Winner culture creates losers

DN article Monday 30th of January

At first – we would like to congratulate Associate Professor Christina Nerstad at Norwegian School of Management – BI, on her doctoral theses “In Pursuit of Success at Work: An Empirical Examination of the Perceived Motivational Climate, Its Outcomes and Antecedents”, where she asks the question: What kind of motivation climate and working culture promotes and restrains performance?

The BI researcher found that focusing on results alone may have the opposite effect then one might think. By always pointing out the best employees, comparing employee’s results and building a culture based solely on competition – leaders create bad performance, lost engagement and over time, burn out their employees.

Afraid of mistakes – resist challenges

- A person who is very performance oriented gets into trouble when things are going the wrong way: He or she does not handle disappointments, and making mistakes frames one’s self-image. Highly performance oriented people will resist taking on challenging tasks as they are afraid of making mistakes, Nerstad comments in the DN article.

Nerstad recommends leaders who want the best results to emphasize each individual’s ability to master an assignment and relate it to his or hers’ potential. Development is a key word. And it is all about mastering new projects, continuously.

From high performance to performance anxiety

To illustrate her point, Christina Nerstad tells a little story of an experiment on two groups solving the same, easy task. The first group was told they did a great effort, and said yes to an even more challenging task. The second group solved the same task, but was told that they were very intelligent. They said “no” to another, more challenging task – afraid of not managing it, and not being smart enough. This illustrates an important point: When moving from showing what you are good at, to having to prove that you are worthy – performance falls. And it also shows that use of language has a great effect on performance – not only what you focus on, but also what you say.

After reading about Nærstand’s research we at TPG are even more aware of the importance of creating a culture where people feel that have a degree of autonomy, they manage and master their jobs and they recognise and buy into a purpose in what they do. And, just as important, how short the distance is between having a high performing culture and a culture with performance anxiety.

Focusing on inner motivation to reach higher performance

The leadership style Nerstad recommends, relates to what significant researchers calls the transformational leadership style. This style does not focus on simple reward based exchanges or agreements, such as do this – and I will give you that, but relates to the employees’ inner motivation, being curious, listening to their concerns and ideas and stimulating them in thinking through situations and problems for themselves, and thus helping them to develop their own abilities.

Research findings from the last 20 years shows that this style is far more effective in generating higher levels of extra effort, commitment, performance and satisfaction among employees – regardless of leadership position, type of organisation or organisational culture.

From research findings to making change happen

The Performance Group emphasizes the transformational leadership style in our leadership development programs. And we know how hard it is to move from understanding new theories, to actually applying it in your everyday busy life being a leader. That is why we support and challenge our clients in adapting new knowledge to new behaviour, and we make them practice. We arrange training sessions where leaders in different levels of an organisation work with real life challenges. That’s how we make our clients release their potential, in both adapting new theory and in raising their employees’ level of performance.

Curious for more? Check out how TPG works with leadership development and learn more from one of our clients, Ringnes, and their leadership development program.