How to Become Better In Any Relationship

I was typing up a summary of the philosophies of the Arbinger Institute, and thought I'd also share it here.
The thing to remember in our relationships is this:

We think other people's bad behavior gives us an excuse for when we are less than our best. I had to get angry, or impatient, or bitter, we say, because of the way they were acting.

But we forget that our actions give them an excuse, too. "I had to act the way I was acting," they say, "because that person was so angry, or impatient, or bitter."

Even if they "went first," we gave them an excuse to keep being bad. "I knew I was right to act that way," they say. "I knew that person would be angry, impatient, or bitter."

And then we use their behavior as our excuse, and the cycle goes on and on, in a hopeless downward spiral that no one can ever win.

And it is not enough to try to break out of it by simply "taking the higher road." Because they will just see our attempts to "be the better person" as being condescending, as talking down to them, as passive-aggressive. They'll just use that as their excuse to keep acting the way they're acting.

So then, where is our hope? If we can't make it better by the low road, or the high road, what is our hope of making it better?

It lies in seeing them as a person again. A person equal in importance to us. No more special, and certainly no less. Walking next to them.

And then recognize that our anger, our impatience, our bitterness made them feel exactly the way we feel. And then in our feeling bad for making another person feel that way.

If it was so bad when they did it to us, it must have been just as bad when we did it to them.

Our ability to empathize with them gives us the hope of reconnecting with them. Our ability to understand them gives us the hope that things can become better.

Even if they were the ones who "started" it.

Because then we stop seeing them as a monster, but as a person. A person like us, who has been hurt, like us. A person who sometimes doesn't quite know how to deal with their hurt, and lashes out at a world before it can have the chance to lash out at them. It doesn't make their actions right, any more than their bad behavior made ours right. But it can make their actions more understandable, and make them people to us again instead of monsters.

And that will change our behavior--because we only felt it was okay to act as we acted toward another human being because we weren't really seeing them as a human being at all.

How To Handle Conflicts (And How NOT To Handle Conflicts)

Some ways of dealing with conflict don't work.

Competition

When we see ourselves as having to struggle against other people to get what we need, it makes us see other people as enemies and work against them. This usually makes them struggle back. It leads them to mistrust us, and us to mistrust them. As was said, "When we see the world as a jungle, it becomes a jungle."

When we think we have to fight against everyone (and by fighting we don't mean punching--it can be arguing, or even passive-aggressive manipulation) it becomes true, because, as often as not, they feel they have to fight back.

People doing this usually believe that if someone else is getting something, that means they're losing out on something themselves.

Capitulation

The other thing that doesn't work is just giving in. We usually do this because we want to keep the relationship good, and are trying to avoid hard feelings. However, when we see how easy it was for the other person to let us give in, it usually results in our getting upset, resentful, and mistrustful of the other person, even though we're the one who gave in! Rather than helping the relationship, it also makes it worse.

And it makes the other person more likely to expect us to back down again the next time--which means it becomes even harder to get what we need.

These people also think they have to give up what they want in order to give someone else what they want.

Compromise

Believe it or not, compromise usually doesn't help either. Combining the worst parts of conflict and capitulation, compromise could be called when, "Both people give up a little of what they want so that nobody ends up happy."

People compromising usually still think that everything someone else gets means something they have to lose, and so every inch of who gets what is struggled over, leading to the same kind of problems for the relationship that Capitulation and Conflict cause.

So if Conflict, Capitulation, and Compromise all don't work, what does work?

Cooperation

This is a fundamental change in attitude about how we see conflict. Instead of thinking, "If I give other people what they want, it means giving up what I want," it says, "I believe that, in most cases, a solution can be reached that can help everyone get what they really want."

Instead of saying, "I just have to think about myself," it says, "The other person here is just as much of a person as I am, and what they need is just as important. I should try as hard to help them get what they want as I would try to get something for myself."

Now this may seem hard if you focus on "What" people say they want--This is called their position. For example, a child might want mom to take them to the arcade, but mom might want to go to the gym. Looking at their positions, it seems impossible to do both. At best, they might find a compromise and mom only goes to the gym for half the time, and takes him to the arcade for a couple quick games.

But was there a better solution?

