“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

This exchange, perhaps a staple of parent/child relationships, has no place in management. In fact, communicating to employees the why of their work — the context, value and relevance of their work — is vital to both training efforts and to effective coaching. Further, recent research, including a study conducted in a nonprofit fundraising environment, suggests that employees who know how their work positively impacts others are more productive than those who don’t.

Putting Training in Context

A fundamental element of effective training is to place the skills and knowledge being transferred into context. Without this, employees may be unclear about the value of their new abilities. Understanding when and how to apply skills and knowledge aids learning and increases the likelihood that the investment in training will be rewarded.

Context is also important when it comes to the timing of training. Whenever possible, training should be delivered in close proximity to the time it will be used. For example, when I conduct training around performance management programs, which typically have planning, mid-year and year-end components, I prefer to deliver training in three separate sessions during the year rather than in one fell swoop at the beginning of the year. Not only does this allow information to be digested in smaller chunks, but it also ensures employees have the opportunity to apply the training while it is fresh.

Optimizing Performance Feedback

When working with managers about coaching, I emphasize the importance of communicating the why of what they’re doing. For providing developmental feedback, I suggest a simple, three-part approach:

• Identify what needs improvement
• Explain why improvement is necessary
• Solicit ideas about how to improve and/or offer suggestions

In the second step, the deficiency is placed in context enabling the employee to understand broader implications.

Communicating the why also comes into play when delivering positive feedback. Here is a similar, three-part framework:

• Describe the situation generally
• Describe, in specific terms, what the employee did that was effective
• Describe the positive impact of the employee’s effective performance

In the final step, the value of the employee’s contribution is emphasized. This provides positive reinforcement and increases the likelihood that the performance will sustain or repeat.

Understanding Equals Results

The importance of communicating the value of employees’ contributions is underscored by recent research including studies conducted by Professor Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Dr. Grant’s research suggests that employees who understand the positive impact their work has on others are not only happier, but they are also more productive.

In one study, summarized on the Knowledge @ Wharton blog, Dr. Grant and his co-researchers conducted an experiment among university call center workers employed to solicit potential donors. The workers were relatively low paid and frequently encountered rejection resulting in low morale and high turnover.

In the experiment, one group of call center workers met for five minutes with students who received scholarships funded by the employees’ fundraising efforts. Then, for the next month, the researchers monitored both the amount of time all employees spent on the phone with potential donors and the amount of money they brought in. Compared to employees who had no personal contact with the beneficiaries of their work, those who previously met with the recipients spent twice as much time on the phone and brought in nearly three times as much money.

From these results, as well as other research, Dr. Grant concluded that simply being aware of the impact of one’s work greatly increases motivation. Where the work has a direct, visible impact on other people — as is often the case in nonprofit settings — the impact is magnified.

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To maximize the effectiveness of training and coaching as well as employee motivation and productivity, organizations and managers should continually seek ways to communicate to all employees the context, importance and relevance of their work.

What are creative and/or effective ways that organizations and managers can communicate the why of work?

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Joe Brown is the Principal and Founder of Slope Resources, LLC. Slope Resources provides a range of human resources and organization management consulting services to nonprofit organizations of all types and sizes. Joe is also the author of the blog Done by People, which focuses on human resources and organization management in the third sector, and will be a presenter at the 2010 Nonprofit Human Resources Conference. For more information about Joe Brown and Slope Resources, please visit sloperesources.com.

photo credit: Marco Bellucci

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The Power of Why https://blog.execsearches.com/2010/03/30/the-power-of-why/

Last updated on April 19th, 2010 at 05:33 pm