I continue to ruminate on the whole concept of rewards and the world view surrounding them is such a rich topic to me in examining our society’s three steps forward two steps back transition from a hierarchical to a more egalitarian orientation. As I see it, you reward someone for doing something you want them to do (or think they should do) that you are not confident that they will do based on their own ethical compass and sense of self-direction. You create an incentive (or even a bribe) that you feel will trump their own inner guidance. I see it as part of a paradigm of power-over control rather than power-with partnership.

Rather than engage another human consciousness (with the experience, wisdom and resulting ethical principles that it currently lives by) as a partner, as an equal, you are placing it in the inferior position (relative to you) of needing to be controlled (by you) and redirected from its internal inclinations. Every exercise of control is an exercise of superiority and higher position in an implicit or explicit hierarchy.

Most people understand this relationship, since say in a conventional (hierarchical) work place it would be viewed as appropriate for your boss to give you direction and maybe a financial reward for successfully following that direction, but generally not be viewed as appropriate or be viewed as even laughable for you to give your boss direction and rewards.

So in a fully hierarchical work place, family, or other institution, the people in the superior position are responsible for directing and controlling the actions of the people below (inferior) to them. “Rewards” (as I am using the word) are one of the key tools of that direction or control. A partner does not offer another partner a reward to do the right thing.

An adult might offer to take their kid out for pizza if that kid turned in all their homework for the week, but would probably not offer their spouse a similar deal for their spouse getting all their household chores done. The first reward scenario would be considered by many as appropriate, but the latter would generally be considered demeaning and inappropriate. Now maybe both spouses would agree to go out for pizza if they both completed their chores for the week, but that is a completely different deal, involving a freely entered agreement between partners rather than one person trying to convince the other to do something they are otherwise reluctant to do.

In my more egalitarian world view, I see replacing rewards by making people stakeholders instead. The Wiktionary defines “stakeholder” as “A person or organization with a legitimate interest in a given situation, action or enterprise”. In a more egalitarian institution, people generally exercise their stake by having a voice or a vote in the important decisions that are being made. I believe that as a general rule, people that have a stake and a voice as “peers” do not require or even seek to be given a reward by someone else.

Now perhaps successful collaboration with others could be said to be “rewarded” by some other sort of monetary gain, happiness, or some other individual or social good. This I would call a more natural consequence and not a “reward” in the “bribe” sense of the word. The people involved are freely entering into this collaboration in the hope of obtaining the desired result. They are not being bribed to perform a task they would otherwise not see the value in. Free choice is a big difference here.

So going back to the kid and the pizza “reward” for doing their homework all week, we have a different dynamic. Is the kid really free to say, “Well that’s a nice offer, but I think I’ll pass on both the pizza and the homework.” This particular reward is sugarcoating the fact that something more punitive may be in store if you don’t accept it. Guess that would better be called a “bribe”.

To be a real partner and stakeholder, participating freely because of the potential natural value to you rather than based on the artificial incentive (and perhaps veiled threat) of the reward/bribe, seems to be the goal I would urge us to all work toward, in our own efforts and soliciting the efforts of others. I would include all aspects of our lives in this paradigm, including work world, home and any educational setting one participates in.

In my work, I have freely entered into a contract with my employer to be paid to contribute my skills, energies and wisdom to helping my team accomplish their various projects that I am assigned to in exchange for being paid an agreed amount under certain desired work conditions. My supervisor hired me clearly understanding the work environment that I sought and how I planned to voice my opinions on the work process and even how my supervisor was performing their job.

In fact in the interview I asked my supervisor if he believed in using facilitative rather than directive management, and he assured me to my satisfaction that he did. I would probably not have taken the job if he had not. Though his position on the org chart is significantly higher than mine, we approached our working relationship as much like a partnership as possible. What I promised is that I would do everything in my power to make him and the rest of my team successful. He does not attempt to reward me to try to get me to perform differently or better. We have instead developed a relationship and we both try to honor our half of it each day, and let each other know when things aren’t working as best they could.

Years earlier, when we pulled our son Eric out of his middle school and let him home school instead, a key to that drastic decision was to allow him, his mom and I to enter into a more genuine relationship where we were not constantly trying to manipulate him with either rewards (and the veiled coercion) to get to school in the morning and get all his schoolwork done. It took more than a year before the three of us could all fully trust each other again and were all able to freely agree to a new “contract” of sorts, one that was never fully or explicitly stated, but implicitly agreed to in bits and pieces over time.

Under that new agreement, his mom and I would not attempt to direct his education (beyond the occasional suggestion) but would do what we reasonably could within our budget to provide him with as enriched an educational environment at home as possible, including his own Internet access, a certain amount of money for his educational “supplies” (mostly computer software), plus lively discussions at every opportunity with the two of us (and his grandparents) about subjects of shared interest. He agreed to take the full responsibility for, and be the key stakeholder in, the course and curriculum of his education, telling us when he needed assistance, and pursuing the things of interest to him vigorously.

For better or for worse that is essentially the agreement the three of us made, though the key points were never explicitly and concisely stated as they are here. Key to this agreement was his mom and I trusting this admittedly precocious and intelligent 13-year-old to know what was best for him educationally. We placed our bets that he did, in order to re-frame our relationship with him in a more honest and genuine way and be able to fully adopt more of an egalitarian and facilitative (rather than directive) parenting style.

In the business world I work in they talk a lot about “managing risk”. Taking on an acceptable level of risk and mitigating it as best you can for a perceived gain. In making the educational agreement with our son Eric we were weighing alternatives that involved escalating gentle or ungentle coercion that might engender compliance but seemed more likely to be headed for a complete train wreak. The choice we made instead, to let our kid “unschool”, was certainly unorthodox and did feel risky, but compared to the alternatives, and given who he was and the world of supportive family and friends around him, it seemed like the best option.

But from a strategic point of view as parents, looking back now a decade later, what I believe we essentially did was stop trying to reward Eric to stay on the conventional path, and made him choose his own path instead, and be the key stakeholder on that path going forward.

When we started framing her education the same way, his sister Emma (three years younger), made some different choices for herself, Including deciding on her own to attend a regular public high school, rather than going to an alternative school or homeschooling like her older brother. After one year of conventional high school and her thoughtful evaluation of that experience, with the other choices still open to her, she chose to “unschool” as well, though her self-directed curriculum involved a lot of different classes and lessons and even a summer at a French language school in Montreal.

And now as young adults (Eric 24 and Emma 21) they both seem quite happy to be the masters of their own destinies, for better or for worse, and the key stakeholders, rather than their parents, in their own lives.