Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

164 G ARY P. LATHAM
A downside of setting challenging specific goals is that people may obtain tangible evidence
that they did not attain them. A teenager may have test scores that provide strong
evidence of failure in math. An employee in a consulting firm may have hours and hours
of wasted effort, non - billable hours, on a potential client who subsequently took the business
to a competitor. The result can be feelings of loss of control. People learn on the basis
of evidence (e.g. revenue, client surveys, staff turnover) that they have failed to attain their
goal no matter how much they truly tried to attain it. Through such repeated experiences
they typically “ learn ” to give up; they learn helplessness. Thus there are employees who
have learned that they cannot increase revenue from existing clients, they have learned
that they are poor at bringing in new clients, and that they are not able to work effectively
with staff. They have tangible evidence to support their conclusions that they should give
up their attempts to attain their goal.
The solutions for maintaining goal commitment are at least two - fold. A fi rst step,
as noted above, is to focus on outcome expectancies. The role of a coach is to help people
see the relationship between what they do and the outcome of their actions; to help
people realize the outcomes that they can expect as a result of what they do. An early
example of how outcome expectancies affect goal commitment can be found in a study by
Lashley ( 1929 ). A man, after 900 repetitions, was still unable to master the alphabet. But
after he was offered 100 cigarettes if he could learn the alphabet in a week, he proceeded
to do so in only 10 trials.
Because the concept of outcome expectancies is as useful in one ’s personal life as it is
in an organizational setting, allow me to share a personal example. I arrived home one
day to discover my four children on the front step. They greeted me with the warning
not to enter the house as Mom was in a horrific mood. As she had walked across the
kitchen fl oor, her foot had come out of a shoe that had stuck to dried milk. As she fell, her
hand braced her from injury as it slipped into an open dishwasher that oozed with leftover
breakfast food.
To announce that I will solve the problem would not only have been lunacy on my
part, it would have fostered dependence: “ Let ’s wait until Dad gets here; he can fi x anything.
” To look for blame would have been equally fool - hardy on my part: “ So what did
you do to get your mother in such a bad mood? ” “ I don ’ t know. ” “ It wasn ’ t me. ” “ She is
always in a bad mood. ” I bet you did something, Dad. ”
The primary job of a coach is to improve performance rather than focus on blame.
This is done through increasing the person’s sense of control regarding the attainment
of their goals. It is done by helping people to realize the outcomes they can expect from
engaging in specific actions. Thus, I simply asked each of them: “ What can you do within
the next 30 seconds to improve Mom ’s mood? ” Setting a goal focuses attention on discovering
solutions to its attainment.
One son offered to clean the kitchen, another said he would get us both a drink, the
third said he would make dinner. My daughter quietly ran off to prepare a bath for my
wife. The outcome, as expected, was a dramatic upswing in my wife ’s affect and behavior.
A four cell empathy box can be used to understand: (1) the outcomes an employee
expects from committing to a goal, (2) the negative outcomes expected from goal commitment,
(3) the positive outcomes expected from sticking with the status quo, and (4) the
negative outcomes expected from doing so. Understanding outcome expectancies enabled
a forest products company to shift the dishonest (theft) to honest behavior in the workforce