What is discretionary effort and how does it contribute towards business success?

First lets explore what discretionary effort is, why it’s important to organisational performance and how to spot if it’s missing from your organisation or team.

They feel they belong, they’re a part of the organisation, so they have a shared purpose to see it succeed. On the flip side, if employees lack a sense of purpose, they can drift and easily lose enthusiasm for their work, often going through the motions to tick boxes adding little or no extra value.

What is discretionary effort?

There’s a name for the gap between these two groups, or outcomes, which is ‘discretionary effort’. Its simple definition is “a level of effort an employee is capable of giving, but one that exceeds the bare minimum that’s required of them”.

Let’s address how this plays out in each of the scenarios quoted at the start of this blog:

In the first scenario, we’d want to know how the business had invested in personal development. Simply making online learning or workshops available isn’t enough to build true engagement and encourage discretionary effort. It becomes a box-ticking exercise. If you invest in your people, it should be to help them become the best version of themselves . In doing so, you align the outcomes you need for the business with their own personal goals and aspirations, creating a common sense of purpose. Achieving this requires a more in-depth development programme which looks at their current beliefs, shows them the mindset of a high achiever, and asks them to think about how it would feel to bridge the gap.

The second scenario could be similar: making a sustained change (which sticks beyond the actual learning experience itself) involves working with people on what they believe is possible, not just demonstrating the way you’d like them to work. When we work with our clients, our objective is to leave them with a workforce full of high performers, not with a workforce of competent people. There’s a difference in the belief system held by these two groups and we always aim for the very best because the outcome will then encourage discretionary effort.

Finally, the third scenario could well be a business that has become a victim of its own success. Discretionary effort is all about people choosing to go above and beyond because they feel rewarded just by doing so. Sometimes, when a business is really hot on targets or KPIs and provides associated rewards, (as can be common in a sales team) it has the adverse effect of people doing just enough to achieve what they need to. Without an accompanying incentive which goes beyond monetary reward (such as a clear sense of belonging or purpose) to motivate them, they will always do ‘just enough’, stopping short of discretionary effort.

How can we encourage discretionary effort?

For people to use discretionary effort, they have to want to do so. It’s not something that can be prescribed (the clue to why is in its very name) however, when we work with clients, we start by looking at individual beliefs and, by sharing the mindset of a high achiever, we help people to understand how they can become the best version of themselves.

Unlocking discretionary effort: how mindset techniques make the difference

It starts with beliefs

Our philosophy is: beliefs drive behaviours which drive outcomes. We start a client change programme by examining mindsets, and from our research we understand the recipe for high performance for leaders and salespeople; this is what we bring to our clients in order to transform their performance.

We’ve noticed that employees having the knowledge that there is a recipe, something broadly tangible, is an incentive for people to revisit their beliefs and seek true change. You can incentivise people to go that extra mile if they believe there’s something in it for them (the ability to perform as the best version of themselves) and if they can see that their organisation is committed to helping them better themselves.

Great minds can be trained to think alike

The trick is to unlock the organisation’s desire to invest in people properly – that means more than running training for all, instead looking to build on people’s natural talents and draw out and celebrate their strengths. In addition, we need to uncover the individuals’ desire to contribute more than the bare minimum by helping them see the bigger picture and feel that their employer ‘deserves’ this. That is how we unlock discretionary effort.

But how? This is about thinking differently. Changing the narrative so that your people can see that you are inspired to help them perform at a different level.

Sport is well known for using mindset techniques often found in the boardroom of high-performing businesses to help with the mental control needed when the pressure is on. It is at these times when they need to inspire a kind of discretionary effort: with sport though, it’s about squeezing every last drop of effort from teams to ensure success.

When Jonny Wilkinson kicked a winning drop goal in the dying minutes of the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final, you knew he had a way of maintaining calm and going the extra mile. He had absolute belief.

This belief started in NASA with Visual Motor Rehearsal and was eventually used in sport for the first time by Dr Denis Waitley, for the US Olympic programme during the 1980s. The All Blacks were also inspired by the mindsets of the leadership team in NASA to overcome challenges which threatened to become blocks to their continuing success.

It involves creating such a strong and visceral mental image of success that the brain forms neurological pathways similar to those created as part of a real-life experience. In other words, they create a real hunger for success and this generates more action designed to achieve it.

Using techniques from different worlds to the one in which you operate is an effective way to open the minds of those who perhaps already believe they are at their best. By opening their minds to something completely out of context, we can encourage them to push boundaries they didn’t even know were there.

Dare to be different

We believe you should find out what drives every individual that you work with. We all get inspiration in different ways, but the root to finding out what works belongs deep in our belief system; that’s why you should start there.

If people feel disengaged, bored, or that there is no purpose in doing or being better, you will never unlock discretionary effort. However, if they can see they are part of a dynamic and ambitious culture where people are continually bettering themselves, they will be inspired to do the same.

If your investment in your people is interactive, engaging and varied, you will be rewarded by long-term interest in continual self-improvement and it is this which creates high performing individuals – who always put in the discretionary effort.

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If you’re looking to build a culture where people consistently go above and beyond, we’d love to help. Get in touch at letushelp@peoplewise.co.uk to explore how we develop high-performing leaders, teams and organisations.