Performance, Effort, Meritocracy & Mediocrity
What happens when we reward; whether it's through praise, recognition, opportunity, award, etc. always results and absent effort? Same thing holds true in reverse. What are the unintended consequences on our audience that is excluded in the reward.
It's not as simple as acknowledging everyone for their unique contributions. And, everyone is wired to respond differently to different types of rewards.
When you really start to think about the ins and outs with all the different perspectives you can see how we end up in a mediocrity system too often.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, iHeartRadio, Castro, Castbox, Pocket Casts, Goodpods, Podfriend, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Summary
Today’s podcast is a discussion between Connor Warman and Brian Chontish and touches on a range of topics related to leadership, performance standards, and the dynamics of meritocracy in organizations. Here are the key points:
Meritocracy and Performance: The discussion begins with a focus on meritocracy, exploring how performance and effort are recognized and rewarded in various settings, particularly in the military. The speakers question whether high performers should always be rewarded more and delve into how performance is perceived and evaluated.
Physical Training as a Metaphor: Tosh uses an example from his experience in the Marine Corps, specifically during physical training (PT) runs, to illustrate how different individuals perform under varying conditions. He observes how some individuals may exert maximum effort but still finish last, while others may not give their best effort yet finish first. This leads to a broader discussion on effort versus performance.
Leadership Challenges: The conversation highlights the challenges leaders face in balancing standards-based and performance-based approaches. It's emphasized that leaders should consider effort, not just outcomes, and recognize that different individuals may require different motivational strategies.
Rewarding Effort vs. Outcome: A significant point is made about the importance of rewarding effort, not just outcomes. The speakers argue that an individual giving their maximum effort, even if they only meet minimum standards, is often more valuable than someone who exceeds standards but doesn't put in full effort.
Individual Differences and Leadership: The podcast touches on the importance of understanding individual differences among team members. Effective leadership requires recognizing these differences and employing strategies that cater to diverse motivations and abilities.
Balancing Mediocrity and Meritocracy: The speakers discuss the balance between fostering a meritocratic environment and avoiding mediocrity. They emphasize that a leader should strive to create a culture that encourages both high performance and high effort, recognizing the complexities involved in managing diverse teams.
Leadership Philosophy: Tosh reflects on his personal leadership philosophy, emphasizing the importance of helping people achieve more than they think they're capable of. This involves a commitment to individual growth and recognizing the potential in every team member.
Adapting Leadership Styles: The conversation concludes with thoughts on the need for leaders to adapt their styles to different situations and individuals. This includes finding creative ways to motivate and inspire team members, considering both individual and collective growth.
Overall, the podcast offers insights into the complexities of leadership, particularly in the context of balancing meritocracy and mediocrity, while also emphasizing the importance of recognizing and rewarding effort, not just outcomes.
Hyperlinks
Transcript
Tosh: Alright, hey everybody. Back again with Connor after a week off of Mega Travel. But we're going to record a little bit. Not sure what topic Connor is going to pick to talk about. But we're going to split up tonight into two sessions and do two recordings smaller. That way we're kind of back into the theme that I had where everything was about 30 minutes long or so. Make it a little easier to just say, hey I'm going to download it on the way to work. Anyways, good to be keeping up the momentum man. Keeping it going? Yeah, yeah.
Connor: You just wasted 30 seconds.
Tosh: I know, 37. But you got good momentum going with your stuff too.
Connor: Yeah.
Tosh: 28 weeks? How many weeks was it that I just seen?
Connor: 28 or 29.
Tosh: 29 now this week, yeah. Yeah. Pages of Connor. Yep. Alright bud, let's dig in.
Connor: Sweet.
Tosh: What you got?
Connor: We're going to talk about some meritocracy.
Tosh: Oh shit.
Connor: We had started to talk about that a little bit earlier. And then standard based max effort.
Tosh: Yeah, kind of all the same right? Yep. Well not all the same but the same topic. The same umbrella. And we probably could just talk about it and go on a huge conversation. But really what we want to do is just identify it and then kind of show why it's important, what to think about it in regards to leadership and some of the implications that it has and then how you can invite both concepts that we're going to talk about sort of into balance when leading.
Connor: Yeah, because we've teased and touched upon it a little bit and other things we've talked about without directly addressing it.