In order to find out, it helps if you focus on "Why" they want it--their fundamental interests. In this case, Mom's been trying to lose weight to win a contest at work, She's gone to the gym every day this week, and she doesn't want to break her streak.

But when she asks the child why he wants to go to the arcade, he says, "You've been gone every night this week. I just want to spend time with you."

So the gym wasn't really about the gym--it was about getting fit. And the arcade wasn't really about the arcade--it was about spending time with Mom.

They decide to go play Frisbee at the park. That way, Mom gets her exercise in, and the child gets to play with Mom--everybody's getting everything they want!

Only this way strengthens relationships instead of hurting them, and helps people get what they want more often than any of the other ways.

To make this work:

1. You have to really want to help the other person find a solution as much as you want a solution for yourself. You can't just want enough for them to get them by. You really have to be as committed to finding them a solution as you are for yourself, otherwise it's too easy to give up too soon, or settle for less for them as long as you're getting what you want.

2. You have to be relatively flexible. Remember the difference between "positions" and "interests" and don't get so caught up in arguing over your "position" that you reject solutions that would meet all of your interests.

3. You have to understand what the other person's interests are as well as you understand your own. Do you really understand what the other person wants? Or have you just made assumptions about what the other person wants? Usually we just assume things, and, most often, we assume the worst. For example, if an employee doesn't want to work late, a manager will usually just "assume" it's because they're lazy or they're trying to see what they can get away with (We do this because, by assuming negative motivations for another person, it becomes easier for us to justify not helping them get what they want and still think of ourselves as nice people). Finding out their real interests is about communication, not assumption.

4. Attack problems, not people. Don't be either defensive or reactive. Try to do and say things that will both strengthen the relationship and help solve the problem. Personal attacks--even if made defensively--only detract and derail discussion. If you're trying to change anybody or make them want something different than what they already want, you're going to be banging your head against a wall.

Why Is It So Hard To Motivate People?

My goals are not your goals, neither are your objectives my objectives, sayeth the employee.

Yeah, it's not quite scripture, but it's still worth remembering.

It often seems like people can be frustrating to try to motivate. When I'm trying to get people going, I sometimes imagine myself as being Tim Conway in an old Disney movie, trying to get some stubborn animal moving. Sound familiar? It makes for great comedy. Doesn't make for so great work days.

So why does that happen? Why do people have such a hard time shifting gears from park to drive?

Or, you might be thinking you'd be happy with park. Why does it seem your employees are set in reverse?

You're probably asking yourself, "Why is it so hard to motivate people?"

As in many cases, sometimes the best way to get better answers is to ask yourself a better quality of question. Your brain is very good at answering the questions you feed into it--that's what it was designed to do.

So if you ask yourself a question like, "Why is it so hard to motivate people?" you're going to get answers that will support the idea that people are hard to motivate.

Answers like, "Because they're lazy." Or, "Because they want to get something for nothing." Or, "Because everybody wants a free ride."

Again, all these answers do is reinforce the idea that people are hard to motivate. You're going to be left with this list of reasons why what you're trying to do is impossible.

What's worse, they're all going to be things you can't do anything about. They're all about what's out there, in your employees and in the world, and when it comes right down to it, those aren't things you can do anything about.

And if you can't do anything about it, then why try, right?

Well, this post isn't over yet, so you can guess we're not going to end there.

Instead, we're going to ask ourselves a better quality question, so we can get a better quality answer.

In this case, we could ask ourselves something like, "When have my employees been motivated?" Or, "What have I seen my employees really excited about something?"

Or, even better, ask questions like, "What can I do differently to better motivate my employees?" Or, "What am I doing that's keeping them from feeling motivated?"

For example, let's say an employee you're having motivation problems with comes to you and asks for a bunch of time off at a bad time. There's another sign this guy's not motivated, right? He's asking for time off at the worst possible time. If he had any mind for the business or any cares about your results, he'd never ask for that time off.

But as you gently reprimand him for the lack of care about the business that his request is showing, stop and think about what effect your gentle words are going to have on his motivation. Can you really think of a time that anyone has been chewed-out into excitement? Does anyone ever say, "Man, he told me I was wrong, and it really inspired me?"

Of course not. I can't lecture someone to greatness.

