Pulse December 2017 | Page 35

2017 ispa conference & expo keynote speaker October 17, 2017 Dedicated Contributor Award to a very deserving candidate. Dr. Mary Wisnom gave a moving acceptance speech about watching the growth of the spa industry as an educator and implored everyone in the audience to volunteer for ISPA initia- tives. Wisnom is proof that a little volunteering goes a long way for the sustainability of our industry. Finally, Daniel Pink, the main event, took the stage. His presentation was witty, yet intriguing. The audience loved that he wasn’t afraid to laugh at himself and his off-the-cuff humor kept everyone engaged. It wasn’t just his humor that ISPA loved; his points on work and human behavior really hit home. Here are some of his points that really struck a chord with the audience: “If-then rewards are great for the simple and short term, not so great for the complex and long term.” Pink’s “if- then” rewards are simple: if you do this, then you get this. He explained that our society has been running its workforce on these types of rewards for centuries. And it worked when jobs were simple. But now, not so much. He said the challenge is figuring out what falls in each category. He then cited studies where people were given meaningless tasks to perform and monetary rewards to complete them. Not surprising, the more money people received, the faster they completed the tasks. But, when the researchers switched it up and asked the individuals to solve more complex problems that required cognitive skills, the results were different. As the monetary reward got higher, people did worse on the tasks. Pink made it clear though, money is a 1. motivator, just not in the way we think it is. Money is surely a motivator when we aren’t making enough of it. It’s also a motivator when someone else is making more for doing the same job. Pink explained (through a hysterical monkey video) that it’s human nature to get angry or shut down when we realize someone else is getting more for the same amount of work, which is why he urges everyone from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to keep employee pay trans- parent and honest. Not doing so is the quickest way to demotivate your staff. “Have less conversations about how and more about why.” According to Pink, the single biggest day-to-day motivator is making progress in meaningful work. Purpose. By giving people a purpose, they become motivated and impassioned about their jobs. Purpose, however, is more than tacking a poster with your company’s mission statement to the wall. It’s about creating a culture where people feel the work they do matters. When people feel like waking up and going to work every day makes a difference, they’re more motivated to get it done, even on the bad days. Make your employees feel like their work contributes to the bottom line of the company, to the growth of the organi- zation and the future of everyone involved, and they’ll be motivated to work their tails off. You do this by creating a high feedback culture. Pink’s idea for instilling this culture in your employees are his “weekly one-on- ones with a twist.” He said to get rid of your annual review process and replace it with a system that works. The twist is 2. that each meeting should be different— what do they love and loathe, how to remove barriers, discuss their career long- term, what should you start-stop-continue, etc. “Management is a technology with a singular purpose, to create compliance.” Pink also urged us to stop managing our teams. You don’t want the people who work for you to be compliant, you want them to be engaged. Pink noted that seven out of 10 people in the U.S. economy are not engaged at work. What?!? No wonder we can’t seem to get anything done! How do you get your employees to be more engaged? Autonomy. Pink said that people aren’t engaged by management, they are engaged by autonomy. Giving people sovereignty over their time, technique, team and tasks leads to more innovation and engagement. Pink gave the example of Nobel prize winning physicists who created a Genius Hour. This meant for an hour every Friday evening, they would work on whatever they wanted. The only rules were: it couldn’t involve their current grant research and it had to be fun. And you know what, that Nobel prize they won for a huge scientific breakthrough wasn’t from the research they normally work on. It came out of their Genius Hour. 3. “What’s your sentence?” After captivating the audience with his humor and scientific research, Pink left us with a challenge: find your sentence. When it is all said and done, what do you want people to say about what you did? What do you want to be proud of? n 4. December 2017 ■ PULSE 33