Tosh: Yeah, well I guess I might have talked about it on podcast before but I think maybe just for posterity just share a little vignette of where it started to come into my life back in the Marine Corps when I started thinking about it a little bit more. In the Marine Corps it's like, is it a meritocracy system, is it not? Like high performers always thought it should be more and they should get rewarded more and this and that. And you can see it kind of playing out in behaviors and the way that you treat each other and the way that leaders and stuff.
I don't know, I'm not here to judge one way or another but one place that it manifested for me that early on when I was a young platoon commander, well not maybe a young platoon commander, I was a first lieutenant, probably an officer for about two and a half years, three years, at about ten years into my career, twelve years into my career. But as a platoon commander you go out for a PT run, right? And this is where I was starting to watch some things.
And I would do these runs with a platoon and I had a large platoon because I was in weapons company and then we'd combine two platoons into one before we went to the war. But I would take them for these long PT events, physical fitness, physical training events once in a while. And I would break it up into like, okay hey, this first leg we're all going to run together as a group, the next leg we're going to run individual effort, the next group, then we're going to rally, then we're going to all run together as a unit to the next checkpoint, and then as individuals, individual effort to the next checkpoint and do that for a period of time. Because what happens is when you run with a whole unit and you try to keep the unit together, people's abilities tend to be low to really high.
And so what do you run to? If I run to the fastest person or I perform to the most talented person, then a whole bunch of people are going to struggle and be left out. If I run to the minimum standard, then maybe one or two are going to fall below that, but the rest of the group is largely going to be unchallenged. And if they're not challenged then it's generally a waste of time unless you layer in different objectives for the event. And by and large, the larger a unit gets, your disparity between the most talented and least talented is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. You're going to have tons and tons of numbers in terms of people participating. And you're going to have a large body of people, right? You could have 100 people, 200 people.
So anyways, so we didn't do large scale unit PT generally for physical development. It was more to assess development that had occurred during an interim between the last large unit PT. But you would invite leadership and you would invite team building and camaraderie and things like that into the learning points or the objectives of that PT. Anyways, so I'd be doing these long sessions with a unit. It was like 70 people in my platoon. And we'd go for the run. We'd stay together as a unit and we'd run minimum standard. Still a little challenging so people would have to work. And then we'd huddle up at the checkpoint and they'd be like, okay, we're going to go to this next location, individual effort. And three, two, one, go. And we take off. And I would be usually towards the front, second or third fastest or whatever. And then the unit that would be spread out across time, minutes, four or five minutes, six minutes. And so the faster you ran to that checkpoint or the faster you accomplish the task, the more rest you'd get at that checkpoint. And then the people that were the last to show up because they were less fit or less engaged or less purposeful, less motivated or whatever, got less rest. And what ends up happening though, it's like, I mean, let me just cut to the chase to make it quicker.
Inevitably, the people that finished first with me tend to be rewarded and the people that finished last tend to get chastised. Right? Oh, you fat fuck. Oh, you lazy fuck. Oh, you incompetent this. You can come out and they'd get punished. Right? And then I'm watching it, but I'm looking and I'm watching across these individuals over time for multiple iterations of this. It's like, hey, I know that that individual, he's finishing towards the back of the pack, but he's putting out his best fricking effort. He's not really physically capable of any more. And that's what he has. And then there were other individuals that finished towards the back that they finished towards the back under some sort of disguise of, oh, well, I was helping so and so or I was helping keep accountability or this or that. And it's all bullshit. And there were some individuals that would fake it. They would finish just slightly ahead of the people in the back, clearly only putting out 70% or 80% effort to finish above the last people so that they wouldn't get any attention, negative attention. Right? And you could see how that would be not cool. But then if you looked at it on the front side also, people that finished right next to me, some people were putting out 100% effort just to be that close to finishing with me. And that's awesome. Their level of physical fitness or prowess was there and their effort was there. But there were some people that finished right near me or even in front of me that were only given 80% or 90% effort, but yet they were finishing in the front. And they would get applauded. Oh, wow, you beat the skipper. Oh, you beat the platoon commander, whatever, whatever. And they would be recognized as these high performers. But yet their effort wasn't max effort. They weren't putting it all in. Right? And then they were getting rewarded.
