4
Make It Motivating


Here’s my theory of motivation:

If you grab someone by the ear and

take off running, their body generally follows.


How to Help Others
Want to Take Action

Let’s take a look at where we are in the problem-solving process. Myra, an employee who works for you, failed to complete an important quality check. You observed the gap, decided to deal with it, and tried to determine the right problem to discuss. Since this was the first infraction, you’ve decided to talk about the content: She didn’t complete the quality check. You admire Myra, and so it is easy to impute good motive. Now you describe the gap. After your brief and effective problem description, Myra responds.

REMEMBER TO DIAGNOSE

The way Myra responds to your description of the gap will determine what you do next. She determines your path, not you. You’ll learn where you’re going by diagnosing the underlying cause of the problem. Is it a matter of motivation, ability, or both? If Myra says, “I couldn’t do the procedure you asked for,” you’ll need to figure out why. Which of the three ability forces is coming into play? If Myra replies, “Come on. What’s the big deal? It’s a stupid little quality check. I don’t really have to do it, do I?” you’re staring at a motivation problem. Which of the motivational forces is at work here?

Knowing how to bring to the surface and resolve all the underlying causes requires a great deal of skill. If you miss a single ability barrier, the other person won’t be able to cooperate. If you misinterpret the underlying motivational block, you’ll be pushing the wrong buttons. You’ll also have to choke back the desire to pull out the big guns to motivate (it’s so fast and easy) or pull out your big ideas to enable (it’s so fast and easy). Both methods are tempting, and both will be wrong.

IT’s ABOUT TO GET COMPLICATED

We begin our journey into the land of multiple causes with a warning: It’s about to get complicated. We also offer a promise: If you follow the best practices of those who routinely step up to crucial confrontations and handle them well, you too will succeed.

After hemming and hawing for a few seconds, Myra explains that she really didn’t want to do the job and asks, “What’s the big deal? Is it really worth the effort?” From this particular response, we’ll conclude that she’s not motivated. Other signs that a person isn’t motivated include the following: “I had more important things to do.” “It wasn’t my idea to switch jobs.” “If you think I’m going to work on something that isn’t on my performance review, you’re wrong.” All point to underlying motive. All imply “I chose not to do it.”

How do we make it motivating for Myra? What do we do to get Myra to march to the beat of our drummer, not her own? How do you reach into other people’s psyches regardless of their power or position or, better still, regardless of your power or position and motivate them to do what they promised to do?

Hint: Your power doesn’t matter all that much. In fact, in many cases the more you think you need power to influence others’ motivation, the less likely you are to do it well. Stick with us and you’ll see why.

DON’t OVERSIMPLIFY MOTIVATION: A SMALL RANT

When someone lets you down and does so willfully and with full knowledge of what he or she is doing, you want to deal with the selfish blighter. For instance, remember what your high school boyfriend once did to you? He didn’t forget to pick you up for your prom date, nor did he come down with a debilitating disease. He simply changed his mind at the last minute. And then, guess what? He said nothing to you, roared by your house in his candy-apple-red Mustang, and then whooped it up with the little hussy who moved in from California while you sat on your front porch clutching a wilted boutonniere.

When it comes to motivation, these are the thoughtless curs we have in mind. We think of people who have purposely violated a promise and as a result have given us a figurative kick in the gut. Do you know why they cause us grief? Because they don’t care. They don’t share our wants and needs. They don’t walk in our moccasins. When you think about it, isn’t that what life comes down to? If we could find a way to get our friends, our family, our coworkers, and especially our boss to climb into our heads, share our dreams, and want what we want, wouldn’t life be one great big chocolate croissant?

Motivation with a Capital M

When others willfully break a promise, particularly when they cause us loads of grief, we want so desperately to motivate the guilty parties that the whole concept of motivation takes on mythical proportions. We think of motivation with a capital M: arm-flailing speeches echoing through a coliseum with the crowd cheering. Or perhaps we envision motivation as the raw use of power delivered in a satisfying and vengeful strike to the ego. Or maybe we think of it as a tool bag chock-full of clever techniques, just underhanded enough to trick people into compliance but sincere-looking enough to maintain a patina of professionalism. And on a good day, maybe our best day, we think of motivation as the ever-popular “art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.”

Of course, none of these views is particularly helpful. All lead to behaviors that eventually get us into trouble. Even the last cloyingly patronizing statement—we think it’s our job to get people to want what we want—is fraught with problems. It works only if we’re omniscient (what we want is always right).


At the heart of our twisted view of how to motivate others lies an accumulation of outdated methods and tortured thoughts, one piled upon another. We come to believe that good leaders propel people to action by blending two parts charisma, one part chutzpah, and a healthy dash of fear into a perfect motivational cocktail. And we’re wrong.


