The Progress Principle: What Can Managers Do to Make Employees Engaged and Productive?

I recently participated in an American Management Association webinar entitled The Progress Principle: Sparking Employee Engagement and Performance. The presenters were Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, co-authors of a book entitled The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.


1. Inner Work Life Drives Performance

Amabile and Kramer conducted a “diary study” of employees in seven different industries, asking them to describe daily their activities and feelings of engagement.  They coupled this diary information with numerical performance data. 
This study found that employees’ inner work life drives performance.  Inner work life consists of employees’ perceptions, emotions and motivations. 

Employees’ inner work life determines whether they are engaged and productive in the workplace. More specifically, positive perceptions, pleasant emotions and intrinsic motivation increases creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality.

2.  The Progress Principle:  Progress on Meaningful Work

Amabile and Kramer found that the most important determinant of whether employees have positive feelings about their work is whether they made progress that day on meaningful work – what Amabile and Kramer call “The Progress Principle.”

In the diary study, 76% of employees described making progress on their projects on their best days, when they felt most engaged.  By contrast, over 70% of employees described work-related setbacks on their worst days at work.

3.  The Power of Small Wins

A further finding of the study was that small daily wins in the workplace translate into a big positive impact on people’s inner work life.  Similarly, setbacks on projects in the workplace translate into negative impacts. 

Therefore, it is important for managers to help employees achieve regular forward progress on their work.  Managers should break big projects up into smaller segments with regular milestones, so that employees can feel forward momentum frequently.

4.  What Managers Can Do

Amabile and Kramer found that managers need to provide two types of support to employees to increase the chances of them feeling that they were making progress on meaningful work – project support and people support.

            a.  Project Support (Catalysts)

According to Amabile and Kramer, the catalysts that managers can use to support employees’ progress include:

• Clear meaningful goals
• Autonomy
• Sufficient information and resources
• Help with their work
• Learning from problems and successes
• Open flow of ideas
• Sufficient time for the work (but not so much as to remove all time pressure)

          b.  People Support (Nourishment)

In addition, managers can support their employees through

• Respect and recognition
• Encouragement
• Emotional support
• Affiliation and camaraderie

Co-workers are important elements in the workplace, but managers are the most critical link.

5. Daily Journaling

As a writer and journal-keeper myself, it intrigued me that Amabile and Kramer recommended that managers keep a daily progress review detailing what happened in the workplace that day to support and detract from progress.  They suggest that managers ask themselves each day “What one thing can I do tomorrow to foster progress in my employees?”

Employees own their own inner work life, but managers can and must support them.  Direct supervisors are the most important link between an employee and their engagement and productivity at work.

What can you do tomorrow to foster engagement among your employees?

Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge

The first business book I ever bought for myself was Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge, by Geoffrey M. Bellman.  At the time, almost twenty years ago, I was still in a staff job and hadn’t yet become a manager.  Bellman’s messages hit home with me, particularly his starting sentence: “You are not in charge.”

None of us is in charge of every aspect of our lives.  But we can all take charge of far more of our life than we do.

This post outlines Bellman’s model for success when you are in a support role (as we all are in some aspect of our life).  The questions to consider in each section are mine. 

1. Understand the job of helping others succeed. 

Recognize that you are not the person in charge, but appreciate the value and expertise you bring to your organization.  And remember that you are in charge of your life – you are responsible for making decisions that are congruent with your values. 

Consider:  What choices and decisions do you make to align your role with the business and the business with your values?

2. Lead when you are not in a position of authority

Just because you are not in charge does not mean you should not lead.  Your leadership grows out of your belief in yourself, in the people you work with, and in the value your profession brings to the business.  According to Bellman, you lead through vision, intuition, and appropriate risk-taking.  These traits are not limited to line managers – everyone in the business possesses them to some extent. 

Consider:  How do you use your vision, intuition and risk-taking to influence the business?

3. Understand and influence change

There are many models of change dynamics.  Bellman’s is a triangle of (1) who the players are, (2) what the players want, and (3) what the current state is – basically, how the players can get from what is to what they want.  Then Bellman puts YOU in the middle – how can YOU help the players get from where they are to what they want. 

This is a basic model of customer service – which is the function of any staff role.  And most line roles also have customers.

Consider:  What do the people who are your customers want? What is the gap between what they want and the current state? How can you help them get what they want?

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This brief summary doesn’t do justice to Bellman’s book.  It only addresses the first of six parts of his book.

Combine Bellman’s three-part model for success in a staff role (any role where you are not in charge) with the concept of discretionary time I wrote about several weeks ago, and you have a roadmap for taking charge of your life.

Are you interested in learning more about leadership in a staff position?  If so, please let me know in the comments below. 

I’d also appreciate any comments answering one or more of the questions posed in this post.

Work-Life Balance and “Opting Out”

ForbesWoman published a thought-provoking piece on February 28 by Meghan Casserly titled “Why Is ‘Opting Out’ a Bad Word for Women?” 

I published a comment to that article shortly after it was posted, but the issue haunted me all last week.  Here’s what I think at the moment about the notion of women “opting out” of the workplace:

1.  Women choose whether to quit working for pay for many reasons. Usually it is a mix of work and family reasons, and a very difficult decision. 

I managed to continue working in a 60 hour a week professional career throughout the years my children were at home.  When my children were young, I got advice from family, friends and colleagues that it would be easier if I quit my position and took a “nice, part-time job” somewhere.  These comments made me mad, and I stayed through the worst of the sick kid years because I was stubborn.  No one was telling my husband to get a “nice, part-time job,” and I earned as much as he did and liked my job better than he did.