And so, yeah, hey, they finished 10 seconds in front of me, but they had the ability to finish a minute and a half in front of me, but yet they didn't. Why? And by looking at all of these different combinations as it plays out across everybody, you just start to see and you can start to read people and understand them. And it's like, hey, I'm rewarding people that finish in the front, but are they truly deserving of being rewarded based on their effort versus their performance? And then again, the same thing in reverse about the people that finished in the end. So I just started thinking about that a lot. What does this all mean to the conversation? It's like these telemarketers are just going to keep calling and calling. That's what they do.
As a leader, so get out of the military now, but just as a leader, you're going to find yourself with a collection of people that could fit any one of these things. So do you want to lead your business, your practice, your family, your life, whatever it is that you're leading with standards based? Hey, this is the minimum standard. As long as you're achieving above the minimum standard, you're good. I think there's value there, 100%. But what about the people that are just falling short of the minimum standard, but they're giving their best effort? It doesn't necessarily mean, oh, we got to shit can them. Or do I lead my company with, hey, it's just truly performance based so he that performs the best gets the rewards and everybody else gets categorized below them or ranked and filed below them. That's a world of comparison off of these individuals that may be inherently talented or inherently motivated or just have the luxury of experiences or education that others don't.
So do I want to create a performance based, standards based meritocracy type thing? Environment? Do I want to create more of a mediocrity, minimum standards, equal opportunity environment? And the answer really is yes. And so as I look at it from a leader's perspective, when somebody is falling into a certain category to investigate what my role is in either setting conditions for them to think that that is what's desired and appropriate and best, or look at myself and say, hey, what can I do then to either incentivize the people that aren't giving max effort even though their performance is really high? How can I incentivize them in order to put more effort in, right? And whatever that looks like so that I can increase performance either of that individual or of other individuals. And then the same thing for everything. You're just always looking back at it on yourself. What do I need to do? What resources or what information or what education or what changes do I need to have in my communication or my manners so that the people that are performing at a minimum standard with the maximum possible effort, how can I empower them to grow?
And when I look at my definition of leadership or what I believe leadership is in terms of a philosophy given whatever role I'm in, because I believe that it can change a little bit, but there's got to be some inherent thing that's consistent across it all. It is to help people achieve, to aspire to something more than what they think they're capable of as an individual. I want individuals to grow. Yeah, I want my business to grow. I want my endeavor to grow. I want to be successful with my mission. But I also want the people that I'm responsible for or to have authority over, I want them to grow as individuals also. Because if they grow, then inevitably the company or the unit or the organization is going to grow with it.
Connor: Yeah, my head just goes in like a hundred different directions when I start talking about this. But I think the effort piece sticks out to me, because you could have all the raw skills be the best at where you're at. Maybe it's the workplace, you're just the best. You're the best, you're the man. You're not really putting in the effort. And then you could go somewhere else and all of a sudden your best is like ground zero. So I think a lot of times it comes down to, it's almost like forced growth. You kind of have to put yourself in a situation.
Like your running example, those top guys, you could put them in a different group and they could be last. And then all of a sudden there the guy's getting chastised and made fun of and everything. But it's like when you get put into a situation where you have to give max effort, but you're not used to giving max effort, it becomes hard to give max effort. You're so used to just skating by with what you know. Right? I don't really know what I'm saying with that. I'm just kind of thinking out loud.
Tosh: Yeah, but I mean it's worth thinking about as a leader, what environment, what culture am I setting inside of my organization with how I'm rewarding or incentivizing one group of individuals and how that actually, the unintended consequences or the second order effects is de-incentivizing or demotivating or deflating another audience. It's like in an ideal world, you would just create your community, your culture, your environment, your organization with one very clear cut specific, this is the way we're going to do business. And that works.
I mean it can work inside your home front, I suppose, if you have one child. Right? But then when you have a second child, maybe they're both wired the same way, but maybe they're wired differently. And so then it starts to break down a little bit, that concept of, well, this is the way it's going to be. Right? And then maybe you have a third child or your organization grows to 15 people or 50 people or 5,000 people. Right? And you have to have skills, right, through awareness, consideration and thought about how to connect with the various types of people that you have and what they're doing. Making sure their roles are appropriate for what your desires are for them.
