This is where our skill at making simple things complicated comes into play. I can imagine a company hearing about the Stanford study and interpreting it like this:
1. Hey, this study says that if we just use the word “together,” people will work way harder.
2. Cool, let’s print up a giant banner that says “together,” give everybody buttons that say “TOGETHER!” and hire someone to record a jingle that’s just the word “together” over and over and then play that in the office all day long.
3. Now let’s sit back and watch productivity skyrocket.
Wrong, wrong and wrong. The results of the Stanford experiments give us a window into the relatively simple ways our brains work and how those brains can be tweaked to make us more motivated.
Tweaking is subtle.
“It’s like a nudge in the right direction, where you nudge people in the direction of a way that they work better,” Halvorson said.
Creating a sense of working together is not about being a cheerleader or getting people to bond during contrived team-building meetings. It’s about subtly making sure people understand that they’re working in concert, supporting each other and building something as a group.
“You don’t want to overdo it,” Halvorson said. “If a word like ‘together’ becomes something that’s coming out of your mouth every five minutes, people are going to wonder why that word is coming up so often. What’s going on? Are you manipulating me? What this study suggests is that when you’re talking about the goals people are working on, working that word ‘together’ in the description of those goals can be powerful. Don’t go crazy with the word, maybe find specific moments where you’re going to make that togetherness salient.”
In other words, keep it simple. Foster a certain level of face-to-face connectedness through team meetings and collaboration, and then recognize the kind of motivation our brains respond to naturally.
Subtle cues. Not flashing lights and waving banners.
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