2. Women who receive significant positive reinforcement in the workplace are less likely to opt out.

I stuck it out while my children were at home, but I retired early.  By that point in my career, the psychic and monetary rewards I got from working were less important than the goals I wanted to accomplish in my life outside the workplace.  Had I still been receiving developmental opportunities and not had to deal with so many jerks at the office, I might well have remained.
So, yes, my decision was voluntary, but it was in part based on reduced job satisfaction.  Could my company have kept me?  Probably.  But only by satisfying my terms, which wasn’t going to happen.

3. Women have more choices than men.

Women are viewed negatively in the workplace when they opt out, but men are viewed even more negatively if they take more than a few days or weeks right after a baby is born.  This is just as unfair as the business assumption expressed in the ForbesWoman article that women are more likely to opt out, therefore, businesses don’t have to spend as much to develop them.

4. Both “staying in” and “opting out” are rational decisions, and they are very individual decisions. 

Each person will choose the best path for herself and her family at the moment the decision is made.  While it is human nature to impose our own values on another person’s decision, doing so doesn’t help.

5. Businesses do not accommodate family life.

This is true for both men and women, but in our society women get less push back for “opting out,” though I know many men who also have “opted out.”

It is rational for businesses to invest less in people they don’t think will stick around, but it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Women are less likely to stick around if they do not see the benefit to themselves – and investing in their development is certainly a huge benefit and a way to keep women engaged in the workplace. If businesses don’t invest equally in women as in men, why would women stay?

So are women (and men) making truly “opting out” on a purely voluntary basis, or are they being subtly directed toward the option that is easiest for business? My answer to that varies moment by moment.

The better question is:  How do we instead make work and home life both attractive options for women?

And the best question is:  How to we allow everyone – male and female – to create a rewarding life that balances work and family?

How Mediators Manage Their Own Biases

Many people ask me how I can be a neutral mediator when I have firmly formed opinions on the laws, proper workplace behavior, and many other topics that are at issue when I mediate.  I have several answers to this question.

First, don’t assume that someone’s experience and background determine how that person will view the facts of any particular lawsuit.  I’ve found that my experiences often lead me to want to favor the employee in workplace mediations.  I was a manager for many years, and an attorney representing management for even more years.  But because I have opinions about how managers ought to manage, I am quick to judge them when they fail to live up to my expectations.  I need to control my urge to impose my standards on other people (as we all do in so many situations in life).

Second, what is most important for mediators is not whether they express their opinions, but that they are aware of their biases.  Only when they have this self-awareness can they decide what to do about their prejudices.  Most of the time mediators can put their biases aside, sometimes they can disclose their opinions, and let the parties decide whether to proceed, and occasionally mediators – if they do not think they can manage the process openly and fairly – should step away from the case.

Finally, as a mediator I know it isn’t my decision whether or how a case should be resolved.  I am not the judge or jury.  My job is to help the parties come to a resolution that they both agree is better for them than a trial.

I believe strongly in the value of mediation, so I can generally put my opinions aside.  When I think it will help the process, I will give my opinions to the parties (known as being an “evaluative” mediator), but if I can’t put my opinions aside when needed, I shouldn’t be mediating the case.

But in most situations, it isn’t necessary to give my opinion.  I can manage the process toward what the parties think is an equitable result, even if it isn’t the best result from my perspective.  If the parties are satisfied, then I must be satisfied also.

Have you had experiences with someone who was supposed to be neutral who didn’t seem to be?

Favorite Firings – First in a Series

Mitt Romney has taken a lot of heat in the last several weeks for saying he likes to fire people.  Some of his Republican primary opponents misinterpreted what he said, but Romney’s intent was clear:  He wants to be able to fire his health insurance company, if he isn’t happy with its service, just as he would fire any service-provider.

I don’t want to give the impression that firing is fun, any more than Romney did. Terminating someone’s employment is one of the most difficult tasks of management, as any good manager knows.  But sometimes firing an employee is the right action for the company, the department, and often even for the employee.

I’d like this to be the first in a series of occasional posts on “favorite firings” – stories about employee terminations that make you shake your head and wonder about the state of our workforce.

My purpose is to make you chuckle, but also to make you think.  Was termination the right thing to do in each situation?

Here is one of my “favorite firings”:

The Facts:  An employee claimed he had been injured at work, and he filed a worker’s compensation claim.  His doctor imposed lifting restrictions prohibiting him from lifting more than twenty pounds, which kept him from doing his job as a stock handler. Therefore, he was off work on disability leave.

Some of the man’s co-workers noticed his picture in the local newspaper, depicting him carrying a wild turkey – holding the dead bird out with one hand, his shotgun in the other hand, and a big grin on his face.  He had won the local turkey shoot competition, and the newspaper prominently reported the weight of his bird as thirty pounds – more than his lifting restriction. 

So, yes, this man was fired for lifting a turkey.

The Moral:  An employee’s behavior away from work can lead to serious workplace consequences.  More and more employees are disciplined, fired or refused employment because of Facebook or other social media postings and pictures, or other publication of their non-work actions.

It is unlawful for an employer to fire someone for filing a worker’s compensation claim.  But an employer can take action if the employee lies about his restrictions.

If you don’t want your employer to find out about something you’re doing, don’t let it be publicized anywhere.  Even if you won the turkey shoot.

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If you have any ideas for stories of “favorite firings” to publish, please email me or leave a comment below.  But please disguise the facts to protect the innocent (and not-so-innocent) unless the situation is well-publicized, and then include a link to support your story.  Only verified stories will be published.