With time and constant exposure to these unhealthy influence theories, here’s what eventually happens to our thinking.

What’s with Those Kids?

The apartment you live in comes with a reserved parking space conveniently located right in front of the building’s entrance. Unfortunately, the tenants in the apartment above you have three—count them, three—teenage children, each with a car. They appear to take joy in parking in your place. Each time they compel you to station your vehicle blocks away, you’re forced to schlep yourself over hill and dale through an unrelenting Seattle-style drizzle while you make a mental note to send a generous donation to the National Association to Outlaw Teenagers.

You once talked to both the parents and the adolescents about the problem. You were on your best behavior. You spared no charm, plucked the old heartstrings, and sure enough, they expressed their deepest and most sincere sorrow. It was rather touching. They then respected your parking spot for a full 12 hours, after which they continued with their old tricks. Apparently they were sorry you spoke to them, not sorry that they were causing you problems.

At this point you’re fully aware of your options. You know that if you threaten your neighbors, they’ll come around. But you don’t want to be that kind of person. You’re bigger than that. So you back off, buy a larger umbrella, and take satisfaction in the knowledge that although you may be drenched and aching, you have not yet mutated into that crotchety old curmudgeon you vowed never to become. Just because you despise these cretins, it doesn’t mean you need to be unpleasant about it.

This kind of thinking leads to a false dichotomy. You believe that when it gets right down to it, you must either put up with the current problem or motivate the kids through power and threats; those are the only two options. And since you don’t want to become threatening and abusive, your monklike vow of silence isn’t a sellout; it’s the moral thing to do.

However, if circumstances demand a more forceful approach; you take comfort in the knowledge that the end will justify the means. After all, it is your parking space, and it’s not your fault that the bozos you’re dealing with respond only to fear. As long as you believe that the principal motivating force behind all behavior is fear, you have a built-in excuse for going to either silence or violence.

GETTING TO THE ROOT OF MOTIVATION

Contrary to popular myth, you don’t have to wield power or provoke fear to be an effective motivator. In fact, it’s better if we don’t think of ourselves as larger-than-life figures burdened with the challenge of bringing the nearly dead back to life through various methods of motivation. That kind of flawed thinking is exactly what gets us into trouble.

Let’s not forget Melissa from the Introduction, the best of the best in the land of flailing fists. She was far too small to intimidate anyone, and rarely, if ever, did she use her formal authority or position power. In fact, the amount of power you have has little to do with how well you motivate others. Remember, we have watched people with almost no authority motivate their bosses’ bosses.

Motivation, it turns out, is actually rather boring. It has little to do with clout, chutzpah, or even charisma. In fact, motivation is about expectations, information, and communication.

Expectations Change Everything

Let’s start our more accurate, if less flamboyant, description of motivation with a simple truism: People are always motivated. To say that someone isn’t motivated is patently wrong. As long as people are moving their muscles, they’re motivated to do something. Second, motivation is brain-driven. People choose their behavior. Third, motivation is influenced by a nearly infinite number of sources from both within and without.

Here’s how the human brain and the surrounding world combine to propel individual behavior. Human beings anticipate. When deciding what to do, they look to the future and ask, What will this particular behavior yield? When they choose one action over another, it’s because they’re betting that that action will generate the best result. Since any action yields a combination of results, some good and some bad, it’s the expected sum total of the consequence bundle that drives behavior. If you want people to act in another way, you have to let them know how a different behavior would yield a better consequence bundle.


Here’s what motivation comes down to: Change others’ view of the consequence bundle and their behavior will follow.


How do you go about motivating others to change their behavior? How do you get people to understand that their existing view of the consequences is either inaccurate or incomplete? What does it take to change expectations or anticipated consequences?

THREE APPROACHES TO AVOID

One thing is for certain: Three of the more popular methods— charisma, power, and perks—don’t work very well. They all have the potential to change people’s view, and so they all have the potential to change people’s behavior. Unfortunately, relying on these heavy-handed methods can be dangerous and rarely sustains behavior over the long run. Yet these methods remain enormously popular. In fact, they hold a nearly sacred place in the current literature. Let’s consider each method in turn.

Don’t Rely on Charisma

It’s time to kill a myth. To be an effective motivator, you don’t have to be awe-inspiring. Everyday acts of motivation are almost always subtle, rarely elicit awe, and never make the papers. Nevertheless, the myth of charisma continues to thrive. Books, television programs, and movies positively ooze with scenes that are designed to make audiences gasp with admiration. For example, in the cold war drama Crimson Tide, we find a naval officer played by Denzel Washington giving a “big speech” to a young radioman on whose skill and attention hangs the fate of the world.

