RESILIENCE | LEADERSHIP| CULTURE

Discretionary Effort Is The Holy Grail In The Workplace, But How Do You Cultivate it?

by | Oct 2, 2023 | All Blogs

If your team only performs when the “cat’s around”, you haven’t built a culture of performance – you have built a culture of command and control, and that’s a miss. I enjoyed contributing to this Forbes piece where we dove into how discretionary effort is the “holy grail” in the workplace. But what is it and how do you get it going? In a nutshell, discretionary effort is when your team performs at a high level autonomously and out of intrinsic motivation. Without leaders chasing them or without a need for either the carrot or the stick. They perform because the environment, leadership and culture surrounding them drive them to do so. That’s the sweet spot. Any leader can build that type of environment – it’s all about understanding the psychology behind motivation and performance, and what people really want and need out of their work environment and leadership team. Some great tips here to get you started with that.