Willpower is the key to Success

In traditional organizations, willpower is often considered to be a rite of passage, that gives an employee a chance to know that they possess the power to control their situation.

A great deal of focus is put on test performance, and related measurement tools like extrinsic rewards and performance appraisal.

 

These tools may focus on the “hard will” that an employee will take to perform well under pressure, where the power to show if they are in control is built in the performance evaluation process.

 

In this way, a supervisor or taskmaster can simply tell an employee what they must do, and that it will all make sense when their team members feel the same.

 

In this way, a manager becomes an informer, from whom employees can receive information that will “help” them manage their team.

 

In this way, performance appraisal has become a warped and generally unsuccessful indicator of an employee’s inner efforts.

This is because performance appraisal instruments, by design and by definition, make it very difficult to measure it directly.

 

This is because it requires a lot of information or involvement from employees. In particular, it requires that each team member agree to take part in the evaluation process.

 

Employees have two equally important behaviors that give more reliable performance outcomes, such as performance on deadlines, or a dedication to the process of performing their task, rather than a review of the scale or size of their achievement on standardized tests.

Willpower is the key to Success

In this way, the information gleaned by the traditional, achievement-based performance evaluation system becomes more problematic and becomes less reliable.

 

Performance appraisal is far from the first way of evaluating how well an employee performed their duties, this is called self-determination, and it is what motivates employees to be part of an internal team.

 

There is a robust, essential role for extrinsic rewards, but they are less reliable an indicator of willpower than self-determination.

Willpower is the important missing element from performance appraisal. This is why it is becoming so important and of such importance in the 21st century.

 

By Willpower, I don’t mean grub the lights out. It means making sure you are doing all you can, that is necessary, to work your way through each day, each task, each day, and success is determined by the cumulative productivity of your efforts.

 

An employee can work five days a week, staying up till 1:30 am a night. By staying in their room and focusing all their energy on their tasks, they will eventually start to feel mentally fatigued.

 

In this way, an employee develops willpower, only so long as they are willing to suffer pain now for the long-term benefits that come from the intrinsic rewards they gain from their work.

 

willpower really is defined as the ability to work hard, until they’re done. (Note: willpower is not an effort driven, continuous self-improvement, this involves continuous effort on a day-to-day basis)

Lack of willpower weakens the performance evaluation process and is one of the main causes of negative attitudes within the organization, and ultimately depreciates individual potential.

 

So, an employer needs to ensure an employee has adequate willpower before the performance appraisal process can be effective.

 

There are many tools out there to measure and measure willpower. Some specifically focus on the needs of specific fields, or have psychosocial assessment attributes, or focus on some aspects of leadership.

 

Ultimately, they are all short-term ways of measuring. This is one reason why long-term motivation is so important; that is because it is where true relational co-creation and the collective outcome can occur.

 

Throughout history, we’ve seen many instances where the hard will of an individual, weakened through the use of willpower assessments, has resulted in conflict and poor outcomes.

 

Willpower assessments provide a way of assessing an individual’s competency but are short-term based. They tend to focus on patterns rather than complex individual situations.

 

Short-term measurement can be simplified into showing what will go wrong, without encouraging change, and strategies such as motivational techniques and face-to-face behavioral assessment measures.

Willpower is like a muscle, it needs to be built over time. It also needs to be retained over time by the employees who master the art of maintainable willpower.

 

Ultimately, a job performance evaluation should be an accurate reflection of what an employee has accomplished throughout their career.

 

To monitor and evaluate the workers’ commitment, accomplishments, and personal strengths would allow for an accurate analysis of what success looks like.

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