The poor fellow has to get the submarine’s radio up and running to learn if the vessel should launch its missiles. If he fails, the captain will be forced to launch the sub’s nuclear arms blindly, cause the enemy to retaliate, and eventually destroy the world— even though it may not be necessary. (“Sorry. My mistake!”)

In the real world the poor fellow probably would collapse from the pressure. In fact, the stress would be so debilitating that a smart leader would be doing everything in his or her power to provide support. But screenwriters are human too. They make the fundamental attribution error by creating a radioman who doesn’t need support. He needs to be inspired. Apparently, he hasn’t repaired the radio yet because he has something he’d rather do than save the world from total destruction.

Denzel delivers a really hot speech. After the tear-jerking performance the radioman turns to his coworker and tells him to stop messing around so that they can prevent a nuclear holocaust instead of playing video games or whatever it is they’re doing.

Denzel gives the speech, the radioman is appropriately inspired, and yes, the audience breaks into applause. Charisma makes for good drama; however, it has precious little to do with leadership. Rest assured that you don’t have to be charismatic to be influential.

Don’t Use Power

Let’s move on to the next big mistake. Raw power, painfully applied, may move bodies, may even get people to act in new ways, but it rarely moves hearts and minds. Hearts and minds are changed through expanded understanding and new realizations. The flagrant and abusive use of authority, in contrast, guarantees little more than short-term bitter compliance.

This simple idea would never have made these pages if not for the fact that parents and leaders alike routinely turn to power as their first tool for motivating others. Without putting it in so many words, they believe that it’s easiest to change people’s thinking about the existing consequence bundle by administering new and painful consequences of their own. It’s a simple enough concept and is very easy to implement. Here’s what it sounds like:

Image “If you don’t finish the project on time, you’re fired!”

Image “If you talk back to me like that again, you’re grounded until the end of the summer!”

The Reason We Intuitively Rely on Force

Earlier we suggested that we often take a dispositional rather than a situational view of others. If others cause us a great deal of pain, we believe they must be bad to the core. The worse the impact others have on us, the worse our assumptions about their character. We think they’re inherently selfish. They may even take joy in our suffering. They’re at best indifferent. And here’s where it gets sticky: We believe that others are capable only of being selfish. It’s in their genes. It’s their disposition. It’s not a choice; it’s a calling.

When it comes to influence strategies, the implication of this dispositional view of people should be obvious. Individuals aren’t going to change their personalities through patience and long suffering on our part. They’re not going to change their proverbial spots after we give them an inspiring pep talk. In fact, they aren’t going to change their inherent and immutable personalities because of anything we say. They can’t.

And now for a leap in logic that would break any Evil Knievel record: Since we’re dealing with deep-seated personality flaws, we have to use threats. Remember those teenagers who took your parking space? Oh yeah, they’ll pay. Remember that plywood employee who was sent to the hospital? He deserved it. It wasn’t the supervisor’s fault that the guy wouldn’t respond to logic.

Warning: You’re About to Do Something Stupid

What does all this chest beating come down to? Let’s take it as a warning. The more we feel the need to apply force, the greater is the evidence that our own thoughts are the problem. To quote Seinfeld’s George Costanza, “It’s not them, it’s us.”

Of course, it s tarts with them when they aren’t motivated. We try and try, and nothing works. And then we become angry. We convince ourselves that we need to use power to solve the problem, and we enjoy doing it. That’s because we’re thinking with our dumbed-down, adrenaline-fed lizard brains.


Warning lights should go off every time we feel compelled to reach into our bag of influence tools and pull out a hammer: If we don’t catch ourselves before it’s too late, we’ll pay.


The Cost of Force
Force Kills Relationships

Every time we decide to use our power to influence others, particularly if we’re gleeful and hasty, we damage the relationship. We move from enjoying a healthy partnership based on trust and mutual respect to establishing a police state that requires constant monitoring.

Every time we compel people to bend to our will it creates a desolate and lonely work environment. Gone is mutual respect and the camaraderie it engenders. Gone are the simple pleasantries associated with rubbing shoulders with colleagues who admire and pull for each other. Gone is the sense that we’re laboring together to overcome common barriers.

It’s a horrible thing we do when we decide to routinely unleash our power as a way of motivating. When we do, our relationship with others is forever changed. We move from respected partner to feared enforcer. And then we pay.