I also can't scare someone into greatness. I can threaten someone into performing a specific action, sure. "Do X or else Y," can often lead to Y. But it doesn't lead to excitement about Y.

The fact is, we get motivated by two things: Opportunity and success.

We get excited when we either see the possibility of something good potentially happening to us, or when we have just reached something good.

So that gives us two ways of motivating this guy.

The first way is opportunity.

The fact is, this guy probably knows that he's asking for a bad time. He's probably expecting you to say no--especially if you're the kind of boss who's said no a lot in the past.

So instead of saying no, say maybe. Give the guy an opportunity.

"You know, that's a really tough time for us, but I think I can figure out a way to make it work. If you do A, B, and C before you go, then I can do X, Y, and Z, and we can get you the time you need."

See? Opportunity. How motivated to you think he's going to be about doing A, B and C now? Probably more motivated than he's ever been about getting those done. And if A, B, and C really are the things we need him to do, then we're still not out much with him leaving. To use the motivational vernacular, it's a "Win-Win."

Plus, because you're doing X, Y, and Z, you're building trust. Now he knows that you're willing to go out of your way to help him get things he needs. What do you think that's going to do do his desire to help you get things you need later?

He can also be motivated by success. In this case, we might go ahead and give him the time, citing past accomplishments as being the justification for it. "How can I say no to an employee who always does A, B, and C?"

Of course, it could be that this is a situation where we absolutely, positively, cannot say yes. That happens. Especially with small businesses, or businesses that are time-based like retail, where we can't give the time off because we're going to be so busy at that point.

Often in these situations, managers put the responsibility for finding a solution back on the employee. "Of course you can go, as long as you can get someone to cover your shift." Knowing that everyone is working that day, they know there's no one to cover, so they can seem like they're saying yes, when they're really saying no.

Ultimately, this kind of dishonesty leads to mistrust, and mistrust leads to unmotivated people.

My philosophy is, if you can't provide what they want, at least provide honesty. Explain to the employee exactly why they can't go that day. Maybe sales records showing how busy it's going to be, and maybe a frank explanation of why you just can't do without them.

But more important than the explanation part is an accompanying part where you listen. Let them talk about what their expectations are for when they should be able to get vacation time, or about what vacation they'd like to be able to take in the future. Again, listening to them builds trust.

Of course, that's only if we're listening sincerely.

These types of articles always talk about listening sincerely as being the key, and it really is true, but I sometimes despair at being able to convey that clearly. I think the people who believe in sincerity already believe it, and the others think, "Yeah, yeah, sincerity. I'm pretty good at faking that."

Being pretty good at faking sincerity leads to employees who are pretty good at faking they care about your expectations of them.

As long as the employee, on any level, feels that you're working against their interests, they're going to follow you slowly or actively resist you. An employee only becomes motivated when the employee truly feels that the place that you're trying to take them is a place that they truly want to be.

As I said in my earlier post about how to motivate people, everyone has a different set of things that motivate them. The key to motivation is you keying in to their wants and desires, not by cramming their personalities into the holes you would like them to fit into.

So I guess when it's all said and done, it isn't so much that people are hard to motivate.

What's sometimes hard is stepping back, getting to know your employees, and then finding their motivations, instead of trying to get them to adopt yours.

And that's serious--it truly is hard. But the good news is, if we do that part, the other stuff, the stuff that seemed so hard before, becomes the easy part.

Be The Change That You Want To See In The World

Imagine, if you would, that your company put Eeyore, stuffed donkey from the Winnie-the-Pooh books who is wont to lose his tail, in charge of employee motivation in your office.

You can just imagine the meetings. You can imagine him in his deep, monotonous voice, talking very slowly as he says something like, "Hello, everyone. I'm here to motivate you. There are a lot of great reasons to work here. The company is doing a lot of great things." Here he would pause to heavily sigh. "We've really got to get morale up around here or else we all might not jobs in a few months."

(Feel free to substitute Debbie Downer here, or whatever other habitually depressed character is appropriate to your cultural experience.)

It's clearly a silly example, but it illustrates a serious matter--in order to create change in our organizations, our behavior has to be consistent with the change that we want to create.

