“Watch or die.”
That, cynics say, is the essential promotional premise of many “special reports” airing on local television newscasts this November ratings season. They don’t offer enlightenment, exactly, but offer to help you avoid something terrible:
- “Could something in your pantry be poisoning your family? Find out tonight at 10!”
- “Is Santa a sexual predator? Exclusive undercover video at 11!”
- “Do bras cause bird flu? Breaking news — right after ‘Oprah!’ “
I made all of that up, of course, and it’s an exaggeration — I hope — even by today’s TV standards. But I can’t help wondering if the popularity of scare tactics springs, at least in part, from the long tradition within newsrooms of negative reinforcement as a behavioral consequence. And not just in broadcast newsrooms.
“Bringing Out the Best in People,” by Aubrey C. Daniels, is about performance management. Its subtitle is “How to Apply the Astonishing Power of Positive Reinforcement.” (By the way, “astonishing” is almost hyperbolic enough for use in a TV news tease.) But it’s what Daniels says about negative reinforcement that reminded me most of the way newsrooms work.
Students of psychology will recognize in Daniels’ work the strong influence of B. F. Skinner. The concepts are not new — except, perhaps, to many people running news organizations, who sometimes seem to believe they operate in an environment so unique that the science of human behavior doesn’t apply.
See what you think.
Daniels defines consequence as something that happens to a person as the result of a behavior, making it either more or less likely the behavior will recur. He says there are four kinds of behavioral consequences: two that decrease behavior (see sidebar), and two that increase behavior.
The two consequences Daniels says increase behavior he calls reinforcement — positive and negative.
Positive reinforcement provides something someone wants. The copy editor who writes a headline so strong that readers remember it for years wins an award. The photojournalist who tells a story so effectively that it brings viewers to tears gets invited to speak at a journalism convention and teach others how she did it. The reporter who turns an exclusive enterprise piece gets praised publicly, thanked personally and entrusted by his boss with important opportunities in the future.
In my experience, editors and news managers say they practice positive reinforcement far more than their staffs say they do. Often, that’s because these bosses believe they are reinforcing behavior when they really aren’t. What they do fails to make the behavior more likely to recur. Common examples include:
- Waiting too long to praise positive performance
- Not being specific enough about the performance they are trying to reinforce
- Providing rewards that are meaningful to the giver, but not to the recipient –- violating what Dr. Tony Alessandra calls “the Platinum Rule”
- Not being consistent with attempts at reinforcement, that is, rewarding one thing one day and something seemingly contradictory the next.
Positive reinforcement, like so much of leadership and management, involves a set of skills that improve with practice. It is not as simple as many managers think, which is why they are often so ineffective at applying it.
Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, underlies some of journalism’s most established customs and conventions. In fact, we practice it without even thinking about it. Yet the term, as Daniels defines it, does not mean what many people think.
Negative reinforcement is not punishment. It is the avoidance of punishment.
Take deadlines.
Miss one and you’re in trouble. Make deadline, and you’re OK — at least for another day. So, what’s wrong with that?
“Deadlines give people permission to wait,” Daniels says. “If performance shows a sharp rise just before a deadline, suspect negative reinforcement. If people are always scrambling at the last minute, working late and overtime to meet a deadline, check one for negative reinforcement.”
Sound familiar?
If reporters in your newsroom all have the same daily deadline, how many stories or scripts come in well ahead of that hour? How many come in during the last hour or even half-hour before deadline? And how much meaningful editing and coaching can occur when all that copy lands at the same time?
“Negative reinforcement,” Daniels says, “serves us well in those circumstances where all we need is compliance or minimum performance.
“Today, every business I know of is interested in world-class performance. Attaining those goals requires much more than minimum performance. Negative reinforcement will give you only incremental improvement.”
Worse yet, not only do most news organizations fail to reinforce performance positively when it exceeds minimal compliance — some actually punish such performance: What happens to those who finish their assignments early? Often, they are given more to do, and not necessarily work they will particularly relish. Such consequences are highly unlikely to reinforce their early-finish performance.
Editors and news directors know what that feels like. What is the consequence for department heads who manage expenses and stay well within budget? Often it’s a smaller budget for the following year. And the consequence for competing effectively and covering the community with a small staff? Sometimes it’s a smaller staff in the future.
When people talk about their bosses, they often offer insight about the kind of consequences at work. A common comment about heavy-handed editors or managers is, “Keep your nose clean, do your job and you’ll be fine.” That’s a survival strategy, not a setup for excellence.
And some of those tough-guy, old-school bosses like to say the reward for good work in their newsrooms is “keeping your job.”
How inspiring.
On the other hand, positive reinforcement by a boss produces what Daniels calls discretionary effort by an employee. Daniels defines discretionary effort as “that level of effort people could give if they wanted to, but which is beyond what is required.” In common terms, it means “going the extra mile.” In journalism, it can mean asking and answering that extra question that enriches reader understanding; capturing that additional camera angle that leaves an indelible image in the mind of a viewer; or providing that unique perspective that differentiates one news organization’s coverage from everybody else’s.
The job of providing positive reinforcement never ends, and it’s not always easy, especially when you don’t have much experience at it. To have an impact, it must be immediate, consistent, specific and meaningful to the performer — rather than to the boss.
