Chapter 6.txt

the issue is in the tissue; can you motivate someone else? “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle. I     had been a SAT sergeant for over a year. We had a high-performing team    where everyone pulled their weight. We had finished roll call, and I w...

the issue is in the tissue; can you motivate someone else? “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle. I     had been a SAT sergeant for over a year. We had a high-performing team    where everyone pulled their weight. We had finished roll call, and I was in    my office working on timesheets when I heard a knock on the doorframe. I looked up to see Jimmy standing there. Jimmy had previously done a temporary assignment with our team while he was in patrol. He did well during the 60 days he was with us and was a solid cop. When we had an opening for a fulltime position, he was near the top of the list with another candidate. As the sergeant of the unit, I had the swing vote on our panel of three, and I went with Jimmy. As it turns out, Jimmy’s solid patrol skills were not translating well to an undercover environment. He was sound tactically, had an excellent work ethic, and wrote reports well. The problem was, he didn’t get a chance to write too many reports because he did not make many “spots.” A “spot” was when a team member was proactive and located criminal activity on their own. The Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 100 most common spots were for drug use, drug dealing, theft, and the occasional street robbery. Usually, within an hour of leaving roll call, someone would call out on the radio with something such as, “Hey, anybody near the Village? I’ve got a deal going down.” Since we agreed to work in the same area, some of the team would get there to pick off the buyer while others stuck with the dealer. We would watch the dealer conduct his business a few more times, picking off buyers and making a distribution case. Eventually, we’d either take down the dealer or follow him to his house and get a search warrant. Some great felony cases were built from a simple spot of someone buying a $20 rock of crack. Whenever our team made an arrest, the case number and defendant’s name were written in our case log. The case log was a three-ring style binder that remained in the office. We used it to track cases for court and lookup previous defendants, since we often had repeat customers. It was also used, informally, to keep score. Every time you got to put your name in the book, it generated a little status on the team. I had a feeling Jimmy was there to discuss his name in the book. The problem being that his name was not in it very much. “Hey, Eddie, you got a minute?” “Sure, Jimmy, come in, what’s going on?” “I need some help. I just can’t seem to get a spot.” To Move When it comes to leadership, motivation is one of the hot button topics. The word motivation is from the Latin word movere, which means “to move.” If you are motivated, you move towards a goal. Let me let you in on a little secret: people are always motivated. This motivation, however, is not always aligned with the goals of the organization. Consider a patrol officer working a day work shift. He attends roll call and then goes to his favorite restaurant to grab a cup of coffee and a bagel. He is motivated to drive to the restaurant in order to achieve his goals to drink his coffee, eat his bagel, read his paper, and swap stories with the cute cashier. He will stay there for hours because that is what he chooses to do and enjoys doing it. His motivation, The Issue Is in the Tissue; Can You Motivate Someone Else? 101 resulting in his act of driving to the bagel shop to spend time there, does not always line up with what we want him to do, so we call him lazy and unmotivated. We might be half correct. I remember complimenting Scott Feldman, a member of my Special Assignment Team, for his initiative on a case. His response always stuck with me. “It doesn’t take much to shine on this department, just do your job, and you’ll be a superstar.” I asked him what he meant by this. He told me most cops spend more effort trying to get out of doing work than they would if they just did their jobs in the first place. His words hit a chord with me. When discussing motivation, we need to understand what we are asking people to do. Most of the time, we are asking them to do the minimum necessary and maybe a little more. If we are going to ask our people to at least do the bare minimum, the first step is to define what that is. This goes back to setting your expectations (as we discussed in chapter 2). I cannot stress this enough; your people need to know what the minimum level of performance is. Only you can define this for them. Patrol shifts will be different from detective squads. The evening dispatch shift could vary from the day work crew. One thing you can be sure of is that if you are not clear on minimal expectations, the people you lead certainly will not be. Once minimum performance expectations are set, the idea is to focus on getting them to do just a little more than is necessary, or to take action towards achieving the goals of the organization. This is called discretionary effort, behavior a person could choose to do but would not be punished if they did not do.37 Just as with minimum expectations, discretionary effort will take different forms for different people or even change from unit to unit. Midnight patrol shifts might need to focus efforts towards impaired driving traffic enforcement. Veteran communication specialists might need to train a new call-taker. So, how do you get someone to engage in discretionary effort? First, we need to understand the difference in motivational approaches. Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 102 Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation Motivation is generally thought to occur in two ways, from the outside or from the inside. This is an overly simplified view, but it gives us a good starting point. Inside, or intrinsic, motivation happens when someone engages in an activity simply because they enjoy the activity and/or get satisfaction from doing it. In contrast, outside, or extrinsic, motivation occurs when someone moves or takes action for external rewards or to avoid negative consequences. Extrinsic motivation, using rewards and negative consequences, is often referred to as the carrot and stick (or hammer) approach. Extrinsic: Carrots and Sticks The idea of using carrots (rewards) and sticks (punishment/penalty) to motivate came about through the study of animals. The concept is more formally known as operant conditioning.38 In this theory, any behavior that leads to the goals of the organization—what you want your people to do in order to achieve or go above the minimum expectations—is called on-task behavior. Any behavior that does not lead to achieving the minimum expectations is called off-task behavior. The basic idea is rewarding desired behavior leads to more of the desired (on-task) behavior and punishing undesired behavior will decrease the undesired (off-task) behavior.39 I almost did not want to write the next sentence for fear that it will be Punishment and penalty are not the same thing. Punishment is giving something that is unwanted. The Issue Is in the Tissue; Can You Motivate Someone Else? 103 misinterpreted and misapplied. Sticks can be effective in certain, limited circumstances. When I use the word “stick” or “hammer,” I’m speaking of negative consequences to discourage off-task behavior. These consequences can be categorized into two main forms, punishment or penalty. Punishment and penalty are not the same thing. Punishment is giving something that is unwanted. For example, new police recruits might have to do 15 push-ups as punishment for a procedural violation. Penalty is taking away something that another values, such as not allowing an officer to participate in an upcoming training class that they were looking forward to. Both can be effective in discouraging off-task behavior. Sticks comes in all sizes and forms. From a simple, “You know better than that…” verbal chiding to termination of employment. When would you use a stick or hammer to discourage off-task behavior? This is a subjective question, but you want to use sticks only when necessary. Officer safety issues come to mind. When you see an officer conduct a sloppy search of a suspect or commit a weapons violation at the range, using a hammer-like approach can be effective to discourage unsafe behavior. If you choose the correctly sized stick, it will invoke the fear response in the primitive part of the brain. When the fear response is associated with a certain behavior, that behavior usually stops. For example, show the officer a few videos of how poor searching techniques can lead to loss of evidence, escape, or even death (the ultimate penalty). At the firearms range, calling out the safety violation and having the officer step off the firing line will result in embarrassment. There is a high likelihood that officer will avoid embarrassment in the future by not committing that safety violation again. Ideally, choose the stick that is the most appropriate and smallest necessary to stop the off-task behavior. Penalty is taking away something that another values. Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 104 So, yes, there are times to use sticks, of varying size, to stop off-task behavior. The problem with the stick approach is it can only discourage off-task behavior. Sticks do not encourage on-task behavior or lead to engagement. Depending on the group you lead, maybe stopping off-task behavior is a good start, but it should not be your end goal. You want your people to be engaged—happy, satisfied, and productive. Using sticks does not lead to engagement. (Yes, I said that twice now, get the hint?) So, what about carrots? Most law enforcement agencies are quite limited in the rewards they can give out. “If I could only give them a raise or a bonus, I know they’d be more motivated” is something I’ve heard quite a bit. That would be too easy. As it turns out, once people make a certain amount of money, an amount necessary to take care of the basic needs of themselves and their families, it is no longer a motivating factor. Numerous studies have proven that financial incentives might work in the short term, but they actually have a negative impact in the long term.40 Is there something else you could do to reward desired, on-task behavior? Why yes, there is, and you have access to an unlimited resource. Immediate rewards in the form of positive feedback lead to an increase in motivation.41 There are three requirements for effective use of positive feedback. Positive feedback needs to be timely, specific, and meaningful. Look at the following two examples and think about which one is timely, specific, and meaningful. “Deputy Dawg, good job on that report.” “What report, Sarge?” “Uh, you know, that one from last week.” Using sticks does not lead to engagement. The