It's silly to imagine we can get people to become more motivated by chewing them out or by threatening them. Fear can improve performance, certainly, but fear is limited in that it fear can only motivate to an expectation.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that if we use fear to motivate employees, we're basically saying something like, you have to do X or you get fired. We might sugar coat it, we might hide that in "managerspeak," but when it comes right down to it, we're saying "You have to do X, or you're going to be fired."

That fear has, at most, the power to get them to do X. And it only has the power to barely get them to do X. It does not inspire them to do X to the best of their ability. It does not motivate them to do X and Y. At best, it simply gets them to go along with your orders.

It certainly doesn't inspire them to do X better than anyone has ever done it, and wouldn't even occur to them you ever appreciate them figuring out a new idea that would make X easier or even make it become completely unnecessary.

All you're going to get, if anything, is X.

But in some cases, like motivation or customer service, motivating through fear--by any means--is generally counter productive.

Can you imagine that one? Imagine Bobby Knight trying to inspire a team of salespeople to give better customer service.

Or Skeletor. Or Grumpy from the seven dwarfs. Or the Grinch. Or Cruella DeVille. Or the Grumpy Old Troll. Or Captain Hook.

Imagine any of those folks trying to tell people to keep the customers interests in the forefront of their minds or to be sensitive.

It wouldn't inspire a single soul to listen sincerely to people or to keep customer interests in mind. If their own leader doesn't see the need to listen to them or keep their interests in mind, they're not really going to believe you think any of that stuff matters, since you're not doing it for them.

Between my examples and the title of this post, my point is probably obvious.

It was Ghandi who said it:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

In this case, we can paraphrase that as, "Be the change you want to see in your organization."

The way to improve the customer service in your organization is by improving the employee service you, as management, provide your employees.

The way to help the organization to become more motivated is by becoming absolutely motivated yourself.

Now that's not to say either of these are foolproof. Becoming more motivated isn't going to guarantee motivation improves. However, it is the only alternative that at least makes motivation possible.

The question to ask yourself is an easy one:

Is my behavior consistent with the change I am trying to create?

By being brutally honest about the answer to this question, you can better put yourself in a position to get the results you're looking for.

The Arbinger Institute

A while ago, someone recommended a book to me called Leadership and Self Deceptionby a group called The Arbinger Institute. I sort of started to read it, was bothered a little bit by the way it was written, so I never finished it. (It's written in that way that's so popular among business books right now, where you tell it like a story, and the main character is learning everything you want the reader to learn.)

About a year ago, I did read it, along with a good chunk of the other stuff published by the Arbinger institute.

What I found was a philosophy that had become one of the most impactful of any that I have ever read. It's changed my life, and it's changed the way I manage.

I've always despaired at being able to write succinct summaries of their philosophies that would inspire those who ought to read the books to read them. Like the phrase "Self-Deception" in the title of the book would indicate, the people who most need to read the book would probably be the least likely to read it, were I to give an explanation.

Arbinger has published their own summary of their philosophies in an online paper titled, "What We Are." written by philosopher C. Terry Warner.I realize that not everyone is going to be willing to click over and read a 26 page scholarly paper (although I'd strongly encourage everyone to--Warner explains all of this better than I ever could), so I'll do my best to sum up what's being explained.

Often times, the conflicts we have in our lives--whether they're with the people in our families or the people in our work or the people we deal with on the internet--these conflicts arise out of mutual mishandling of a situation.

Generally, it is really, really obvious to us the way the other person is mishandling the situation. We can see their lack of tact, their meanness, their rudeness, their inconsideration--these are so obvious to us, it's like a mack truck parked behind them.

However, the problem comes because of an innate ability people have to be blind to their own mishandling of situations. This happens because as soon as anyone does something--in fact, it is probably more accurate to say that as someone is doing something, they'll give themselves reasons for doing it.They'll give themselves intellectual reasons for doing it--it's smart, it makes sense, etc--but they'll also give themselves emotional reasons for doing it. They're angry, or they're frustrated, or they're deeply, deeply hurt.

And these are trickier, because in our society, we've become accustomed to thinking about emotions as being something that other people create in us--you make me mad. You make me sad.

And this gives me an even stronger justification for whatever I'm about to do than the intellectual reasons do. Because the emotions give me an excuse for blaming you for my actions.

Here's the classic example, that's in almost all the Arbinger books.