Force Motivates Resistance

When we quickly move to use force to influence change, people intuitively understand that we do that because we believe they have bad motives. We don’t respect them. In addition, it communicates that we care only about our goals, not theirs. In other words, it destroys safety. And when safety disappears, people immediately become defensive. Eventually they resist our ideas out of principle. Every time we leave the room, we wonder if they’ll actually do what we’ve asked. By destroying safety, the hasty use of force ensures that force will be needed to solve the problem and that a healthy crucial conversation won’t work.


The “Hog”

The employees at the plywood mill didn’t simply stand by and watch the ambulance haul their friend to the hospital. They got even. Every time they became upset at a supervisor, they took a perfectly good veneer and threw it into the “hog”—a massive grinding machine that transformed expensive wood into cheap sawdust. Productivity took a hit, and supervisors were blamed. “How come our numbers are so low?” And if the battles continued to rage, numbers dropped even further, the hog got really fat, and the supervisors were dismissed.


Of course, most families and organizations don’t have massive hogs lurking in the wings, but people find other ways to strike back. They do what you ask even if it’s wrong. They stop giving their best effort. They spend hours complaining. They lose focus.


Perhaps the largest avoidable cost in every organization is the loss of energy that comes every time someone abuses his or her power.


Force Doesn’t Last

Back in the mid-1930s, Kurt Lewin, along with several of his colleagues, conducted a fascinating study that forever put to rest the notion that power yields lasting results. The researchers randomly assigned leaders to one of three leadership styles: authoritarian, hands-off, and democratic. The subjects then used their assigned styles to lead a production team. As expected, the authoritarian (power-based) style produced the highest results when the leader was in the room. Also as expected, force yielded the lowest results once the leader left the room1. When people produce solely out of fear, once the fear is removed, so is the motivation to continue to follow orders.

Be Careful with Perks

Now for the last of the common motivational errors: the hasty use of extrinsic rewards to motivate what should already be intrinsically motivating. Parents long ago learned not to make this mistake through their failed attempts to reward actions that should be rewarding in and of themselves.

For example, if you want your children to read or, better still, love to read, what’s the best way to lure them away from TV programs and video games? More than a few parents have chosen to pay their kids to read. The theory is that if you pay them, they’ll read, and if they read, they’ll learn to love reading. Unfortunately, extrinsic rewards often kill intrinsic satisfaction. These children learn to read for money, not for reading’s sake. Then the minute you remove the cash, they’re back at the TV or the video game.

Similarly, if you continually use special perks to encourage people to do what should be a routine part of their jobs, in effect perfuming the consequence bundle, you could be undermining or even destroying the satisfaction that comes from doing the job. It also takes attention away from the legitimate reasons for the work. When they are applied to routine behavior, extrinsic rewards confuse purpose. Special rewards should be reserved for special performance.

THE SOLUTION

The problem with power, perks, and charisma is not that they never work or never should be used. The problem is that people turn to them too quickly, and there are almost always better methods. For instance, savvy parents and influential leaders use their ability to teach. They intuitively instruct by using part of the model we developed in Chapter 2.

Image

Explore Natural Consequences

When you watch people who have been singled out by their bosses, peers, and loved ones as the best at handling crucial confrontations, it should be no surprise to learn that they change people’s hearts by changing their minds.

Savvy influencers recognize that they could propel people to action by using their leadership authority or offering perks. They also know that within the three domains of self, others, and things, there are other factors that are far better motivators, that propel action without the leader pulling strings or making threats.

What are these compelling factors? They are the natural consequences associated with any behavior. For example, if you don’t manage your diabetes well, you are likely to face amputations later in life. That’s a natural consequence. If you fail to follow up on commitments, you create extra stress for your boss, who has to guess what will get done. That’s a natural consequence. If you make sarcastic and cutting comments when your spouse isn’t feeling amorous, she will withdraw and feel less spontaneous affection for you despite what your lizard brain is telling you. That’s a natural consequence.

All our social actions put into play a chain of events that affects anywhere from one person to millions of other people. This sequence of events makes up the consequence bundle. Among these consequences, there is a subset of “natural” consequences that exist independently of the intervention of an authority figure. These methods require no force, no chutzpah, and no charisma. No parent has to wag a finger; no boss has to write up a disciplinary action. Natural consequences are always present and always serve as a potential source of motivation.

Of course, not all natural consequences motivate people equally. Here is an example:

“When you cut Jimmy off in midsentence, it hurt his feelings.”
“Good, I don’t like him anyway.”


Consequences make up the reasons behind all behavior, so savvy influencers motivate others with a consequence search: They explain natural consequences until they hit upon one or more that the other person cares about. As you start your own consequence search, your job is to make the invisible visible while maintaining a dialogue.


