61 - Review and Reflect - Self Efficacy

This week we've focused on self-efficacy.  So how does this help you?  What do you get out of knowing about this topic?

I don't hear anyone talking about Self-Efficacy in the business world.  I do hear about it in Education and Development communities, but it seems like it's almost too academic for business.  That isn't really true, though.

It's important to understand cause and effect in any setting.  Ultimately, you want your work to be rewarding, both financially and spiritually.  Leaders want people to work more productively, and to continuously improve the ways we do the work. 

Designing work for self-efficacy and satisfaction provides both of these outcomes.

Self-efficacy is the confidence you have in your ability to do a particular task.  People with high self-efficacy will improve their workspace, try new things, and persist through failure.  If everyone in your company showed up doing these three things, that company would be unstoppable.

To review, there are 4 main elements: Mastery, Vicarious Learning, Verbal Persuasion or Coaching,
and Control. 

The learning piece focuses on designing work that a team can do together to build better relationships and learn from watching each other and talking about better ways to work together.

The coaching piece focuses on helping the team set better goals that challenge the skills of the team to build expertise in the required tasks. 

The coach also provide support and encouragement and should be done by whomever actually leads the team, even if it's a peer leader rather than a true supervisor.  By the way, in more advanced organizations, this can be a position through which team members rotate.

Mastery focuses on individual competence.  The higher the competence, the higher the self-efficacy.  So we deliberately focus on making everyone an expert.  Work that requires an expert feels more significant and meaningful that work that is menial.

To build that mastery, we set effective goals and targets that challenge our people in a positive way.  We provide the support they need to find the best way to do the work that achieves the challenge or hits the target.  Through repetition and accountability skills will improve.

So, while we can make an academic case out of this, there's nothing more practical that goal-setting, standardized work, practice, measurement, consistency, coaching, and feedback.

Tomorrow, go and make your work better.  Go and make work better for the people in your care.

Have a great day, and I'll see you tomorrow.