is that presence conveys authority and intelligence. A trendy Hollywood actor may have great charm and charisma, but lacks the presence of the classic Oscar-winning actors who are charismatic but also convey credibility and power.

Everyone can achieve a powerful presence. While research shows that certain characteristics (such as being tall and physically fit) automatically enhance presence, you can have a wonderful presence no matter what your natural attributes are.

Here I’ll share with you my 5 P’s to creating your powerful presence.

#1: Posture
Nothing instantly shows your authority as well as standing and taking up all the space in the room you deserve. Good posture is more than standing tall. It’s also about keeping your shoulders back, neck stretched, chin slightly tilted up, pelvis slightly tilted down, and feet firmly planted on the ground with your weight back in your heels.

If you’re unsure where your perfect posture is, consult a physical therapist or personal trainer. If you’re like most of us who sit hunched over at a computer all day, your posture is less than ideal.

#2: Poise
Poise is grace under pressure. Unfortunately many people are never able to exhibit poise because they are too afraid of failing. You may think that to have presence and convey authority, you need to be perfect and professional. The problem with this approach is that you may be too careful, thereby limiting your natural charisma, and preventing yourself from making mistakes.

You need to face the fire to convey your poise. Bring on challenges. Confront difficult situations and people. Show that you care but also stay calm and hold your ground. Your poise will shine through.

#3: Polish
A polished appearance is key to your presence. A disheveled appearance, wrinkled clothes, mismatched colors, and an out-of-date look greatly undermine your authority.

People who present themselves attractively are better able to influence others and command respect. If you don’t know what colors, fits, and fabrics look best on you, check with an image consultant or go to a high-end department store or boutique where they will measure and fit you.

#4: Projection
Project your voice with the right volume and pitch. Show that you have something valuable to say by speaking clearly and loudly. If you are a natural mumbler and soft-speaker, practice articulation by recording yourself speaking.

Know your natural voice. If you speak too loudly, have a scratchy throat, or have a very high-pitched voice, your voice may grate on people, so it’s worth working on. Projection comes from your mind as much as your vocal cords- have confidence in what you say, and you’ll naturally project.

#5: Pay Attention
Ninety percent of your attention should be on the person you’re speaking with, and 10% should be on yourself. You want to pay attention to yourself to be aware of your posture (keep it open) and facial expression (relaxed and warm).

When you pay attention to others, you enhance your charisma and personal magnetism. We like those who like us. Genuinely convey your interest in others and you’ll enhance your likeability, personal power and presence. You’ll be better able to communicate your ideas, positively influence others, and make a real difference.

As you practice these 5 P’s to your powerful presence, you’ll find that they are not difficult. They should be natural extensions of you—if you’re trying too hard and forcing it, you will get the opposite effect…You may be seen as arrogant or insecure. To practice, simply keep one or a couple of the P’s in the back of your mind—you don’t need to try to do them. When in doubt, simply use empathy and focus on others, and you can’t go wrong.

Maximizing Performance Appraisals

As you know, performance appraisals can be very stressful for both the employee and the manager. Let’s explore how to make them not only useful and less stressful, but a productivity and loyalty-boosting experience.

How Managers Can Effectively Face Performance Appraisals

For the manager, these evaluations are difficult, especially when constructive criticism needs to be given. While it is important that managers give honest and direct feedback, they often fear compromising the quality of the relationship with their employees, hurting the individual’s feelings, decreasing morale and teamwork. Managers worry about how employees will take feedback and whether it will be taken out of context. Managers sometimes doubt their own leadership abilities and wonder, “who am I to give this type of feedback?”

It is also common for managers to dislike the performance appraisal where almost everything is positive because they worry that their employees will then slack off or think that they are pushovers for going so easy on them.

Setting up Your Session

Frame the session within the employee’s goals for her career and your goals for her and the company. Create direct links to using the session to make changes with specific incentives. The worst thing to do is not to follow-up because that sends the message that the session was not important. Make sure that the employee has the necessary resources to make the changes you are asking him to make.