Make the Invisible Visible

When it comes to exploring natural consequences, your primary job is to help others see consequences they aren’t seeing (or remembering) on their own. That happens because many of the outcomes associated with a particular behavior are long-term or occur out of sight. Your job is to help make the invisible visible. Here are six methods for doing that.

Link to Existing Values

As you consider all the consequences you could discuss with another person, turn your attention to that person’s core values. What does he or she care about the most? This will be your point of greatest leverage. Then help the other person see how his or her values will be better realized through the course you are proposing. If you have created enough safety, you can talk frankly about any value issues. Let’s look at an example of speaking with a spouse who has had two bypass surgeries and continues to gorge:

“Dear, I honestly believe that if your eating habits don’t change, you won’t raise our children, I will. Do you have the same concern? What do you think?”

Here you’re trying to deal with your loved one’s eating habits, and rather than nagging or attacking, you’re linking to his or her core value of being around to help raise the kids.

Connect Short-Term Benefits with Long-Term Pain

Show how the short-term enjoyment the person currently is experiencing is inextricably connected to longer-term problems. This is essentially the central task of parenting:

“If you continue to watch television and don’t do your homework, you’ll get bad grades, you won’t get into a good school, you won’t get a good job, you won’t make lots of money, and you’ll never drive your own Porsche.”

You might not use these exact words, but this is at least part of the map you’re carrying in your head and the map you’d like your child to share eventually, except maybe the part about the fancy car.

This method of clarifying long-term or distant negative consequences is also applied at work dozens of times a day:

“I’m sure it’s a hassle to double-check appointments when you enter them on my calendar, but our current error rate is so high that the assistants of the other vice presidents are calling me to ask for confirmation. I worry that your reputation here is going to be hurt if we can’t solve this.”

Place the Focus on Long-Term Benefits

This is the other half of parenting. It’s also the single best predictor of lifelong success. If a person can suffer a little now— delaying gratification in order to serve a longer-term goal—life gets better (think dieting, weight lifting, studying, etc.).

If you doubt this premise, consider a study conducted over a matter of decades. Researchers put a marshmallow in front of individual children and told them that they would get another one if they didn’t eat the first one while the researcher stepped out. As the researchers tracked these children over the years, they found that those who had waited for the researchers to return did far better in life than those who ate the confection right away, and in almost every domain.2 To help people stay the course, take the focus off the short-term challenge by placing it on the long-term benefit:

“I know that putting up with some of the kids’ messiness is really hard for you. I also believe that your relationship with them is at risk if you can’t learn to let some of the smaller things go.”

Introduce the Hidden Victims

This is perhaps the most widely used method of explaining consequences. You describe the unintended and often invisible effects an action is having on others. At work, leaders carefully and clearly explain the consequences to the company’s various stakeholders: “Here’s what your failure to comply is doing to other employees, to the customer, to the shareowners, to the boss, and so forth.”

At home, parents explain what’s happening to other family members: “Louisa, I know your little brother gets on your nerves a lot. But did you know that when you made fun of his weight, he sat in his room and cried for the rest of the evening? I know your goal was to get him to stop following you around and not to hurt him so deeply. Is that right?”

Hold Up a Mirror

To help introduce the social implications of a particular action, describe how a person’s action is being viewed by others. “It’s starting to look like you don’t care about the team’s results.” Remember, when it comes to the way we’re coming across, we all live on the wrong side of our eyeballs. Help others gain a view from the other side.

Connect to Existing Carrots and Sticks

This is typically not the best starting place, but eventually you may want to talk about rewards. Help others see how living up to an expectation advances their careers, enhances their influence, puts more money in the bank, or reduces their risks: “You’ve mentioned wanting to be the art director. In my view you will be much more successful in that position—and more likely to get it—if you have solid working relationship with both the editing staff and the video team.”

Stay in Dialogue

Remember, as you’re doing your best to make consequences more visible, stay in dialogue. Keep the information flowing honestly and freely in both directions.

Watch for the Line between Dialogue and Threats

There’s a fine line between sharing natural consequences and threatening others. Well, in most cases it’s not that fine a line. If your motives are wrong, sharing becomes threatening. If your motive is to punish or if you’re taking pleasure in describing the awful things that will happen if someone’s obnoxious behavior continues, you are the problem. Your motive must be to solve the problem in a way that benefits both of you. Anything less than that will provoke silence or violence, not gain willing compliance.

The line becomes finer when your motives are right but the other person mistakes your description of natural consequences for a threat. “When you fail to complete your assignments on time, we start giving you less relevant assignments to protect ourselves from failure” can sound like a personal attack or a job threat.