A new father hears his baby start fussing a little in the other room. It occurs to him that if he got up and rubbed the baby's back a little, the baby would probably fall right back asleep and neither he nor his wife would have to get up with the baby.

But he doesn't get up. And so he starts talking to himself about why he's not getting up. Maybe he has a meeting the next day, early. Maybe his wife had a nap when he got home, and it's "her turn."

But he doesn't stop there. He gets a little annoyed with his wife. Why doesn't she hear the baby? Why isn't she thinking about letting him get some sleep?

He starts getting angry with her, and thinking about what a bad mom she is, and what a bad wife she is.

See what's happening here?

He starts off feeling some sense of what he should do. I don't mean this in a religious sense, or under any specific moral or ethical code. There was just something he felt he should do.

But then he didn't do it. And since he, like all of us, wasn't inclined to start telling himself a story about what a bad person he was, he started telling himself a story about why what he did was the right thing to do.

But it didn't stop there. Because there was still a little bit of doubt in his mind, his mind needed to shift blame elsewhere, and his wife was the natural target. Not only did it create intellectual means to blame her, but emotional ones as well.

Had he simply got up before he'd started feeling the need to justify his actions, the emotions would never have arisen. They weren't caused by any real action of the wife--they were created to justify his own failure to be who he thought he should be.

Even worse, he starts feeling the need to see her as a bad person, as if by raising or lowering her degree of "badness," his own virtue can be raised or lowered accordingly.

Now if you've followed me that far, then come this last step with me, because this was the part that was the biggest eye-opener for me:

At this point in the game, it wouldn't matter if he did get up and help with the baby.

That didn't make sense to me, at first. It seemed to me like the problem was that he didn't do the right thing. If he did do the right thing, how can he possibly be wrong?

Well, like this:

We all know how it would play out if this guy made his wife get up. He'd say something like, "Honey, you know you got that nap when I came home. And I have my big meeting tomorrow. Can't you just go get her?"

His phrasing, which he thinks will clearly show her how much sense it makes for her to get up, while just hinting at how thoughtless he thinks she's being (in other words, which he thinks is defensive) comes across to her as an accusation that she's lazy or uncaring (in other words, it comes across as an attack).

This prompts her to go into a similar self-justifying cycle of why his attack is unjustified as he went into when he didn't think he wanted to get up.

But now, imagine that instead, he decided that, despite all his reasons for thinking she should do it instead of him, that he was the good dad and she was the bad mom, despite all of that he was going to do the "noble" thing and get up with the baby anyway.

He's still got all these feelings. So he's still going to say something like, "No, honey, you just keep sleeping. I'm sure my meeting tomorrow won't be a problem." Something designed to seem thoughtful, but still hint at what she's putting him through so she'll appreciate his sacrifice. Of course, rather than seeing his comments as being about him, she'll see what he's saying about her, and still take it as an accusation.

It still invites her to go into her own self-justifying cycle. And it still adds to the conflict.

Even if he doesn't make a comment, he's going to sigh a certain way, so she'll notice. And even if he doesn't sigh, he'll still just remember, let it fester somewhere in the back of his mind, to add fuel to the next fire that flares up between them.

Does it make sense now? The problem isn't which thing he did. It isn't about whether he did right or wrong. The problem was his attitude towards her. The problem was his need to find blame.

Had his attitude towards her been different, there are ways he could have asked her to get up and help with the baby as well as gotten up himself that would have done nothing to add to the conflict, but could even have made their relationship stronger.

Had he not had the bad feelings towards her, he could have gently said, "Honey, could you please get up with the baby? I have my meeting tomorrow, and I'm really worried about getting enough sleep. I know you're tired, too. I promise to make it up to you tomorrow night." More important than the words, would just be the absence of the animosity. The lack of need to show her how her getting up was somehow the right thing.

In other words, in many, many cases, seeing other people as the problem is the problem.

Often, in making ourselves a victim, we're also victimizing someone else.

Now the obvious rebuttal a person might have is that there are some cases of clear-cut victimhood. Cases of abuse, for instance.

This is talked about at some length in the book Bonds That Make Us Free. And what it explains is how even in those cases, it is often self-deception that traps us into those problems. It is self-deception that either obligates us to stay in the abusive relationship or that keeps us from being able to let go of it once the relationship is over. To "release its power over us," as a pop psychologist might say.