Issue Is in the Tissue; Can You Motivate Someone Else? 105 vs. “Deputy Dawg, I read your burglary report from this morning. Very detailed and well-organized. I see you found a possible witness during your neighborhood canvass. That will be really helpful for the detectives and might lead to a break in our current trend. Keep up the good work!” “Wow, thanks Sarge!” Positive feedback costs only minimal thought and effort on your part but makes a big difference in motivating those you lead because it boosts confidence and self-esteem, which causes your brain to release a dose of happy chemicals. We then want to repeat that same behavior to get that happy feeling again. Speaking of the brain, let’s change our focus from outside to inside. Let’s take a quick look at how motivation can also come from within. Intrinsic: A Dash of Neuroscience Where extrinsic motivation comes from outside factors, such as a leader using carrots or sticks, intrinsic motivation occurs within the person.42 More specifically, motivation, the issue, occurs in the tissue. Human behavior is a complex topic, mainly because all behavior starts with the brain. Your brain is the master gland, controlling and regulating all of your actions, so let’s start there. The brain sends messages to the body for any action or movement to occur. These messages occur in the form of chemicals or neurotransmitters. The feeling of being happy or being motivated can be traced to a specific group of neurotransmitters. These are often Immediate rewards in the form of positive feedback lead to an increase in motivation. Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 106 referred to as the happy chemicals; dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, or DOSE.43 These neurotransmitters are crucial to achieving a motivated state. The basic idea is when we do something good, or even anticipate when something will make us feel good, our brain releases dopamine, and sometimes oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. These chemicals provide a little “hit” of happiness that motivates us to do more of the activity that triggers their release. As it turns out, when people receive positive feedback, it releases a DOSE of these chemicals into their bodies. You can’t force their brain to release the DOSE chemicals; however, you can set up the right environment to welcome the chemical motivational cocktail. An environment where your people flourish will lead to what most leaders want when they ask, “How do I motivate my people?” Remember, discretionary effort or discretionary behavior is when people do more than the bare minimum that is required of them. The idea is people engage in discretionary behavior because they enjoy the activity and/or get satisfaction from doing it. This enjoyment comes from within, from the DOSE chemicals. How do I create an environment that will lead to the DOSE chemical cocktail? Excellent question. To do that, we need to talk about the academy and academia. Achieving Motivation Excellence Think back to the time you graduated from your law enforcement academy. Remember how proud you and your family were of you? Remember what it felt like to get the badge pinned on your chest? How about your first call for service, your first pursuit, your first foot chase? You had a flame coming out of your rear end a mile long; you couldn’t wait to come to work and lock up the bad guys. Close your eyes and imagine those early days. Do you remember feeling like a superhero? Feeling like you couldn’t believe you got paid to do what you do? You were highly motivated, high performing, and completely engaged at work. The Issue Is in the Tissue; Can You Motivate Someone Else? 107 To achieve motivational excellence, we want to rekindle those same feelings you had after graduation from your academy. The word “academy” comes from a famous school in ancient Athens founded by Plato around 428 B.C.E. The school was outside the ancient city named Akademeia, after the legendary hero Akademos. It is where formal learning began. Plato did not charge any tuition; instead, he encouraged people to attend simply to learn and improve themselves, to develop their excellence. “Arete,” in Greek, means excellence. But excellence does not really capture the true meaning of the word. To be a person with arete means you are highly effective, using strength, bravery, and intelligence to achieve your goals, your true potential, and purpose. Remember how you felt after graduating from your academy? That, my friend, was the feeling of arete. But something happens to many of us, and we lose that sense of arete. We lose our drive, our flame dies down, it burns out, we burn out. We no longer look forward to coming to work, and we complain about our paycheck. This doesn’t happen to everyone, but it does to many. Chances are, by supervising a group of people, some of them will have lost their flame, and you will be asked to “motivate” them. We are going to use the ARETE recipe to get our people to reignite their flame and achieve a state of excellence. The ARETE Recipe The ARETE recipe is based on one of the most empirically studied theories of motivation, Self-Determination Theory44 (SDT). SDT is a meta-theory that explains how humans are motivated to grow and flourish based on three psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These needs are like nutrients to sustain motivation, just as food sustains our bodies. In creating the ARETE recipe for motivation I’ve renamed one of those needs (Competence