SECTION V LEAD-DOWN PRINCIPLE 7

Lead-Down Principle #7

REWARD FOR RESULTS

A man was enjoying an afternoon in a small fishing boat on a peaceful lake. He fished as he munched on a chocolate bar. The weather was perfect, his cell phone was turned off, and all he could think about was how happy he was.
Just then he spotted a snake in the water with a frog in its mouth. He felt sorry for the frog, so he scooped up the snake with his landing net, took the frog out of its mouth, and tossed it to safety. Then he felt sorry for the snake. He broke off a piece of his chocolate bar, gave it to the snake, and placed it back in the water, where it swam away.
There, he thought. The frog is happy, the snake is happy, and now I’m happy again. This is great. He cast his line back into the water and then settled back again.
A few minutes later, he heard a bump on the side of the boat. He looked over the side, and there was the snake again. This time it had two frogs in his mouth!
The moral of the story is this: Be careful what you reward, because whatever gets rewarded gets done.
I’m guessing that as a leader you are probably strongly aware of this truth. And it doesn’t matter if the thing that gets rewarded is positive or negative. Whatever actions leaders reward will be repeated. That’s why it’s very important to reward results—and to do it the right way. When you use every tool at your disposal to reward your people, you not only inspire them to do the things that are right for the organization but also to work harder and to feel better about the job they’re doing. Rewarding for results makes you a more effective—and more influential—360-Degree Leader.
Whatever actions leaders reward will be repeated.

To reward results most effectively, follow these seven principles:
1. GIVE PRAISE PUBLICLY AND PRIVATELY
The place to start when it comes to rewarding others is with your praise. You cannot praise too much. Billy Hornsby, EQUIP’s European coordinator, advised, “It’s okay to let those you lead outshine you, for if they shine brightly enough, they reflect positively on you.”
In 25 Ways to Win with People, Les Parrott and I explain the importance of praising people in front of other people. The more important the “audience” hearing the praise to the people receiving it, the more valuable it is. But I want to suggest that before you praise people publicly, first praise them privately. Doing that gives what you say integrity; people know you’re not just trying to manipulate them by saying something kind. Besides, most of the time when people are praised privately, inside they wish others were there to hear it. If you praise privately first and then do it publicly, it is doubly important because it fulfills the longing they had for others to hear it.
“It’s okay to let those you lead outshine you, for if they shine brightly enough, they reflect positively on you.”
—BILLY HORNSBY

2. GIVE MORE THAN JUST PRAISE
Now that I’ve encouraged you to praise people, I need to tell you that you have to give them more than just praise.

If you praise them but don’t raise them, it won’t pay their bills.
If you raise them but don’t praise them, it won’t cure their ills.

Talk is cheap—unless you back it up with money. Good leaders take good care of their people. If you really think about it, the people who cost the organization the most aren’t the ones who get paid the most. The ones that cost the most are the people whose work doesn’t rise to the level of their pay.
When the pay that people receive doesn’t match the results they achieve, then they become highly discouraged. If that happens under your watch as a leader, it will not only take a toll on your people’s effort, but it will also take a toll on your leadership. One leader I interviewed said he once relocated to the northwestern United States to take a job running a dwindling department in an organization. In nine months’ time, he doubled the impact of his department.
When he went for his annual review, his performance was totally ignored. He was told the staff was getting a blanket 5-percent increase in salary. That was hard to swallow, because he was to be rewarded the same as the other departmental leaders, even the ones who hadn’t made any kind of significant improvement in their areas. But he became even more demoralized that his increase would be prorated down to 3.75 percent because he hadn’t been there the whole year. Talk about taking the wind out of a person’s sails!
3. DON’T REWARD EVERYONE THE SAME
That brings me to my next point. If you want to be an effective leader, you cannot reward everyone the same way. This is a major pressure for most leaders. All but the top people in an organization want everyone to be treated the same way. They say that they want everything to be “fair.” But is it fair for someone who produces twice the revenue of her counterpart to be paid the same? Should the person who carries the team be paid the same as the one he has to continually carry? I don’t think so. Mick Delaney said, “Any business or industry that pays equal rewards to its goof-offs and its eager beavers sooner or later will find itself with more goof-offs than eager beavers.”
So how do you go about addressing the pressure to be fair while still rewarding results? Praise effort, but reward only results. Since whatever gets rewarded gets done, if you continually praise effort and do it for everyone, people will continue to work hard. If they are working in their strength zones and keep working hard, they will eventually achieve good results. At that time, reward them financially.
“Any business or industry that pays equal rewards to its goof-offs and its eager beavers sooner or later will find itself with more goof-offs than eager beavers.”
—MICK DELANEY