Connor: Yeah. Because there's value in no matter where you're at, someone telling you you're bad. Like you're bad at that. You know? I have it all the time. You know, whether it's at work or writing, you know, like people start telling you you're really good at something and then someone who's a lot better than you comes along and says, actually you're bad. That wasn't as good as it could have been. But if you just get so used to the, oh, you're really good, you're really good, and then all of a sudden you stop seeking opportunities to grow, you kind of just become stagnant and then you just kind of stop.
Tosh: Yeah. You can become complacent to your own natural talent. Oh, my natural talent got me to this so far and I'm so talented. Well, now I don't have to put so much effort into it because it just comes natural to me. And I was like, well, if you put more effort into it, just think of how much better it could be. Well, what is it that you can give somebody that thinks that way, right, or is acting that way, what can you give that individual to get them excited about growing? You know what I mean? It's different for every, I mean, you can incentivize it through money, increased responsibility, new responsibility. We see a lot of places in the workforce now, right? Like you move jobs and positions like, hey, this person's in charge of operations and they move through an operation cycle. And the next thing you know, hey, we're going to pull you out of that director position of operations and we're going to put you in to marketing to build your skills and abilities in that area. And then you got to go through the whole learning curve again. So you can incentivize people that way, you know, making their resume more robust, I guess, as business speak.
Connor: Yeah. I mean, I've always seen it, especially for me, I've always seen it in writing, right? Like grow up, mom's telling you you're good, teachers are telling you you're good. I start writing now, people around me are telling me I'm good. But then you get out of that comfort zone and then you get to people who are accomplished writers and they're like, actually, this is bad or this isn't as good as it could be. You know, you're like, oh yeah, you know, I just got in this rut of I'm good, I'm good. And then it just helps you kind of level up. And you know, but then it goes to the whole thing of criticism or criticism or critique, like take it for what it's worth because sometimes it's not right. Sometimes it's just someone who's stylistic about something, who says this could be better but maybe it's just not the way they want it. It still could be good, right? I don't know if I'm getting off topic but...
Tosh: I think there is a departure there from our topic with that but I think it's relevant. You know what I mean? I think if we were to take both branches of what we're talking about now in the moment, distilling back down, it's awareness of a leader to recognize their talent and how their talent is, not their personal talent, their people. I'm using the word talent as in terms of their employees or their peers or whatever, right? Like the importance of a leader to recognize the individuals of who they are, how those individuals are motivated, what their capabilities, limitations are, right? What their performance looks like and then connecting with that individual. And it gets really, really hard to do to have 15 different unique templates when you're trying to create a culture, right? Or a community or a family that's one. Hey, this is my hallmark thing. I stand my hand on the ground, run a table and say, hey, this is what we're all about. Boom. And we have that and we stick to all those hard, fast things that give somebody, everybody something in common, right? Your standards. But yet how everybody moves towards accomplishing those standards or that culture, right? It's going to be different.
So, I mean, it's highly engaging, right? You've got to know your people. I think in the Marine Corps, there was a leadership principle that was know your people and employ them in accordance with their capabilities. And it's like, yeah, that's great, but it can be so much more, right? Employment in accordance with the capabilities, yeah. Or employ them and give them the resources that will allow them the opportunity to grow and evolve into increased capability, right? I don't think the Marine Corps principle was short at all. I think we just write it as that. And then as you go up the leadership chain, those principles get deeper, deeper, more richer, more richer, right? As you play with them in your head. But if I was in the Marine Corps today, say I was a general today and I was just going off of, you know, employ your people in accordance with the capability, know your people and employ them in accordance with capabilities, right? And I just stuck to that at the superficial level, I'd be a really shitty general. You know what I mean? That's great as a corporal or a sergeant and a lieutenant, maybe even a captain, right? But as you move through your leadership progression, those little principles should grow. Grow and have deeper and richer meanings in the way that you use them, right?
Connor: Yeah, so as a leader, it's being able to take the group of people that you're leading and being able to connect with each one of them. So you're pushing your quote high performers and you're pushing your people who are not as high performers without making either party, without discouraging or making either party feel bad necessarily.
