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Fellow Workers as a Source of Reward and Punishment on the Job

Organization Development Michael Cardus Create Learning Team Building and Leadership (25)

In earlier articles I shared a challenge a management team and I faced in changing the organizational systems and culture from a process of KITA Kick in the Ass motivation to one that had embedded rewards & recognition of achievement in the work itself.

In an effort to change this we identified the following:

systems-Drive-Behavior

Rewards and punishment to people in their roles at work come from three sources.

 

Fellow Workers

Positive Consequences

Negative Consequences

Positive & affirming comments from fellow workers. For example “Great job presenting in that meeting today.” + “You are one of the best at doing that type of work.”

Use of formal development and improvement teams. The connection and camaraderie felt from being responsible to a team of peers.

Use of informal teams. When people chose to work together for a shared cause, whether work related or not.

Negative & disconfirming comments from fellow workers. For example “Slow down, you are making us look bad.” + “Now because of your work in identifying x,y,z the team has to be together longer on this.”

Peers viewing development & learning as kissing-up & publically making fun of people who want to learn.

Open sarcasm at people’s suggestions.

Threats of physical and /or property damage to high performers.

We took the examples above and gathered stories from the jobs of when people received recognition & reward from fellow workers, plus when they felt deterred by fellow workers.

From those stories we began to change how the work was done, policies & procedures, and performance support for the managers and people.

 

What do you think?

Share how your fellow workers can be rewarding or punishing? What should be added to the positive consequences? What should be added to the negative consequences?

Team Building Leadership Innovation expert Michael Cardus

michael cardus is create-learning

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