4. GIVE PERKS BEYOND PAY
Let’s face it. Leaders in the middle of an organization often have limitations on how they can reward people financially. So what is a 360-Degree Leader to do? Reward people with perks. What would it be like if you had a special reserved parking place but gave it to one of your employees for a week or a month? What kind of an impression would that make on the person who received it? Anything you get as a perk you can share with the people who work with you, whether it’s a parking place, free tickets to an event, or use of the corporate suite.
Another area where you can share your wealth is in your relationships. It requires a secure leader to do so, but if you introduce your employees to friends, acquaintances, and professionals who might interest or benefit them, they will feel rewarded and grateful.
Finally, though this may seem a little odd, I want to recommend that you try to extend perks or acknowledgment to your employees’ family members, when appropriate. They are often the ones who make great sacrifices for the work to get done, especially during a crisis. One leader I interviewed told me a story that affirmed the positive impact of such an acknowledgment. He said his organization’s lighting system had crashed two weeks prior to a planned production. For the performance to go on, the entire system had to be replaced in a week’s time, and he was set to oversee the job. To make matters worse, the whole thing happened in December, as Christmas approached.
This leader started preparations a week before the installation, and once the electrician arrived to start the job, he didn’t leave his side. He knew that if he went home while the crew was working, progress would stall. He worked more than one hundred hours that week, ate every meal at work, and never saw his kids the entire week.
He completed the work on Sunday, and then reported to work the next morning. His boss had a surprise for him. Knowing that the leader had missed spending time with his five-year-old son, his boss arranged for his son to attend an important staff meeting that was planned for that morning. As the adults met, the boy sat on his father’s lap and colored. The leader later told me, “Bonuses are wonderful. Gifts are great. But that moment, appreciating my sacrifice to my family, meant more than anything!”
5. PROMOTE WHEN POSSIBLE
If you have the choice to promote someone from within or bring in someone from outside—all other factors being equal—promote from within. Few things reward an employee the way a promotion does. A promotion says, “You’ve done a good job, we believe you can do even more, and here is a reward for your performance.” And the best promotions are the ones that don’t need to be explained because everyone who works with the ones being promoted have seen them grow into their new jobs.
6. REMEMBER THAT YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR
Not long ago I invited a young leader to attend a roundtable discussion with leaders of large churches from my area. Forums like these are really beneficial because leaders on a similar level can talk about their struggles, share information, and learn things from each other. At one point in the discussion, the leaders talked about staffs and budgets. They went around the table, sharing the percentage of their budgets that were spent on staff. When it was this young leader’s turn to talk, he quickly changed the subject.
Later when I talked to him, he told me that as they talked he realized that he was underpaying his staff, because the percentage of his budget was very low. He went home after that meeting, met with his church’s board, and radically changed their pay scale. He says that his church now has the best team it’s ever had, and it is worth every penny. He doesn’t ever want to lose a valuable team member because of pay.
A leader may be able to hire people without paying them a lot of money. And occasionally, it may be possible to keep a few good people while not paying them very well. But in the long run, you get what you pay for. If you want to attract and keep good people, you need to pay them what they’re worth. Otherwise, you will end up with people who are worth what you pay.

When you were a kid in science class, did you ever work with an old-fashioned balance? I mean the kind like the scales held in the hand of Blind Justice at courthouses. They’re made up of two shallow dishes suspended from chains from a lever. If you put something that weighs an ounce in one dish, then you need to put something that weighs the same in the other dish for it to level out.
Leadership is like one of those scales. The rewards leaders give are counterbalanced by the results that their people give in return. In an organization, the scales are always moving, weighing more heavily on one side or the other. The scales naturally seek equilibrium where they are level, and they will not stay out of balance permanently.
Leaders always want greater results, because that is where the fulfillment of the vision comes from. The impact, profits, and success of an organization all come from this. As a leader, you have a choice. You can try to push your employees to give more, hoping to swing the balance in your favor. Or you can load up the rewards side—which is the only side you really have significant influence over—and wait for the balance to swing back to level as your employees respond by producing more. That’s what 360-Degree Leaders do. They focus on what they can give, not what they can get. By giving more, they get more—and so do their people.