The progress principle
This one is for Managers –
I suspect you’re already aware of the substantial influence you have over your direct reports’ professional performance, contentment, and engagement. You’re familiar with the real reason employees leave their jobs (it’s not the job, it’s the manager). You can quickly recall the good and bad managers you’ve had in your career.
Nonetheless, management skills are a struggle for many people because they’re a completely different set of skills. Most of us are promoted into management positions based on our success as individual contributors – roles where we may or may not have received the chance to practice management skills, but still hold the values of Specialist, Associate, or Coordinator positions. In fact, managers are 11% less likely to strongly agree that they have the opportunity to do what they do best at work. This means they are not working from a position of strong skill, either due to circumstances or because the skills required of managers are different than (and more difficult for some) the skills required for more executional roles. And with good reason! You Managers are served a heaping dish of responsibility that runs the spectrum from making sure the executional details are on point to relaying the appropriate info to your superiors to the consistent development of your direct reports’ skills to ensuring your team is engaged and happy. Need some help???
I want to share something to increase your management skills strength with one shift of perspective. That is to focus on progress. The Harvard Business Review studied the daily diary entries of 669 knowledge-workers from dozens of companies around the world and found that “of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.” This is the “progress principle,” and it says that, in any field, everyday progress can seriously impact your team’s sentiment and performance.
Well yeah, you might say this is obvious. But as part of the same study, managers around the world did not see this as the case. They ranked “making progress” as the least effective motivation tool for their teams behind positive feedback as the top-ranked. Shifting your daily focus to emphasize progress will most effectively and positively motivate and engage your teams.
How do you get started? Take these 3 actions to practice a progress principle mindset:
Acknowledge the small wins. Your larger projects and goals won’t get accomplished overnight. Make sure to acknowledge and celebrate the smaller – yet still integral – milestones along the way. This is a sure way to emphasize progress.
Show your team how their work is contributing. Sometimes those larger projects and goals are made up of menial, tedious, laborious tasks. When your team is stuck in these for days at a time, it can quickly demotivate them – it’s difficult to see how that stuff actually makes the wheel turn. Take the time to shine a light on that connection. Never dismiss those tasks as unimportant. Allow your team to ‘own’ it (don’t helicopter them), and solicit feedback on how they think those tasks could be improved.
Be a catalyst and nourisher of progress. What’s that mean? Well, it doesn’t look like micromanaging your team, giving them unclear and unrealistic directions and deadlines, limiting their resources, and not rolling up your sleeves to get dirty when all hands are on deck.
Emphasizing progress alone isn’t the antidote to your team’s success. It’s bolstered by the other management tools – process, clear communication, effective feedback, consistent/healthy attitudes, etc. A progress-at-all-costs mentality also won’t be helpful. However, asking yourself each day how your team can make meaningful progress will help determine your next action and the direction you lead your team.
Thoughts on this? Let me know here or email me at matt@mattbrunercoaching.com. If adopting this approach is something your business needs help doing at scale, coaching is the perfect catalyst for helping managers to practice. Please schedule some time with me if you’re interested in learning more about this.
Go get ‘em this week.