Challenge of Consequences
“Isn’t consequences the same thing as punishment?” someone asked me recently. “Not really,” I answered.
This association of words often keeps supervisors from following up on their employees’ unacceptable performance. You see, we associate “consequences” with “what happens when you mess up.” Consequences are issued to unruly children and teenagers who make poor behavior choices in order to help them learn appropriate behaviors. However, the same concept can be used with adults. Punishment, on the other hand, has an emotional component that is supposed to make you feel bad for what you did.
Consequences are actually what happen as a result of your actions. Consequences can be positive or negative. For example, when a salesman signs a new customer, he might receive a bonus, which is a pleasant consequence. On the other hand, an employee who makes a careless safety error may receive a reprimand, which is an unpleasant consequence.
The problem lies in inconsistent consequences. If consequences only happen when someone does something wrong, they feel like punishment to the person receiving it. If you want to see consistent results from your people, then you have to use consistent consequences. Make sure that people hear lots of good news from you when they are performing well. Don’t be a recognition miser and don’t wait for the super achievement to give recognition. Reward consistent positive results and efforts toward behavior improvement. People want to know that what they do pleases you. You have a lot of power to inspire achievement if you will use it.
Be also free with natural consequences if you see incorrect behavior. This is difficult for many supervisors so they wait too long before giving consequences. Thus it gets escalated to disciplinary action quickly. Instead, give people useful information that will help them get back on the correct path immediately while there is no emotion attached to it. Just as you quickly pull your hand back from a hot pan when cooking, employees ought to know where the limits are by your quick reaction to near misses, not crises. Discuss lessons learned and apply the “what happened, why did it happen, and how can we keep this from happening again” approach. In this way, natural consequences are follow-up actions in response to incorrect or unacceptable behavior. The purpose is not to make the employee feel bad, but help them be successful the next time.
