Are you honest about what you're really rewarding?

Are you honest about what you're really rewarding?

When I was with the Dallas Mavericks for a pre-season, the first thing the coach told the group of guys competing for select spots was that "We are already paying someone $20M this season to score the ball. We are looking to sign guys who can pass, be a good teammate, and play the right way." Unsurprisingly, they ended up filling those roster spots with a few guys that scored the ball really well, even though one of them started about three fights during the camp.

It doesn't really matter that they went with the scorers, it was eye-opening for me (at the time) that they would say one thing and then do the opposite. In this context, it didn't really matter, because NBA teams use each of the athlete's childhood dreams as leverage. If an athlete became bitter and disillusioned about these environments, there were millions of others who would gladly take their place.

But in the real world, a lot of organisations don't have that luxury, meaning that their word is a big deal. Going against it is the biggest source of erosion in trust, and begins the "here we go again" loop. As a result, people stop delivering any discretionary effort, they stop doing good work to do whatever they're incentivised to do, and/or they begin looking elsewhere.

This is why I believe it's one of the best opportunities for companies to retain talent, because people are expecting to be disappointed. When they see that an organisation is honest about what they actually want, it creates buy-in as a result of sheer surprise. And the buy-in gets deepened when the rewards match the espoused values.