On reading the book SuperBetter by Jane McGonigal, I invested some time pondering how the concepts might be leveraged to empower leaders and sales leaders to motivate their teams, add some fun and achieving even better results.
"When we play a game, we volunteer to be challenged. No one forces us to try to solve a game's puzzles, or defeat another team, or reach a certain score. Because we are fully in control of whether we accept a game's challenge, we don't experience anxiety or depression when we play— despite the very real possibility of loss or defeat. Our primary experience is of agency, not of threat." – Jane McGonigal
Games of all kinds have an effect of some sort on individuals. Why you play a game of any kind determines it impacts on you positively or negatively. Games trigger the reward mechanisms in our brains, so it's useful to leverage this mechanism in our work and life in general.
The main idea of the book is to redefine the harder aspects of your life of business pursuit as a game by challenging yourself to overcome obstacles to reach an outcome.
Philosopher Bernard Suits defined a game as a 'voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.' There's no logical reason for attempting to hit a small white ball into a hole with a thin metal club — but we do it because golf is fun
Self-efficacy
There is a massive difference between saying you will take a particular action towards the desired outcome (an epic win) and doing the often uncomfortable activities that are required to achieve it.
"Self-efficacy is the crucial difference between having lots of motivation but failing to follow through, and successfully converting motivation into consistent and effective action."
Consider in a selling environment this trait in winning business with prospective clients who have long term relationships with a competitor. How about the challenges of nurturing a sizeable national key account. It takes tons of persistence, thinking and communicating in creative ways to breakthrough and significantly grow the account.
To gamify and increase ones self-efficacy, select a secret identity that empowers you and get creative creating quests. In sales, this could be "the Solution Whisperer", "Growth Warrior" or our go-to and slightly less gamified "Trusted Advisor".
During sales leadership accountability sessions, develop simple daily routines and activities that help get closer to reaching your epic win. Take inspiration from video games and work together with your coach to allocate experience points (XP) to boost confidence to take on more significant and challenging quests.
Keeping Score
You need to be able to measure progress in fixed time periods and have visibility of how your activities are or are not producing results. This is important because you may be tempted to do the same thing over and over again and gain little traction. For example, if you decide with your team member that to embed themselves deeper into the key accounts will require activities in three key areas.
Choose how to score the actions:
Reaching out by phone/video to new stakeholders in the business and set up a face to face meetings 20 XP (experience points)
Writing an article on LinkedIn and tag a relevant contact 10 XP
Arranging a lunch and learn and get a key stakeholder to attend 25 XP
Get together often with your ally or sales coach and decide what is working and adjust the approach as needed. Celebrate your wins, allocate rewards and aim to beat your previous scores consistently.
Enlist allies
Encourage each member of your team to choose someone they can turn to for help or brainstorm ideas for their current initiative. When undertaking projects or quests, the ally or accountability coach is there to assist you in making substantial progress. When you let someone else know what you plan to do, it assists with motivation. Accountability maintains momentum when you hit inevitable setbacks.
"Having social support makes it easier for us to achieve our goals. It's not just that our friends and family help us directly by offering their time, advice, or resources. Medical research shows that our bodies respond to social support in dramatic ways, getting stronger and more resilient every time someone helps us."
Utilise Power-Ups
If you need to refocus in Basketball, you may call a timeout. Consider, what is it that gives an energy a boost and helps you stay on track longer?
There are mental, social, emotional and physical power-ups. A few examples:
Mental – Use expanded awareness – focus on a spot on the wall above eye-level and gently allow your gaze to drift out into the peripheral. Let your attention drift outwards to the left and right so that you can become aware of the walls, people, objects 180 degrees from where your eyes are looking. Stay in this state for a minute or so and notice how refreshed and refocused you become.
Social – Arrange a coffee meeting with your accountability coach or engage with someone who makes you feel empowered and ready to get back to it.
Emotional – Check in with the voice and negative emotions inside if it is derailing you. Develop self-awareness and change your state into a more empowered one.
Physical – Go for a walk, get some sunshine, do twenty squats or pushups.
It’s useful to identify the bad guys and anything that gets in the way of your progress. What are the things that distract you, people who drain your energy, circumstances that demotivate you and actively avoid or work around them.
In summary, humans play games for many reasons, and gamifying important projects and desired outcomes is a useful way to provide motivation, keep score of progress and add a new level of enjoyment to harder challenges.
When we assist organisations to improve their sales accountability frameworks we request the inclusion of leading indicator dashboards. These dashboards are created with the activities a sales person needs to complete in the sales process to achieve the desired outcomes. We use these leading indicators to create new behaviours.
If you can also gamify the leading indicators this too will assist in creating the desired new behaviours.
Want to know how to improve your accountability for your sales people? Ask us as we have designed specific accountability frameworks and coached sales leaders to feel comfortable applying them . Click here for schedule a conversation.