How Much Behavior?
“Just One More Thing…” is a short-form way that I share ideas, questions and guidance with more substance than a LinkedIn post and less academic rigor than my articles. I hope you find it valuable.
Do behaviors matter? It’s an easy question to answer. Too easy. Ask an HR leader if a person’s behaviors are as important as their performance and you’ll get a resounding “yes.” Ask a business leader and they’ll say important but not as important. Ask that business leader about the less-than-ideal behaviors of their highest performer and that balance will shift even further to performance.
For that reason, the question you need to answer isn’t “Do behaviors matter?” It’s three questions:
- Which behaviors matter?
- Where do they matter most?
- What weight do they have?
Which behaviors matter?
As we describe in our Success Model article, organizations must separate “good citizen” behavior from “performance-driving” behavior. I expect you to be a good citizen as a condition of employment – you don’t get paid extra for that. I will incrementally reward you for demonstrating performance-driving behaviors. Most leadership models are a muddied mess of both.
Which three or four behaviors are most closely tied to your organization winning in the marketplace?
Where do they matter most?
Ideally you’re reinforcing those three or four behaviors in recruiting, onboarding, performance management, development planning, talent reviews and more. But they should have actual consequences in two places: Performance management and talent reviews.
In performance management, behaviors should influence the overall rating sufficiently to reinforce or correct behaviors. No ratings? Yeah, that’s why we don’t like that concept. The message is that “behaviors matter.” In talent reviews, behaviors should be a “gate” for promotion. Is Suzy behaving consistent with what we want to see a level above her? If “yes,” great. If no, “Suzy, we can’t make you a VP until we see a change in x and y.”
What’s the right balance?
Let’s say that 100% of your bonus awards are based on deliverables/performance. For each 1% of those rewards you shift to rewarding behaviors instead of performance, you are saying that the organization will get the same or a better outcome from that new mix. Do you get a better outcome from an 80/20 mix of performance and behaviors than from a 95/5 mix?
You need to decide what the best balance is for your organization. I’d suggest it’s not 50/50. 50/50 implies that delivering 100% of your goals (full 50% awarded) and not behaving very well (30% awarded) is the same as not performing very well (30% awarded) and behaving perfectly (50% awarded). That’s clearly not the case.
The global average in our most recent research is 68% performance/32% behavior. We’d suggest that balance sends clear messages about both, especially if the behavior awards are differentiated. Great behaviors should get you 100% of your behavior award. Pretty good behaviors get you 75% of it. You see where that’s going.
Behaviors matter but only when you smartly reward the right ones, in the right amount, in the right places.