Sunday, December 15, 2019
Corporate Compliance Insights
  • Home
    • Home
  • About
    • About CCI
    • Writing for CCI
    • Advertise With Us
  • Articles
    • See All Articles
    • Compliance
    • Ethics
    • Risk
    • FCPA
    • Governance
    • Fraud
    • Audit
    • HR Compliance
    • Cybersecurity
    • Data Privacy
    • Financial Services
    • Leadership and Career
  • Industry News
  • Jobs
  • Events
    • Webinars & Events
    • Submit an Event
  • Downloads
    • eBooks
    • Whitepapers
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Subscribe
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
    • Home
  • About
    • About CCI
    • Writing for CCI
    • Advertise With Us
  • Articles
    • See All Articles
    • Compliance
    • Ethics
    • Risk
    • FCPA
    • Governance
    • Fraud
    • Audit
    • HR Compliance
    • Cybersecurity
    • Data Privacy
    • Financial Services
    • Leadership and Career
  • Industry News
  • Jobs
  • Events
    • Webinars & Events
    • Submit an Event
  • Downloads
    • eBooks
    • Whitepapers
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Subscribe
No Result
View All Result
Corporate Compliance Insights
Home Featured

5 Ways to Encourage Discretionary Effort

by Linda Henman
March 16, 2018
in Featured, Leadership and Career
concept of worker going the extra mile

Building a Culture of Excellence

Star performers often have an innate, internal drive to exceed expectations. It’s a tough thing to cultivate, but relatively easy to quash. Leaders should be careful not to stymie this quality in their teams. Linda Henman offers five tips to encourage “discretionary” effort.

Years ago, I worked for a boss who would have told you how much he admired, encouraged and inspired discretionary effort. And he would have been wrong on all counts. However, he would have also told you that he went to great lengths to hire highly motivated people who would ensure his success as a business owner, and he would have been right about that. So, how did the wheels come off his plan?

Highly motivated people don’t need external forces to encourage them to go above and beyond. It’s in their DNA. But these same top performers can cease to perform when their bosses engage in demotivating behaviors, as my former boss did.

For instance, he asked me to participate in a new business development initiative to reach potential clients in a new geographical location that involved me collaborating with the business development professional. I agreed, even though this was beyond the purview of my job.

After the event, he asked me to evaluate the experience. I told him I didn’t think the approach would work for specific reasons. He exploded and told me he didn’t appreciate my negativity, even though he asked for what I presumed he wanted: candor. Of course, I was right, and we didn’t acquire one new client, but the boss never discussed that with me. Nor did he apologize for his outburst.

A series of episodes like this led me to limit my discretionary efforts and to eventually leave the company. I had been motivated when he hired me, but because of his leadership, my motivation had waned. I didn’t like the way that felt. I liked going beyond expectations, but I really didn’t like getting scolded for my resourcefulness.

I define discretionary effort as the level of performance that goes beyond what’s required. It involves the energy people willingly exert, often in response to internal goals to do more than their bosses expect. Unfortunately, many bosses, like my former one, manage performance in such a way that motivates employees to do only enough to get by and avoid getting in trouble.

You can’t measure discretionary effort with employee satisfaction surveys or any other happy-to-grumpy scale. You see it in the results. Discretionary effort is not a “thing” that responds to events, motivational speeches, training or any other HR initiative. It surfaces when leaders do these five things:

  1. Delegate key decisions and empower others with both authority and responsibility to carry them out.
  2. Provide the necessary training and opportunities to develop individual skills.
  3. Show appreciation for autonomy and effort, even when an initiative fails.
  4. Encourage collaboration.
  5. Serve as an exemplar of consistency.

Increased discretionary effort can have a considerable impact on the trajectory of any organization, no matter what size or industry. A culture of excellence can’t help but follow.


Tags: corporate culture
Previous Post

TRACE International's 2017 Global Enforcement Report

Next Post

To Mitigate Information Risk, Security and Compliance are Converging

Linda Henman

Dr. Linda Henman is one of those rare experts who can say she’s a coach, consultant, speaker, and author. For more than 30 years, she has worked with Fortune 500 Companies and small businesses that want to think strategically, grow dramatically, promote intelligently, and compete successfully today and tomorrow. Some of her clients include Emerson Electric, Boeing, Avon and Tyson Foods. She was one of eight experts who worked directly with John Tyson after his company’s acquisition of International Beef Products, one of the most successful acquisitions of the twentieth century.

Linda holds a Ph.D. in organizational systems and two Master of Arts degrees in both interpersonal communication and organization development and a Bachelor of Science degree in communication. Whether coaching executives or members of the board, Linda offers clients coaching and consulting solutions that are pragmatic in their approach and sound in their foundation—all designed to create exceptional organizations.

She is the author of Landing in the Executive Chair: How to Excel in the Hot Seat, The Magnetic Boss: How to Become the Leader No One Wants to Leave, and contributing editor and author to Small Group Communication, among other works.

Dr. Henman can be reached at [email protected].

Related Posts

change is coming text on city background at sunset

Future-Proofing the Compliance Professional

December 13, 2019
futuristic technology projecting 2020 in white text

The Future of Data Privacy Regulation

December 12, 2019
illustration of businessmen shaking hands through smartphone screens

FINRA Reveals Top Areas of Interest: Supervision and Digital Communications Compliance Programs

December 12, 2019
new york city skyline at sunset

The Early Days: The Birth of the Independent Monitoring Concept

December 11, 2019
Next Post
dominos converging

To Mitigate Information Risk, Security and Compliance are Converging

Free Downloads

OFAC whitepaper cover
Compliance Job Interview Q&A
Reputation Risk Management Research

RSS SEC Litigation News

  • John Special, Defendant, and Michael Murphy, Relief Defendant, John Kenneth Davidson December 12, 2019
    SEC Obtains $3 Million Settlement in Insider Trading Action
  • Palm Beach Atlantic Financial Group, LLC and William A. Smith December 11, 2019
    SEC Charges Florida Resident and His Corporate Entity for Fraudulent Securities Offerings
  • Nanotech Engineering, Inc., Michael James Sweaney (also known as Michael Hatton), David Sweaney, and Jeffery Gange December 11, 2019
    SEC Obtains Asset Freeze to Halt Alleged Offering Fraud

Jump to a Topic:

anti-corruption anti-money laundering/AML Artificial Intelligence/A.I. automation banks Big Data blockchain board of directors board risk oversight bribery CCPA/California Consumer Privacy Act Cloud Compliance communications management corporate culture corporate governance culture of ethics cyber risk data analytics data breach data governance decision-making Dodd-Frank DOJ due diligence fcpa enforcement actions GDPR GRC HIPAA information security internal audit internet of things (IoT) KYC/know your customer machine learning monitoring regtech reputation risk risk assessment Sanctions SEC social media risk technology third party risk management tone at the top training whistleblowing
No Result
View All Result

Privacy Policy

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS Feed

Category

  • Audit
  • Compliance
  • Compliance Podcasts
  • Cybersecurity
  • Data Privacy
  • eBooks
  • Ethics
  • FCPA
  • Featured
  • Financial Services
  • Fraud
  • Governance
  • HR Compliance
  • Leadership and Career
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Resource Library
  • Risk
  • Uncategorized
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Whitepapers

© 2019 Corporate Compliance Insights

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
  • Articles
  • News
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Whitepapers
  • eBooks
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

© 2019 Corporate Compliance Insights