Punishing by Rewards Form

Instructions and help about Punishing By Rewards

This book, Punished by Rewards (by  Alfie Kohn), is a classic for leaders,   HR leaders and anyone helping build  organizations where humans can be at   their best. It makes the case that all rewards  are basically manipulation. And since they're   manipulation, they feel icky. And they  backfire. And we don't want to use them. It resonated strongly with me when I read it two  decades ago, it's been around for a while. It's   still . . . it's a classic. And I recommend  it to anybody. I immediately “got it” when   he started talking about these manipulations,  because this is how I would feel when people   would say,”Oh, you know, we want you to  do this.” So it's like dangling carrots. The problem with these “strategies” is that we  externalize the reward of the good feelings,   we appropriate them onto us. We don't let  the task itself and the innate goodness   of the work provide the reward. Once  we externalize those good feelings and   we m