Tosh: Sure. Kind of. Yeah. Well, you just brought me in and like you saying that took me to another place too. It's like, okay, hey, I've got a high performer. He's performing really high, but his efforts only 80%. But they're performing way above the standard. Hey, that's great. One strategy is how can I excite that individual to put out more effort so that they can increase their performance? Sure, that's one way to do it, right? I'll tell you another way to do it is to how can I motivate that performer to put more effort in on a lateral cause, meaning bring up the performance of the people that are underperforming. That could be another arm of a strategy, right? So now I've got two prongs. There's a third, a fourth, and a fifth prong like in different ways to...
I'll tell you what is a constant beat down to a high performer. A constant beat down is always trying to incentivize them either to work harder to increase their performance or to force them to, okay, hey, start thinking about others and now increase their performance. You have to have multiple things and you'll find, right? But I was so exhausted at a young point in my career where, hey, you're performing really well and you're putting in a lot of effort. Well, now why don't you, because you have this talent or whatever, this propensity, now help others. Keep making and then holding me accountable for their lack of performance or my lack of effect on them, their effort or their performance. And if I'm constantly just trying to do that to that audience to bring up the average of everybody else, that's just a beat down because some people aren't motivated that way. I was, but I can think of names of individuals that were in the same category as I was in that regard that weren't motivated that way. You know what I mean? They were motivated by the, hey, I want to do something new. I'm bored. So giving them new and exciting things to do in order to tackle more effort or to get them to achieve something else so that they could grow would have been the strategy I would have used for that person. You know what I mean? But instead, you're getting beat down over and over and over again. Like, oh, you know, you're capable of so much more.
Why don't you, our baseball analogy from like two book writing to go, you know what I mean? You got so much talent, you got so much talent, you go out in the ball and you got no hustle. And if I'm always beating you down to get you to hustle more, hustle more, there's value there. But if that's the only thing I'm trying to get you to do and you're resistant to it, it's not going to work. And you're a fool as a leader to think that I'm just going to continually try to pressure you that way to get more results for you. You're either just not ready for that yet and you will be some other day because your growth curve is different or I need to find something else to get you to tackle, right?
Connor: Yeah, so what do you do about as a leader of the person who is the high performer, has all the raw skills, but you go to them and you try to push them to do more and they just straight up say, what does it matter? I'm leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else.
Tosh: I mean, there's a ton of things you can do. What works is going to be trial and error to find out what connects to another person, right? I give you more responsibility. Consume more time and then therefore it's going to make you put more effort in, right? And it might work, but I need to be watching whether it works or not. I need to confirm or deny whether it's working or not working. And if your performance in another area starts to decrease because you're being overtasked or extra tasked or differently tasked, right, in addition to your things and your performance starts to go down in that original area that we identified is awesome, then my strategy is not working, right? Increased responsibility is always like the cute thing like, oh yeah, like what employer doesn't want to have somebody come for an interview and it's like, hey, this person, I'm a go-getter, right? Oh, Connor, why do you want this job? Oh, it's because I'm a go-getter and I just want increased responsibility and I want to help others. I think, yeah, that's an employer's wet dream, right? Everybody learns to say that. But six months down the road, if you go back to that initial interview and you take those words that you said to me, and I'm marrying those up with your behaviors and your performance, it's probably not, right?
How does this all tie back into a basic though, like one of our core tenets and really it's caring about your people. I mean, it's common courtesy, decency and respect. It's truly being invested in your people that makes you a quality leader that thinks about these things, thinks about your individuals as individuals and also as pieces of the greater puzzle and how it fits making the bigger picture, right? But each individual still needs the care and consideration of an individual. Otherwise, we're just going to be in a widget factory. All you need to do is just sit and pick up the one piece, turn it 90 degrees and set it back on the conveyor belt so that it goes through and gets stamped again. I'm not interested in helping a leader of widget makers, but I'm still thinking that probably those widget maker leaders could benefit from looking at their people as individuals.
Connor: How's about getting them to see the value in, if I pick the team up around me, we're all going to be better for it. It's easy to see that in the military, right? Because the stakes are high, right? Like if I make these people better, then it's people, we're going to have less likelihood of people dying kind of thing, you know? But how about getting them to see that value in, I make them better, the whole team gets better, I get better, therefore.