If the other person believes that he or she is in trouble, perhaps because of previous experience with other bosses, your best behavior may seem manipulative regardless of your skill or demeanor. If you notice that others appear nervous, step out of the conversation and restore safety by explaining your positive intentions. Explain that your goal is to solve an important problem. You simply want to share the consequences of what they’re doing and then ask them for their view on the matter. When they start hearing natural consequences as threats, you should recognize it as a safety problem, not an insurmountable barrier to dialogue.

Listen to Others’ View of Natural Consequences

When it comes to other people’s roles, you should be listening as they explain their view of the consequences. They may be aware of factors you know little or nothing about: “Yeah, we can do it the way you want, but it’ll blow up our lawn mower.”

Your view of what should be done may change in the process of jointly discussing consequences. In the end, you may be convinced that they shouldn’t do what you originally asked.

Stop When You Reach Critical Mass

As you help others see consequences they didn’t realize existed, explain those consequences only until you reach critical mass. Stop once you believe others will comply. Your job isn’t to keep piling on information. It is to share consequences until the other person understands the overall effect and shares your view of what needs to be done. Don’t sell past the close.

Match Methods to Circumstances

Let’s look at the final element of making a task motivating. It has to do with the circumstances you’re facing. Sometimes the person you’re talking to is simply unaware of the consequences associated with his or her actions. Sometimes you yourself don’t understand why the other person isn’t motivated. Or perhaps he or she’s partially motivated but the task just hasn’t made it to the top of his or her priority list. Maybe the other person’s openly resisting your efforts. Let’s learn to match method to circumstance.

When You’re Teaching

The methods for explaining natural consequences we’ve just examined are easy to apply when we’re first informing people about the reason behind a specific action. Employees want to know why they have to produce products and deliver services by using certain methods, —particularly if what you’re asking isn’t going to be easy. What they really want to know is whether it’s really worth it. As we suggested earlier, effective problem solvers are teachers, and much of their teaching is about the consequences to varying stakeholders: “Here’s why it’s worth it.” They make the invisible visible by whatever means work. They do this to avoid gaps.

When it comes to parenting, the younger the child, the greater the need to teach the child the relationship between behavior and outcome. Newborns do not understand consequences. Almost everything a parent does during the early stages of child rearing is to protect a child from invisible bad consequences and then to teach. As children grow older, methods change and resistance increases, at least until age 14, when your offspring actually know everything and you don’t have to teach them anymore. Of course, when they turn 21, they become ignorant again.

When You’re Jointly Exploring

This circumstance comes up more often than you might imagine. The other person isn’t exactly motivated, and neither of you is quite sure why. Perhaps the other person knows why but isn’t saying. In either case, you can’t figure out why the other person isn’t motivated, and you’ll need to examine the motivational role of self, others, and things to determine which ones are making the task undesirable.

The idea here is to examine each area with simple questions: Is the job hard to do? Is it repetitive, boring, uncomfortable, and so on? Is that why you don’t want to do it? Are others encouraging you not to do it? Finally, is the task at odds with what the other person is getting rewarded for?


The goal of exploring consequences is to bring to the surface the issues that make the task undesirable. If it’s not immediately clear, this could take some work. Once you’re both aware of the factors that are at play, decide if you still want the other person to continue (you may change your mind). If you decide that the task still makes sense, use any combination of the methods we’ve described for making the consequences visible.


When Priorities Differ

What if the other person has different priorities? It’s not that people don’t want to do the task; it’s just not at the top of their list. Priorities can differ for several reasons. Maybe other tasks came up out of nowhere, or perhaps that person enjoys doing other jobs more. Maybe the people who have let you down have forgotten what they were supposed to do or, more likely, why they were supposed to do it. Here’s a big one: Perhaps they were hoping that nobody would care if they dropped that part of the job. They eliminated it and watched to see what would happen.

Whatever the reason, people know what to do but choose something else. Let’s be honest: More often than not they already know what the consequences will be. Under these circumstances, explaining why certain parts of the job are necessary can sound quite different from routine instruction. You’re now doing your best to remind people without haranguing them. Consider the following:

“Are you sure that I need to explain safety procedures to everyone walking in here? Some of the visitors have been here before.”

“Remember when we had that discussion a couple of months back about government regulations? If people get hurt, they can sue us if we haven’t talked to them every time. I know it can seem redundant, but it’s the law.”

Reminding people is the tactic you take with hard-working, reliable individuals who are caught in a priority battle.

When Others Resist

Let’s consider a more challenging case. Individuals are openly resisting your efforts. They really don’t want to do the task, they need to be convinced, and you need to be careful not to create resistance. That means you’ll need to know how to explain why something has to be done without jumping straight to power or discipline. Now what?

