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Smell Your Hands (#2)

If you spend your day throwing lavender at people you hands will smell like lavender. If you throw elephant poo, your hands will smell like guess what?

One of the best kept secrets in modern psychology is that people will repeat a behaviour if they are positively reinforced. If this is so, how come so many of us have stories from our school and business past about being punished for making mistakes and being ignored when working productively.It would make more sense to ignore mistakes and acknowledge productive work.

The same applies to people who attend a training program and are ridiculed when they return and try out new behaviours or business practises. Maybe we are bumping into the 'I know but I don't do' gap. So many people and organisations know how to improve their business behaviour but persist with old behaviours that are no longer productive in a changing world.

So hoping that another explanation will encourage you to 'do' rather than increase your 'knowledge'.

There are two ways of increasing desired behaviours. The best is to positively reinforce desired behaviour whilst it is happening. If someone does something for you and you want them to keep doing it....reinforce immediately. By the way, positive reinforcement is anything you say or do that encourages the person to repeat the behaviour. It could be anything from a look to a gift. The longer the gap between the deed and the reinforcement, the less effective the reinforcement.

The second way to increase a desired behaviour is to negatively reinforce undesirable behaviour in an attempt to get the person to behave well. 'I am going to embarrass you every time you come late' announced loudly will encourage a person to come on time but you will do damage to the relationship. You will also get compliance and reluctant compliance at that. They won't come early. If you have frightened them, they will come on time. If you want a reliable way of getting people to behave well....try positive reinforcement. You will get more willing behaviour and build a relationship. Notice when people do good work and comment at the time.If you can't find anything positive to comment on then maybe you should resort to the stick. The carrot is much more effective but you will have to adjust to catching people doing things right instead of the opposite.

I'd like to hear of any success you have in applying this technique to improve behaviour and productivity.
regards Paddy Spruce.
A recognised specialist in "The Art of Influence"
Would you like happier clients, motivated staff, contented managers?

Call Paddy on +613 9808 8990
Web: http://www.paddyspruce.com.au
Email: paddy@paddyspruce.com.au

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