The Metiss Group's Blog

Wikipedia defines reverse psychology as “a technique involving the advocacy of a belief or behavior that is opposite to the one desired, with the expectation that this approach will encourage the subject of the persuasion to do what actually is desired: the opposite of what is suggested.”

Parents use reverse psychology on their children as a playful yet effective means to get them to do what they want.  Leaders can apply this approach as well.  According to Humetrics Hiring Hints newsletter, here are ways to guarantee that your best people will quit:

• Treat everyone equally. This may sound good, but your employees are not equal. Some are worth more because they produce more results. The key is not to treat them equally, it is to treat them all fairly.
• Tolerate mediocrity. A-players don’t have to or want to play with a bunch of C-players.
• Have dumb rules. Great employees want to have guidelines and direction, but they don’t want to have rules that get in the way of doing their jobs or that conflict with the values the company says are important.
• Don’t recognize outstanding performance and contributions. Behavior you want repeated needs to be rewarded immediately.
• Don’t have any fun at work. Find ways to make work and/or the work environment more relaxed and fun and you will have happy employees who look forward to coming to work each day.
• Don’t keep your people informed. You’ve got to communicate not only the good, but also the bad and the ugly. If you don’t tell them, the rumor mill will.
• Micromanage. Tell them what you want done and how you want it done and get out of the way. Ask for their input on how it could be done better.
• Don’t develop an employee retention strategy. Employee retention deserves your attention every day. Make a list of the people you don’t want to lose and, next to each name, write down what you are doing or will do to ensure that person stays engaged and on board.
• Don’t give feedback. Employees want and deserve feedback.  On the spot feedback, weekly one-on-ones, and quarterly performance reviews all help employees accelerate performance.

Be creative when empowering your leaders to accelerate the performance of their direct reports, and you’ll experience more success.

This entry was posted on June 3, 2013 at 3:00 am and is filed under Leadership, Performance Acceleration. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.