Innovation is Success. Do You Create an Environment That Motivates Others to Share Their Knowledge?
People are motivated for different reasons. I wrote in Retail Leaders – AMP Up Your Team’s Motivation with These 3 Things that motivation can only come from within someone. As leaders, we can only create the environment for motivation versus supplying the motivation. Motivation is not always about the action behind something; it also applies to every other engagement opportunity. That includes sharing information. I have found that it is something that can be an issue in the retail world.
It is not uncommon to find out that Managers, at all levels, do not share their ideas or information with others, peers, especially. When asked, the typical responses are, ‘I wanted to make sure the idea would work,’ or ‘this is unique to my store(s), so I didn’t think it would matter.’ ‘I didn’t think anyone else would find this useful’ is another explanation provided after-the-fact. These are almost entirely driven by environmental or cultural factors. When there is a need to compete for attention or recognition is provided in a ranking nature (top performers get all the accolades), then people adjust accordingly. If they feel that they are doing something that gives them an advantage, they want to ensure they reap all of the benefits for themselves.
While understandable in certain conditions, it will be detrimental to the long-term benefits that could come from sharing ideas and discussing them from multiple perspectives. In Great Leaders Share Their Best Ideas to Help Everyone Find Their Own Success I spoke about how sharing can lead to innovative ideas and is something more embraced in the ‘maker community’ as discussed by Adam Savage of Mysterbuster’s fame. In the Harvard Business Review Article, Why Employees Don’t Share Knowledge with Each Other, the authors explore the motivations behind withholding information.
Our analyses yielded three key findings: First, people share and hide knowledge for different reasons. Second, as we stated above, they are more motivated to share when they work in a cognitively demanding job and have a lot of autonomy. Third, they are more likely to hide knowledge if they think colleagues rely on them too much.
Some of the findings have direct correlations to the everyday situations we face in the retail environments. Successful Managers are asked to share what they are doing with everyone. When that begins to happen often, they choose not to share because they believe that others simply are not trying to innovate. The top performers select to hold back the information because they do not think their peers deserve to have the same opportunity they do because of effort.
What motivates people to share or hide knowledge? When we analyzed the data on what motivates participants to share or hide knowledge, we categorized their responses as being either “autonomous motivation” (which means doing something because it is meaningful or enjoyable) or “controlled motivation” (which means doing something to get a reward or avoid a punishment.
Frequently, managers will also shy away from sharing if their peers begin to believe that they are a ‘favorite’ of the group leader (think DM or Regional Manager). Or, if a shared idea suddenly does not work any longer, they fear being called out for sharing something that didn’t work.
Another interesting element to the motivation factor stems from ‘controlled motivation.’ When others are pushed to gain a reward or ‘stay off a list,’ their effort levels are dramatically different than if they choose to do the activities based on their own desire. It is for this reason that I try very hard to stay away from contests. Time after time, they prove they do not lead to lasting behaviors or sustained results. Certainly, there are occasions to generate some fun and even some recognition, but contests will not help to improve slumping results for more than the contest period. And, only then, those that are attracted to the attention of the contest will perform for that window of time.
Ultimately it is up to the leader to establish an environment that encourages team members to share ideas through their own motivations. Allowing people to innovate in their own ways and providing a safe platform from with to implement and engage others will continue to build a cycle of proactive knowledge transference. Having a setting for ‘group think’ will allow everyone to benefit from the ideas that can be applied for success.
How do you create an environment where team members are motivated to share ideas and learn from others?
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