It gives the example of a woman who kept going back to an abusive husband. Despite his cruelty, she knew his self-destructive lifestyle would destroy him, and felt guilt whenever she'd leave him because she was afraid of what might happen to him. She justified leaving him because of what he was doing--his "bad" actions justified the act she sort of felt was "wrong"--leaving him, even though she knew he was in trouble.

The problem was, whenever he'd come back to her apologetic, she'd feel obligated to go back to him.

It wasn't until she was finally able to separate the morality of her own actions from the immorality of his that she felt free to leave him for good without feeling like a bad person.

They're a wonderful set of books. If you're only going to read one, I suggest The Anatomy of Peace. You can read the first few pages of it online here. It's the one geared towards families and individuals.

Leadership and Self Deceptionis more of a business book, so I'd recommend it if you're a manager or work with a lot of other people, although it's a great book for everyone. The Anatomy of Peace is actually a "prequel" to this book in terms of storyline, and a "sequel" in terms of content, but they can be read completely individually.

There's also an 8 page article on parenting that can be read here.

The Two Levels Of Leadership Training

There are two levels to "Leadership" training.

The first is attributes. That's who you are.

The second is technique. That's what you do.

So any leadership training would have to focus on both levels.to have two-level leadership training. You deal partly with what a leader needs to be, and partly with what a leader can do.

I see it kind of like this--if you want to build buildings, there are two levels to what you have to learn.

First, you've got the principles of construction. Where do you put support structures? How much support do certain weights need? What types of materials are best in what situations? Knowing this stuff is what makes you a builder.

From there, you also learn how to use the tools. How to use a screwdriver, how to use a hammer, how to use the nails.

But if I want to be a true builder, it has to go in that order. The knowledge of how to use the tools is useless before I've learned the principles. I might be the best in the world with a screwdriver, but if I don't know how many support beams to put in a wall--or, even worse, if I don't know when to use a screwdriver and when to use a hammer--it still won't help. And I'll likely fall into the trap of trying to use a screwdriver for all my building needs.

For example, I see a seminar on "Offering Constructive Feedback" to be the "Technique" side of things. It's "tools." It's good, and it's necessary, but if it's not grounded in correct principles and sincerity, it's not going to work.

The purpose of the leadership training should be principle based. It's about the ideas that help you know when to use which tools.

And, just as importantly, about being the kind of person who can do it. In the analogy, that means being a builder. Or in this case, being a leader.

It's like I've discovered about my struggles with my weight. It was, in the end, less about the "tool" than it was about the sincerity and the effort behind what I was doing. When I really, really meant what I was doing, almost anything I tried would work. When I didn't really mean it, nothing did.

Telling a poor leader the right words to say when giving feedback can be just as ineffective as telling a CSR who doesn't care about his customers to smile more and giving them a cheerful script. It won't improve the way they're being received, because, deep down, their heart isn't in the right place. The pasted-on smile or cutesy script won't change that.

So "being"-type training--the things that focus on who a leader is--would be just as important as "doing" training that teaches skills or other tools.
When I hear someone say that "Attribute" training is too theoretical, I worry. Because it means they're probably focused on results at any cost. They just want to know what to say to make everything come out the way they want. They want the magic tool.

And that makes them forget that other people have things they want, too, and that some costs are too high, and that you can never force greatness. Because ultimately, results-at-any-cost isn't true leadership. It's bullying or emotionally blackmailing and short-sighted.

If you want specifics, one that springs to mind is trust. I've really come to believe that any problem that two people have, whether it's a CSR and a customer, an area manager and one of their store managers, or even a husband and wife, or parent and child, can usually be broken down on some level to a problem with trust.

The symptom might be something else ("My manager is giving that CSR more hours than me!") but at it's heart, it's a trust issue ("I no longer trust my manager to look out for my best interests.").

So the attribute would be twofold:

1. Giving the other person all the reasons in the world to trust you.

• Recognizing that trust is not automatic, and that we have to give others reasons to trust us.
• Not making commitments you can't follow through on.
• Sometimes making commitments and keeping them that have no business benifit, but for the sole reason of giving them another reason to trust you.
• Being careful about what you do and say about others around people, lest they worry what you do and say about them when they're not around.
• Being very open about where employees stand, how they're progressing, what our plans for them are, etc.
• Creating goals and plans together, and then working together for common goals.