Delivering Difficult Feedback

The best performance appraisals do not present any shocking information. Managers should give ongoing feedback to employees so employees know what to expect in their appraisals. This reduces the anxiety on both sides and improves the usefulness of the appraisals. Follow-up on the appraisals is equally important.

The employee will best hear feedback (positive or negative) when it helps them to accomplish their goals. If the manager can frame negative feedback as help or advice that can enable the employee to reach his career goals, it will be taken much better and even appreciated. It is also important to balance negative with positive feedback so the employee does not dismiss the important negative feedback as the manager being overly critical.

If your employee reacts negatively, here are a few tips. First, recognize that the employee is likely to have that reaction because they care about their position and want to do a good job. Second, try to empathize with their position or put yourself in their shoes. For a crying employee, you can say, “I see it is very important to you to do well in this position and I really appreciate that. Would you be willing to work together to make that happen?” Third, address the behavior specifically.

If the behavior is inappropriate, the employee needs to know. A good way to diffuse a defensive response is to give specific, concrete, behavioral examples. Fourth, if the employee is having a strong emotional reaction and not hearing your feedback, schedule a follow-up session to discuss it when he is feeling calmer.

How Employees Can Effectively Face Performance Appraisals

For the employees, performance appraisals are inherently difficult because evaluations are naturally anxiety-provoking. For most people, it is intimidating to feel that you are being critically evaluated.

Many employers are not the best about giving regular feedback, employees are often unsure what to expect and the fear of the unknown is difficult. There is often a good deal riding on these evaluations (your job, a promotion, a raise, etc) so that adds pressure to it.

When you have a review, go in with a strong working knowledge of your own performance appraisal. Know where you have been excelling and where you have been weaker. Proactively saying, “I have struggles a bit on this account and want to improve my sales skills,” will come across very well to your manager and make her want to help you. Also prepare specific questions and ideas about what you need to do your job better. Be careful not to complain but to request specific resources or assistance to help you perform your best.

Recognize whether your boss is giving you helpful criticism or whether he is being overly critical or malicious. If it is the latter, do your best to remove yourself emotionally from the situation and let the criticism roll off you. If your boss is reasonable and has some helpful pointers and ideas, remind yourself how the criticism will help you and that your boss’s purpose is to help you perform your best.

Creating Lasting Change

It’s critical for both employees and managers to follow up on the feedback in the performance appraisal. Employees can ask for and be open to both positive and negative feedback, and managers can go out of their way to provide employees with ongoing support and suggestions for improvement.

What we all really want is ATTENTION

I’d like to share an excellent article by bestselling author and thought-leader David Meerman Scott. I had the privilege of interviewing him and really enjoy his ideas.

 

I'd like to be bold and boil down thousands of conversations I've had over the past ten years as well as about five years blogging into one word: ATTENTION.

 

Entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business owners want people to pay attention to their company. Marketers, PR pros, advertisers, and salespeople are on the payroll for one reason: To generate attention. 

 

In thinking about attention, there seem to be four main ways to generate it today. As I evaluate companies on a regular basis it seems that they are spending too much time, money, and effort on three ways of generating attention, and not enough on a fourth way, which is to earn attention by publishing great information online that people will find.

 

You can BUY attention. (This is called advertising). You buy access to people through television commercials, magazine and newspaper ads, the Yellow Pages, billboards, tradeshow floor space, direct mail lists, and the like. Advertising agency staffers are really good at buying attention. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult an advertising agency, the solution always involves buying attention.

 

You can BEG for attention. (This is called Public Relations).  You beg for access via the editorial gatekeepers at radio and TV stations, magazines, newspapers, trade journals, and more and more these days, bloggers, podcasters and other social networking sites. I realize that the word "beg" is a little extreme, but in my former life as VP of corporate communications for several public companies I did feel a bit like a beggar. And these days I get hundreds of pitches a month from people (usually PR agency staffers) who want me to write about something in the magazine articles I write or my blog or books and many of these pitches have a whiff of desperation about them. Public Relations agency staffers are really good at begging for attention. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult a public relations agency, the solution always involves generating attention from third parties.

