| | April - June 2020MANAGEHRMAGAZINE.COM19that interfere with their ability to execute on any such plans. The first is straightforward: leaders have way too much on their plates. They are expected to engage their teams, execute strategy within the entire organization, and still complete their own work. It's exhausting, if not impossible, for most team leaders to accomplish this, and so (for a variety of reasons) engagement responsibilities tend to get left on the backburner. Secondly, leaders usually don't become leaders because they're good at leading. They become leaders because they're good at executing. The best sales person becomes the sales manager, the best coder becomes the IT manager, and so on. People who tend to get promoted are really good at doing something, but that `something' is rarely about leading people. This leaves many managers ill-equipped to engage employees despite the expectations put upon them. Unfortunately very few interventions on the market have successfully accounted for these challenges. For example, many of the leadership development tools out there only provide employees with feedback in a report, which isn't enough to drive actual behavior change. Leaders need action plans, encouragement, reminders, and feedback about progress. Knowing this, we recently designed CompassSM, a talent activation solution designed to boost leadership and collaboration behaviors. By incorporating behavioral economics and adult learning strategies, Compass uses confidential assessments and reports to help leaders understand the unmet needs of their teams and colleagues via easy to digest feedback reports. It then guides them on how best to serve those needs through personalized email coaching. The results have been astounding, creating 10 percent score improvements from a total of 16 minutes of development work from leaders.So how can your company use behavioral economics strategies to drive engagement? Consider these three tactics.Loss AversionBack to the notion of loss aversion. With targeted use, this technique can help build team leaders desire to develop their skills. It is the difference between guiding them to think about, "What you stand to gain in promotions, opportunities and career advancement by becoming a better leader," versus, "What do you stand to lose in promotions, opportunities and career advancement by not becoming a better leader?" This creates twice the motivation by simply changing just two words.FramingImagine this: a patient needs a serious medical procedure. A doctor could frame it one of two ways: "90 percent of the people who have had this procedure have recovered well," or "10 percent of people who have had this procedure have died." Unsurprisingly, most people would be more inclined to agree with the first statement despite the fact that both convey the exact same message. Now, think about how framing could be utilized in the workplace to motivate teams. "I think that 80 percent of the presentation is good," versus "I think 20 percent of the presentation is not good." Despite the same underlying truth, how a manager frames any situation alters employees' attitude and efforts towards it.PrimingPriming is the idea that the more often people experience a term, concept, or By embracing behavioral economics, leaders can structure programs and communications in ways that boost intrinsic motivationidea, the more likely they will find opportunities in their day-to-day life to see and act upon that thing. For Compass, we created a diagnostic approach so that for each employee we can personalize a development plan and then follow up with a treatment in the form of eight weekly coaching emails. The emails always use keywords in the subject line to prime employees on the primary area of their focus. So it could be "recognition," "inclusivity," or "development." This is one way to prime managers to remind them in small bursts to focus on that particular aspect of leadership.These are just three of many behavioral economics techniques that can be used daily to help engage a workforce. This is becoming especially important as the economy is nearing full employment and companies are fighting tooth and nail to recruit top talent. In today's talent marketplace, anticipating how employees will actually react (not how they should react), and then structuring your interactions to leverage that understanding can only give you a leg up in attracting, retaining and engaging the best workforce possible.
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