Tosh: Well, you think it would be easy in the military. It's actually not. It's actually really freaking hard in the military because 90% of our time, 95% of our time, maybe not recently, but has spent training without the looming thing of combat on our front door. And then combat just makes it very, very clean and makes it very, very easy. Nobody wants to be an underperformer in combat, right? But it's actually really, really hard in the military when there's no looming threat of adversity or conflict on the horizon. And it's just like, well, what are we doing this for? You really have to find some intrinsically motivated individuals or internally motivated individuals or individuals that are motivated through intrinsic means. There'll be a better way of saying it.
But how do you do it, man? There's so many simple, specific examples like, oh, everybody gets a raise or we could profit share or we could give bonuses or whatever, right? Or, okay, if we reach this standard as a team across these different verticals, we'll get a day off. We'll get a four day work week for the next two weeks or whatever, whatever, right? It just comes down to creativity of the supervisor, the creativity to be able to afford these opportunities with inside the construct of what's capable and what they can actually do.
Connor: Yeah, because it's kind of like the baseball example, right? You wouldn't have even had the chance to hit the big walk-off home run if the hustle guy didn't make the diving play in the last inning to keep the score what it was kind of thing. There's a lot, obviously, there's value in that.
Tosh: That's when you start to really look at, if you pick high performing teams, like, hey, I have a high performing team on the rugby pitch. I have a high performing team in the laboratory. I have a high performing team in the board meeting. And then trying to look at what do those high performing teams across different professions, what do they have in common? I'll tell you what they have in common. Common courtesy, decency, and respect for each other. You know what I mean? I don't want to let you down. You don't want to let me down. I really, really care about you. You really, really care about me. We really, really care about each other, the mission, the purpose, the cause. And we're always trying to align all those things the best possible and understanding that there's always energies pulling those things apart, distractions and whatnot.
Yeah, standards based. I think we have to set a standard. And the standards need to be clearly communicated, defined and clearly communicated. And they need to be rigidly adhered to. Don't make a rule that you're not willing to enforce or stand behind when you're the most fatigued, tired, stressed out, when chips are down, whatever, whatever, because if you're willing to bend those, then don't even make it a rule because that will erode trust and confidence. So standards based, you have to set these standards. And we need to measure individuals against the standards. But it's not always as simple as just measuring against the standard in terms of a raw number. There's effort, there's intentions, there's circumstances and we need to consider all of those things. But you always have to enforce the standard. Hey, you did not make the mission. Yeah, but I'm a nice guy and I've got four kids at home and I can't lose this job. And the standards got to be the standards, right? But then recognizing how we reward different individuals in arriving at that standard based off of those other things. I would much rather take somebody that's performing at the bare minimum standard and giving max effort than somebody that performs above standard and gives 80% of it. I'll take the former individual almost every single day of the week. You know, why? I believe that there's just something to be said in the character profile of an individual that is willing to give their best. Here's the consistency in who I am in my leadership and it's also one of the four agreements. Always do your best. You know what I mean? And so I'm a really big fan of max effort, max effort mentality, people that are giving their best, right? I'm really, really adverse to the phrase good enough. I don't believe in saying good enough. I've talked about it about why before we could talk about it in another conversation. But good enough needs to be stricken from all of our language, right? In terms of a phrase, I don't ever want to say, hey, well, okay, hey, that's good enough. No, no, no. That effort and those results are appropriate for what's required and will satisfy what's needed in the time based off competing interests of efficiency, cost, time, whatever, whatever, whatever. But you will never hear me say and I'll always correct myself if I ever say the phrase, okay, that's good enough. Because that's just a negative phrasing. It's not a good positive framing of what I'm trying and meaning and how I'm evaluating an effort or a result, right? And then again, it's like, hey, do leaders intend to create a mediocre environment or are they looking to create a meritorious environment? I want to create a meritorious environment. But it's not necessarily by following all of these, quote unquote, like tried and true things of a true meritocracy. Because the reality is that the composition of our workforce or our talent is not an appropriate fit for that.
Connor: Yeah. Yeah.
Tosh. I don't know how that fits with equal opportunity, but it does. It does. But maybe that's a stretch. Anyways, those are my thoughts on that. There you go.
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