Yan Maschke, July 20, 2017
Promotion vs. Prevention Focus
A simple yet powerful awareness tool that can be used "in the moment"
How many awareness assessments have you taken in your career related to personality style, leadership style, or leadership competencies?
Do you naturally prefer lottery tickets or flu shots?
I find "Promotion Focus vs. Prevention Focus" a very helpful awareness tool that's very simple to use, and a tool that can be used dynamically "in the moment".
I was working with my former colleagues on a big client proposal several years ago, one that would challenge us to take our execution to an even higher level. When we won the project, the sales team was super excited. At the same time, our project execution lead said he was having one of his classic "stomachache" moments because he couldn't stop thinking about all the things that could potentially go wrong and what we need to do to ensure flawless execution.
Promotion vs. Prevention Focus is a concept that has been studied for 20 years by various researchers. Social psychologist (and motivational scientist) Dr. Heidi Grant Halverson speaks beautifully to these 2 kinds of motivational focus. For Promotion and Prevention, neither one is good or bad. She calls them the "two kinds of good".
Promotion Focused people are focused on the kind of "good" that is the benefits and rewards when they succeed. They “play to win.” Dr. Heidi Grant's studies show that Promotion-Focused people are highly creative and positive, and they seize opportunities. They may not think things all the way through. They'd rather say Yes! than letting go of opportunities.
Prevention Focused people pursue the kind of "good" that prevents loss and failure, it's their responsibility to consider what might go badly. They play to prevent loss. Studies show that the Prevention-Focused are often more conservative and less inclined to take chances, but their work is more thorough, accurate, and carefully-planned. They would much prefer to say No! to an opportunity, rather than end up in loss or failure.
Just like in personality assessments, we are rarely just one style or the other. We are all concerned about both promotion and prevention, and most of us have a dominant motivational focus. One may be more promotion-focused at work but more prevention-focused when it comes to protecting his/her children. Dr. Heidi Grant said that "everyone is promotion-focused when they line up for a lottery ticket and prevention-focused when they line up for a flu shot".
Let's pause here a bit. I invite you to reflect on your personal tenancies and preferences.
- Do you think you have more promotion or prevention focus?
- In what environments and situations might you be more prevention or promotion focused?
- How do you add value through your promotion and/or prevention focus?
- What are the benefits of your natural tendencies?
- What might be your impact on others around you?
- How would those around you answer those questions about you?
Now that we reflected on our personal tendencies, what does this mean in a team environment? This could be a team at work, at home, or in your community engagement. Clearly, we need both promotion and prevention. A good balance between promotion and prevention allows us to take advantage of opportunities and to carefully plan to ensure successful execution. As a leader of a team,
- How do you work with different styles?
- How do your team members work with different styles?
- What do you do and what can you do to ensure balance in your organization and on your teams?
- As a leader, how do you set a tone to encourage such balance?
- How do you act as a role model for creating a culture that is open minded and that welcomes diversity of strengths?
I am not a fan of calling any assessment tools "diagnostic" as people are dynamic and need to be careful with using labels. If you are interested in a 3rd party assessment tool to help gain insight into your dominant focus and a sense of how well you work with promotion and prevention motivation, you can check out the Focus Diagnostic tool that was designed to accompany Dr. Heidi Grant's book FOCUS. I suggest that is only used as a supplement to your personal reflections and inter-personal feedback.
What's your biggest insight upon reflections?
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