This is the discussion people have in mind when they say that those they work and live with are hard to motivate: “Others fight me at every turn.” Fortunately, the basic principle is the same: Explain natural consequences until the person genuinely agrees to comply. In this case it’s a delicate search. You keep searching for consequences until you find one the other person values. Here are examples:

“Come on. I have better things to do than get my expense reports in the day I get back.”
“We’ve found that the longer people drag it out, the less accurate their reports are. They often forget small expenses, and it costs them money.”
(Consequences to the employee)
“I’ve got a good memory.”

“It also causes trouble for the people in accounting. They have their own deadlines and goals. If we wait too long, it throws them off.”(Consequences to coworkers)
“Big deal. Let them suffer once in a while. I’m the one on the road half my life.”
“When you don’t get your bills in, we don’t bill our clients as quickly. Last year we figure late billing cost the company over $200,000.”
(Consequences to shareholders)
“We made a bazillion dollars last year.”
“When you drag out your reports for a couple of weeks, I get a call, and I have to track you down and hold these kinds of conversations. It’s not how I want to spend my time.”
(Consequences to the boss)
“Hmmm. I didn’t realize I was making more work for you. Sorry. From now on I’ll put a reminder in my electronic calendar, and it’ll keep me on track.”

This conversation calls for both patience and skill. The person really doesn’t want do what you’re asking, and it takes a genuine consequence search to come up with something that motivates him or her. You have to search because not every consequence matters to everyone. In this example the employee didn’t care about anything until the boss talked about how it was inconveniencing him or her (which, by the way, implies the use of power).

When to Use Discipline

Despite your best efforts, sometimes you still have to start down the path of discipline. Perhaps the other person has done something that requires immediate action. Maybe your son crossed the line from resisting your efforts to being disrespectful and insulting. Maybe you’ve explained consequences and the other person isn’t going to do what you ask no matter what you say. Perhaps you’ve had multiple conversations—describing content, pattern, and relationship—but the employee is still violating every agreement you make. It’s time to change tactics. It’s time to move away from natural consequences and start imposing consequences of your own (discipline). As you start down this precarious path, keep the following in mind.

Know the Mechanics

Every organization has its own discipline steps and policies. Study them carefully. If you fail to follow procedure, your efforts may be thrown out when they are reviewed, undermining your credibility. Families should create their own clear disciplinary steps as well. If they do not, everything comes as a surprise.

Partner with People in Authority

If you’re in a situation in which you don’t know the person’s total history and details, explain why the action was wrong, state that you’re going to move to discipline, and say that you’ll get back to him or her later. Then check with specialists to learn what the actual steps should be. Otherwise you may suggest that you’re going to send the person home without pay and then find out that he or she was only due for a warning. You’ll have to eat your words. The home version of this should be obvious: Parents must be unified in their actions.

Be Appropriately Somber

Discipline isn’t something you impose with a sense of pleasure regardless of what the other person may have done. Keep the tone serious and speak about what has to be done, not what you now get to do. This is not a time for a smug in-your-face celebration. You’re moving from partnering to policing, and that’s hardly a victory.

Explain the Next Step

As you explain what will happen as a result of the infraction, cover what will happen if the person does the same thing again. Explaining the next level of consequences informs and motivates. It also helps eliminate surprises: “Nobody said I was going to be fired!”

Be Consistent

Don’t play favorites. If you’re working with an employee who gives you fits at every turn, you can’t discipline that person for something you wouldn’t discipline everyone for simply as a means of getting even. When discipline falls under review, the first thing third parties examine is equity. Did the person get fair treatment? Don’t single people out.

Don’t Back Off under Pressure

Once you’ve started the process, stick to it. Follow the steps and don’t be dissuaded simply because the person puts up a fight. If discipline is called for, stay the course. If you waffle, you’ll gain a reputation for making hollow threats.

When Power Fails, Be Candid about Coping

Let’s look at one final issue. What if you’ve explained the natural consequences associated with an action but others still aren’t motivated and you can’t or shouldn’t impose consequences to increase their motivation? Let’s say your boss realizes he should stop yelling at you and others but says the following: “I know it’s wrong, I know it frustrates people, but I’m high-strung and under a lot of pressure, and it’s just going to happen sometimes!”

Now what? You’re not likely to impose consequences on your boss.

Or let’s say your business partner has been unreliable in getting assignments in on time and after a lengthy discussion you still believe it’s likely she’ll get them in late. What do you do?

