High Performance Leadership: 6 Cornerstone Principals Explained

Many years ago, I was fortunate enough to be mentored by Professor W.D. Pienaar, a visionary leader in negotiation, advanced management and profiling, and a Professor Emeritus at UNISA Business School. Professor Pienaar identified 6 cornerstone principals of leadership that are based in psychology and economics that have proven over time to be highly effective.

I wanted to share his cornerstone principals with you to ensure his wisdom is passed to a new generation of leaders and to hopefully give you a deeper insight into human behavior, elevate your EQ, and help you to build, manage and motivate high-performing teams.

Defining the 6 Principals

  1. Law of diminishing returns - the first occurrence has the highest impact.

  2. Wolf effect (“Peter and the Wolf” - “false alarms” cause people to ignore your real alarms.

  3. Random interval, random reward - people are motivated by random rewards at random intervals.

  4. Zeigarnik effect - people remember interrupted thoughts or tasks more than completed ones.

  5. Self-fulfilling prophecy (the “Ted Lasso effect”) - repeating a prediction helps make a prediction come true.

  6. Law of unintended consequences - for every action there is an additional unintended outcome.

Practical Application

  1. Law of diminishing returns - Repeating a behavior has a reduced impact every repetition. This is a form of boredom. something is only new, fresh and impactful the first time. For example, a store with a sale every day stops drawing new customers. If you keep promising your team or your customers the same reward, the motivational effect declines over time. this is accelerated by non or partial delivery. Only randomization can help reduce the impact of this law, (see law 3). To keep your teams and your market energized, you need to keep things “new” or changing (which can also generate fatigue).

  2. Wolf effect - The financial crises of 2008 is an excellent example of this effect. Many analysts raised the alarm multiple times in advance of the crises, but the “Wolf effect” is why they were ignored when the crises did not occur immediately after the warning. After the crises their credibility was restored. Only raise an alarm when crises is imminent, even if you are right, or you will lose all credibility until after the crises occurs. Until then, gather and present your evidence to influence strategy and direction, instead of an alarm.

  3. Random interval, random reward - the law of diminishing returns is softened by randomization. Ritual practices of “giving gratitude” leads to platitude and suffers strongly from diminishing returns. To sustainably motivate your team, be on a constant vigil for the behaviors you want to encourage and support those when they happen and change up the reward. An example is private words of acknowledgement or a spot bonus for a team member who did something special without being asked and sometimes there is no reward or no recognition. Applying random reward random interval is a “state of mind”, not a ritual, and is exceptionally powerful.

  4. Zeigarnik effect - People remember interrupted thoughts or tasks more than completed ones. For example, someone pauses mid-sentence. When they resume, that is the point you will remember most. This is a technique you can use when trying to communicate a point, but it is only effective when used selectively. Leaving silence mid-sentence or thought, pausing, then completing the thought will amplify its impact, and cause it to be more … …memorable. Your brain will be fixated on the un-finished thought or process until completion. Beyond speech impact, to use this as a motivational tool, interrupt a task someone was working on and let them resume it to completion later. For example, a team member in the middle of a task, interrupt them, put them on a different interim task and then assign them back to original task later for completion. They will be highly self-motivated to complete the task. This effect is so strong, if you do it repeatedly it has negative consequences.

  5. Self-fulfilling prophecy - In the Apple TV series, “Ted Lasso”, a core story point is that Ted, a coach, gets his football team to believe they are champions by posting a “Believe!” sign in the locker room and then pointing it out to his team at every opportunity. I have successfully evolved teams into high performing engineering teams, solving business problems at the highest level. After extended periods of performing at the highest level and repetition and evidence that they are the highest performers, it becomes such a part of their culture that internally, only the best performance and solutions are acceptable, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Creating that type of culture unlocks a new level of team performance. The negative effect can be true also. For parents, there is this example. You have two children and you repeatedly re-enforce “this is my angel” and “this is my troublemaker” Don’t be upset when one becomes an angel and the other a troublemaker. This is the self-fulfilling prophecy or “Ted Lasso” effect at work. Repetition and re-enforcement over time of a vision and expectations makes a team expect everyone to behave, be and execute accordingly, eventually fulfilling the vision, positive or negative.

  6. Law of unintended consequences - This is the Achilles heel of KPI and goal- driven management strategies. When a group or leader attempts to solve a problem in isolation, the “solution” implementation often results in unexpected, undesirable human behaviors and a new set of problems. A simple example is an award for increased throughput metrics resulting in a drop in quality. As long as leaders focus on identifying problems, creating the solution and the success measurement themselves, this law of human nature will continue to generate unexpected negative outcomes.

Finally

Understanding and utilizing these six principals can provide you with new tools for your EQ and audience-influencing toolbox that others may not have. They take practice and awareness for successful execution, so start using them now as your key differentiators.

My original LI article