 

You can BUG people one at a time to get attention. (This is called sales). You knock on doors, call people on the telephone, send personal emails, or wait for individuals to walk into your showroom. Again, sorry about the extreme nature of the word "bug" but that's what I feel when the confronted with pushy sales tactics. Salespeople are really good at getting attention one person at a time. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult a sales professional, the solution always involves generating attention one person at a time.

 

You can EARN attention online. (There is debate on what this is called.) People have referred to creating information on the Web as "inbound marketing," "new marketing," "social media marketing," "content marketing," and "permission marketing." The idea of all of these is creating something interesting and publishing it online for free: A YouTube video, blog, research report, series of photos, twitter stream, ebook, Facebook fan page and the like. An increasing cadre of social media gurus claim to be really good at generating attention through social media. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult a social media guru, the solution always involves earning attention by publishing content online.

 

I recommend that every businessperson know what the four ways to generate attention are. And you should understand the point of view of the person you are talking with about attention, especially when there is the inevitable pushback about earning attention through what I call the new rules of marketing and PR.

 

Most organizations have a corporate culture around one of these approaches to generating attention. (Examples: P&G primarily generates attention through advertising, Apple via PR, EMC via sales, and Zappos via social media). Often the defining organizational culture is because the founder or the CEO has a strong point of view. When the CEO comes up through the sales track, all attention problems are likely to become sales problems.

 

Chances are that your CEO did not come up via the social media track. So you’ll have to convince your boss to invest in social media. Most organizations over spend on advertising and sales and under-invest in social media, but nearly all organizations should be doing some combination of all four ways of generating attention.

 

 

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader,
and the author of the award-winning BusinessWeek best-selling book The New Rules of
Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, viral marketing and online media
to reach buyers directly, which is being published in 24 languages and the new hit
book World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your
Ideas and Share Your Stories. He is a recovering VP of marketing for two publicly
traded technology companies and was also Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder,
at the time one of the world’s largest newspaper and electronic information companies.
David has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Hong Kong and has presented
at industry conferences and events in over forty countries.  

 

Check out his blog http://www.webinknow.com/

 

Follow him on Twitter http://twitter.com/dmscott

 

Download his free ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free at http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/documents/Viral_Marketing.pdf

 

 

 

 

Improve Your Work Relationships

Much of your workplace success is based not on what you do but who you know. The better your relationships with coworkers and others in your workplace, the better your career will go. Here are 7 simple steps to improving your relationships at work.

1) Make small talk: Get to know your coworkers so it does not always seem all about work. The key to making appropriate office small talk is to not get too personal too soon. Keep it general at first and then gradually work your way up to discussing family and more personal issues when your coworker is also moving in that direction of discussions. Also keep small talk at work limited (don’t go on and on) to respect everyone’s tight deadlines.

2) Help each other out: Show them that you are willing and able to help them out when they are under a tight deadline. Not only will they reciprocate for you, but they will begin to trust and depend on you.

3) Ask them for their thoughts and opinions: This is a great way to show them that you really value and respect them. People like those who they feel like them. Show them that you value their advice and feedback.

4) Get away from the office gossip: Even if you have resolved not too gossip about your coworkers, you can be guilty by association. When workplace gossip starts, excuse yourself. This will show people that you will not be involved in the gossip and that they can trust you.

5) Do little things like get them holiday cards or birthday cards, congratulate them on their good work, and offer to grab them some lunch when you are going out.

6) Let others take the credit when they have done most of the work. If you are incorrectly given credit and praise, acknowledge the coworker who deserves the accolades.

7) Handle workplace conflict seamlessly: If you are not directly involved in the conflict, stay out of it, at least initially. If you decide you must get involved, plan out some negotiation strategies ahead of time and facilitate the resolution of the conflict. The key is to show that you care, but without becoming rash or worked up.

These tips, while effective, may not work in every workplace and with every person. When in doubt, ask. Ask your coworkers how you can best help them. Most importantly, be sure to follow up and keep your word by doing what you say you’re going to do.