Agree on a Work-Around

When you’ve decided not to administer discipline as a way of compelling someone to change his or her actions, develop a coping strategy and then candidly share it. That way, as the other person observes and experiences the consequences of the work-around, he or she can choose to act differently if he or she wants to avoid the pain, waste, and inefficiency you’ve talked about.

For instance, from this point on you will not give your unreliable partner “critical path” assignments. She may not be happy about this choice because she wants to be involved with the hottest assignments. Nevertheless, at least she understands why you’re doing what you’re doing.

With an emotionally explosive boss who refuses to change, you might suggest that when he blows off steam, you’ll eventually withdraw, allow time for him to calm down, and then return for a healthier and more complete discussion. You might also share that you are likely to be reluctant to challenge some of his more vigorous arguments. You’ll do your best to be candid, but his defensive actions will continue to make that difficult for you. By being candid about your coping strategy, you empower your boss to choose whether he wants this consequence bundle.

This point is so important that we want to expand it a bit. For people to behave badly over the long haul, we have to do two things. First, we have to avoid crucial confrontations. By doing that, we avoid helping others see the consequences of their behavior. If we don’t alter their expectations, why should they change what they do? Second, we create a work-around that enables others to continue doing what they’re doing, unaware and guilt-free. For example, our boss never returns calls, and so we secretly assign someone to do it for her. A doctor is incompetent, and so we discreetly schedule complicated surgeries for when he’s off shift. Our dad is grumpy and abusive, and so we buy him his own wide-screen TV and build him a den.


The reason others aren’t motivated to change is often because of us. We’re conspirators. Either we misuse power and mobilize others’ resistance or we withhold honest feedback and then take great pains to create clever and secret work-arounds that continue to keep others blind to the consequences they’re causing.


Even if you don’t have the power to impose your will on an unwilling person, you can avoid being part of the problem by being candid about your coping strategy.

FINISH WELL

Let’s assume you’ve been able to make it motivating. You jointly discussed consequences, you chose not to back off, and the other person has agreed to comply. The conversation is winding down. But you’re not through. You have to do one more thing to ensure that you haven’t wasted your time. Coming to an agreement is one thing; deciding what’s going to happen from this point on requires one more step.

As you wrap up the confrontation, make a plan. Decide who will do what and by when. Then set a follow-up time in which you can check to see how things are going. (We’ll examine how to do this in Chapter 7.)

A FINAL CASE: CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?

Let’s take a look at how discussing natural consequences applies to a difficult example.

He Hates My Kids

This is both Gary and Kali’s second marriage. She has two children from her previous marriage, ages 15 and 20. When Kali and Gary first met, he was very interested in her children. They’ve now been married four years, and his interest is waning. In fact, he’s almost always surly with them and has taken to calling them names. They feel like strangers in the house, and Kali is beginning to think she’ll have to choose between Gary and her children.

What makes this problem particularly hard to solve is the fact that he doesn’t want to talk about it. When Kali tries to discuss their relationship, he accuses her of being unreasonable and storms out of the room. What can she say? One thing is for certain: The first few seconds will be critical. Kali has about 30 seconds to do two things: She has to help Gary want to talk to her; and she has to make it safe so that he’ll talk to her constructively. Let’s watch her in action. Gary is doing e-mail in the den alone. The kids aren’t around, and so they’re likely to have an hour or so without interruptions.

Image

Image

Image

CHAPTER SUMMARY


Make It Motivating

We’ve carefully described the gap and are now listening to see if the problem is due to motivation or ability. In this chapter, we examined the motivational side of the model.

When the other person isn’t motivated, it’s our job to make it motivating.

image

Image Consequences motivate. Motivation isn’t something you do to someone. People already want to do things. They’re motivated by the consequences they anticipate. And since any action leads to a variety of consequences, people act on the basis of the overall consequence bundle.

Image Explore natural consequences. Begin by explaining natural consequences. Within a businesses context, this typically includes what’s happening to stakeholders. Stakeholders include other employees, customers, share owners, communities, and regulatory agencies.

Image Match method to circumstances. When people simply want to know, explain both what needs to be done and why. When dealing with someone who is pushing back, resist the temptation to jump to power. Search for consequences that matter to the other person.

Image Finish well. Finally, wrap up the conversation by determining who does what and by when. Then set a follow-up time.

Additional Resources

Struggling to “make it motivating”? Refer to Appendix C, “When Thing Go Right,” for tips on motivating with praise. Also, visit www.crucialconfrontations.com/book and learn how you can submit your specific questions to the authors of Crucial Confrontations.

What’s Next?

Let’s expand our skills to include the other half of our six-source model. Let’s learn what to do when the other person is motivated but unable to act.

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
3.237.178.126