The Behaviors Leaders Reward by Accident

Teams do more of whatever gets rewarded, and leaders reward far more than they realize. A reward doesn't have to be a bonus. It can be praise in a meeting, a leader's attention, or a leader solving someone else's problem for them. When rewards go to the wrong behavior, the team learns the wrong lesson, even if the leader never meant to teach it. A leader who looks closely at what they reward, and compares it with what they say they value, can change a team's culture faster than any values statement can.

Rewards Are Wider Than Pay

Leaders often think of rewards as pay and promotions. Those count, but they come a few times a year. Everyday rewards come constantly, and a quick "thanks for jumping on that" is a reward. So is the interesting project that goes to one person and not another.

What the leader ignores sends a message too. If a person spends a month preventing a problem and nobody mentions it, the team learns that prevention doesn't get noticed. People watch these cues closely because they want to do well, and the leader's reactions are how they find out what doing well means.

These small rewards add up because they happen so often. A single thank-you in a quarterly meeting may be forgotten by the next week. A leader who thanks the same kind of behavior every week for a year has sent the team the same message about fifty times.

In 1975, management scholar Steven Kerr wrote a paper with a title people still quote: "On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B." Kerr argued that organizations often say they want one behavior and then reward a different one. People respond to the reward, and the stated goal goes unmet.

Formal systems can make the same mistake. A clinic that tracks patient visits per hour, and praises the providers with the highest numbers, may say it values thorough care. The number it tracks rewards speed. A company that pays bonuses for individual sales may say it values teamwork, while the bonus tells each salesperson to keep their best leads to themselves. In both cases the people involved are doing what the system asks of them.

Four Common Accidental Rewards

Rescuing is one of the most common. A team member brings a problem to the leader, and the leader solves it on the spot. That feels helpful, and for that day it is. The team member also learns that bringing a problem without a proposed answer is the fastest way to get it handled. After a few months, the leader is solving problems all day that the team could have solved without them. The leader can still help by asking a few questions that lead the person toward their own answer.

Firefighting gets rewarded too. A person who stays late to fix a crisis gets thanked in front of the whole team. The colleague whose careful planning meant their project never had a crisis gets no mention. Over a year, the team learns that heroics get noticed and steady prevention does not. Some people will let problems grow until they are big enough to fix in public.

A leader who reacts badly to bad news ends up rewarding silence. A team member reports that a project is behind, and the leader's frustration shows. The leader may be frustrated with the situation and not the person, but the person who delivered the news feels it. The next time a project goes wrong, people wait longer to say so, or they wait for someone else to say it first.

Leaders can also end up rewarding pressure. When the person who complains loudest gets the extra budget or the schedule they wanted, the team learns that pressure works better than patience. Patient people stop being patient, or they stop asking at all.

Why Leaders Miss It

Leaders judge their own behavior by what they intended, and the team judges it by what happened. A leader who stepped in to solve a problem remembers being supportive. The team remembers that the leader solved the problem for them, and they plan accordingly.

Many leaders were also promoted for the very behaviors they now reward by accident. Someone who rose by fixing crises and answering every request quickly may value those habits without noticing. It takes a careful look back to see that the habits that helped them as individual contributors may not be the ones their team needs now.

Rewards are often given without thinking, because many rewards are reactions, and reactions happen fast. A leader who is busy and under strain will thank whoever made the day easier. That person may or may not have done the most valuable thing on the team that week.

Resetting What Gets Rewarded

Resetting starts with looking. A leader can review the last month and list who got public thanks and who got the interesting assignments. Next to each one, the leader can write down the behavior that earned it. The list often shows a pattern the leader didn't see while it was happening.

The team can help with that review. A leader can ask, in a one-on-one or an anonymous survey, "What gets people noticed around here?" The answers describe the culture as the team experiences it, which may be different from the culture the leader thinks they have built.

It helps to tell the team what is changing and why. A leader can say, "I've been thanking people for last-minute saves, and I want to start thanking the planning that makes saves unnecessary." People are more likely to change their behavior when they understand what the leader is now looking for.

Changing the pattern means rewarding the behavior the leader wants at the time it happens. When someone brings bad news early, the leader can thank them before reacting to the news itself. When someone brings a problem, the leader can ask, "What do you think we should do?" and give credit for the answer. When a project runs smoothly because of good planning, the leader can say so in the same meeting where they would have praised a rescue.

These changes take repetition, because a team that has learned one set of rewards will test the new ones for a while to see whether they last. Leaders who keep rewarding the behaviors they want, week after week, will see the team follow.

The next time a leader thanks someone in front of the team, they can ask themselves one question first: is this the behavior I want more of?