becomes Expertise) and added two additional nutrients (Trust and Expectations) Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 108 to give you a model that is easy to remember and use. Let’s look at what the ARETE recipe for motivation looks like. Autonomy The ability to choose. The need to feel in control of one’s own actions and destiny. People don’t want to feel manipulated, but rather that they have control over their own behavior. As a leader, part of your job is to use goal setting and to assign tasks. Invite those you lead to participate in setting goals and then give them choice in how to meet those goals or which tasks to participate in. The following is a scenario to illustrate autonomy. You are a patrol supervisor who must address a neighborhood speeding complaint, a Cub Scout station tour, and send two officers to assist the narcotics squad with a search warrant. How would you select which of your officers to handle each of the assignments? Use a detail log? By seniority? How about giving your officers some choice in assignments? Once the assignments are given, set parameters for what needs to be done and then let each of them figure out how best to complete their task. Warning: micromanaging tends to kill autonomy and lead to a decline in motivation. Giving people choice in how to accomplish a task can feel strange, or downright nerve-wracking, depending on your personality type. Take a breath and understand that just because someone does not do something the way you would do it does not make it wrong. Relatedness We are social animals, so we all have a need to feel connected with others. People need to feel a sense of belonging and attachment to other people. Those you lead need to feel Warning: micromanaging tends to kill autonomy and lead to a decline in motivation. The Issue Is in the Tissue; Can You Motivate Someone Else? 109 valued and that they are contributing members of the group. Embrace the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” As members and leaders of law enforcement organizations, we should be able to align behavior and actions with meaningful values and the noble cause we all serve. As a first-line supervisor, your focus should be to work on your relatedness in two areas. First, build your relationship with those you lead. Value each and every member of your unit for their individual strengths and talents. How do you do this? Get to know your people. Learn about them. Show a genuine interest in why they became a member of our profession. Discover their career goals and aspirations. These relationships will take time and, most importantly, cannot be faked. You have to develop a genuine interest and concern for the welfare of those you lead. Second, learn to connect what they do on a daily basis with the greater mission of your agency. Ever been stopped by a citizen who thanked you for your service? Or maybe you’ve seen posts on Facebook or Instagram that show a picture of an officer changing a tire or buying a meal for a homeless person? These social media posts connect the actions of the officer to the community they serve. As a leader, you need to find a way to connect the daily duties of those you lead to the greater mission of your agency. Encourage them to get to know and build relationships with members of the community they serve. Expertise People have a natural desire to be good at what they do. Those you lead genuinely want to be competent in their jobs. When they feel they have the knowledge, skills, and ability to excel at their job, they are more likely to excel at their job. The reverse is also true. For example, Officer Schmuckatelli has been on the day work shift for the past six years and was recently transferred to midnights. He has not performed Standardized Field Sobriety Tests (SFSTs) in a long time and does not remember them all. He is absolutely not confident about testifying to any Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 110 SFST results in court. Chances are, he will not be conducting any DUI enforcement because he does not feel competent in that area. Expertise is related to autonomy. People want to choose in what areas they develop expertise. When working on your relationships with those you lead, you will come to understand in what areas they are interested in growing. If you don’t know where their growth areas are, find out and then support them. Maybe Officer Daniels wants to be a detective someday. How about Deputy Moore-Bacon and his obsession with riding a motorcycle with the traffic squad? Encourage their growth and help them develop their competence through training or pairing them with a mentor who already has the skills they are looking to develop. Trust As a first-line supervisor, your two primary responsibilities are to the mission of the organization and to the people you lead. Your actions must always be to support the mission and the people. Your words must reflect the same. This means making decisions and taking actions using the organizational mission and goals as your guide. When your words are congruent with your actions, trust begins to develop. By reading this book, you have chosen to develop your competence and expertise in the area of leadership. The people you lead do not expect you to be an expert at leadership or to be the greatest leader ever (really). What they do want to see is that you are trying to be better. They want to see that you are making a conscious choice to increase your knowledge, skills, and abilities in this area. You are trying to be a better leader, but you will, inevitably, make mistakes. Sometimes you will recognize the mistakes, sometimes you won’t. Let them know it is okay to point them out, but encourage them to do so in a private and respectful manner. In turn, you will do the same thing for them. By admitting you are trying, by admitting you will fail but will try to learn from your mistakes, you are creating an environment where trust can grow. You are also leading by example by showing that it is okay The Issue Is in the Tissue; Can You Motivate Someone Else? 111 to show a little vulnerability and take risks. In order for your people to grow, to make choices and develop their own competence is to see you do the same. Mistakes must be treated as part of the growth and learning process, so long as they are made in support of the mission. Encouraging your people to speak up and make mistakes without fear of being hit with a hammer every time they do so creates the sense of psychological safety that we discussed in chapter 4. There is good reason that I use this term several times in this book, it works. If you are still in doubt, know that Google researchers concluded that psychological safety was the number one factor for team success.45 Expectations If you want people to do more than the minimum, you’d better clearly define what the minimum is. I’ve heard too many leaders complain about unmotivated employees, yet when asked about performance standards, the common response is, “They know what they’re supposed to be doing.” People want direction, they want to set goals, and they want to achieve them. Few people join our profession saying, “I just want to do the bare minimum to get by.” Unfortunately, at some point during their careers, many end up there. Why? Because leaders failed to set clear and appropriate expectations for them or had low expectations of them. Set clear expectations for those you lead. These should be worked into a blank performance evaluation and serve as the guidelines for expected job performance. Ever known someone to say, “I can’t wait to score ‘below expectations’ on my annual performance evaluation”? If you set clear, written expectations, most people will want to meet or even exceed them. Setting expectations of them. Here is my suggestion to you, especially if you are a new supervisor or new to a unit, treat everyone who works for you as a ten (on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best) to start with. If you treat everyone as a ten, they are more likely to rise to meet your expectations. In psychology, this is referred to as the Pygmalion Effect. Of course, the same is true if you assume the worst Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 112 in people, they tend to meet your low expectations, also known as the Golem Effect. We covered a lot in this chapter, but we barely scratched the surface of motivation. Now it is time to move on to discuss how to practice, or “do,” leadership. Motivation Problem? “What you are saying, Jimmy, is that you want to make cases, but you don’t know how to get any spots?” “That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s embarrassing. I want my name in the case log, I really do. I just can’t make a spot to save my life.” I remember, distinctly, alarm bells going off in my head. Was this a motivation problem? Initially, it sounded like it. Do I try carrots or sticks? No, wait, the carrot already exists. Jimmy wants to perform well and get his name in the book. He is already motivated, so now what? “Jimmy, what, specifically, have you tried doing lately in order to get a spot?” “Actually, to be honest, I haven’t tried in a while. I just kinda wait for one of the other guys to call out with something and then go help them out with their case.” Bingo! Jimmy was motivated, but after trying so many times, and failing, he just gave up. This wasn’t really a motivation problem after all, it was really an ability problem. Could it be that no one had shown Jimmy how to put himself in the best position to get a spot? He didn’t make any spots because he didn’t know how. “I appreciate that you trusted me. Here is what I think you do today, right now.” I then suggested three different areas for him to sit and gave him certain behaviors to look for. I suggested he go to his selected area any time we were not actively working a case. I then gave him a nice pep talk, explaining that he was a productive member of the team. I valued his contributions in helping out with everyone else’s cases, but I also expected him to occasionally make his own. “Look, if you do this, you are bound to get a spot eventually. I know you can do it.” He left my office with a smile on his face and a purpose in his stride. I couldn’t believe it. About an hour later, I heard Jimmy call-out on our radio, “Hey, anybody close? I just had a deal go down.” I could feel the release of dopamine in my own system as I headed his way. Excellent! The Issue Is in the Tissue; Can You Motivate Someone Else? 113 Chapter 6: Lessons Learned All motivation really comes from within, through a DOSE of dopamine and the other happy chemicals. Sticks sometimes prevent off-task behavior but never lead to engagement. Some carrots have short-term effects but ultimately hurt long-term motivation. One carrot, positive feedback, when delivered honestly and effectively, will release a DOSE of the motivation cocktail. To help foster motivation, leaders need to create an excellent environment for intrinsic motivation using the ARETE framework.