2. Finding all the reasons we can to trust them. (Not in a Pollyanna-ish, naive way, but by:)

• Soliciting feedback frequently, so we're not in doubt as to their thoughts
• Creating an environment in which they are comfortable offering us feedback, so they can tell us what they're really thinking, not just what we want to hear.
• Not just assuming the worst when problems arise, but sincerely trying to figure out their motivations and point of view, and even eliciting the facts before jumping to conclusions
• Creating goals and plans together, and then working together for those common goals.

How To Motivate People

Imagine, if you will, that your district manager called you up tonight and told you that there had been an emergency. There was a rock slide that had buried the parking lot of one of our stores, and they needed you to come out tommorrow morning at four in the morning and move rocks so all the rocks would be out of the way in time for the store to open at nine.

How would you feel as you set your alarm for the next morning? How would you feel as you lay down, knowing you would have to get up in just a few hours? How would you feel when that alarm went off, and you knew you had to get up?

Now imagine this: You get the same late-night call from your district manager. They still want you to meet them at four in the morning, but the reason is different. They've had to go out of town at the last minute, so they had to cancel a visit they were going to make with their family to Disneyland. Their flight leaves early, but if you can meet them at four in the morning, you can have the passes for you and your family for free.

Now how would you feel as you set your alarm? Now how would you feel as you lay down? And how would you feel when the alarm went off?

Probably a completely different feeling. In fact, you might set the alarm for an even earlier time now, just in case. You'd pop out of bed and dash off to go get those tickets.

Notice that even though the events were the same--you were having to get up early--your attitude about it, your eagerness to do it, was entirely based on your perception of what was going to happen, not on the act itself. It was still the same time of morning both times, but the action got easier based on how you felt about it.

Now I'm not going to pretend that your job is anything like a visit to Disneyland--if it were, your could probably charge you to work there instead of paying you. But I will say that playing up the fun and entertaining aspects of your job will make your job easier, as well as the people you manage.

As managers, it is your responisbility to keep your people motivated. That means motivating yourselves, as well as motivating your staff. In order to do this, you're going to have to put some effort in to figuring out what motivates yourself, and what motivates them. You're probably motivated by very different things! You might find the thought of a big bonus drives you to working hard, but your CSR might not care about their bonus, so much as they want recognition.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to try to figure out what motivates you:

1. What do I feel is the biggest accomplishment I've made outside the home?

2. When have I felt the most valued and appreciated?

3. What event I was involved with, outside of my home, brings a smile to my face when I think about it?

4. What job that I've had brought me the most satisfaction?

5. If you remember a day when you were excited to come into work, what was special about that day?

By thinking about the answers to these questions, you can find what area of the job means the most to you. Here are some possible motivators:

Competition. Did you think about times where you knew you had stood out from the crowd, and made a difference? Did you think about times where you had "won" or "beat" another? Then competition may be your biggest motivator.

To make work more fun, you may want to find a store that's about the same size and with the same types of customers as yours and start trying to beat them. You may want to ask your district managers if you can have a competition with that store, where the losing store pays for lunch for the winning store out of their expenses.

Maybe pick a store that's doing a little better than you and start trying to pass them up.

By giving yourself something to shoot for, you can exploit that competitive spirit in yourself.

Warning: It is not a good idea to put your staff in competition against each other. This can make them start working against each other, which will hurt your store overall (eg, if you have a contest for which CSR can get the most contacts, a CSR might withold infomation from the notes that might help other CSRs reach that customer). Instead, have your CSRs compete as a team against some other team, or for a common goal. This builds the spirit of cooperation and commeradery. When people are working together for a common goal, it gives them less reason to work against each other.

Recognition. Did you think about times when you received special awards or honors? Did you think about a special phone call that you got from a supervisor or co-worker aknowledging an effort you had made? You're probably motivated by recognition.

This one's tough, because in a lot of ways, you can't control how other people recognize your accomplishements. You might get a pat on the back one month, but the next month do even better and have it go unrecognized.

However, look for those spots where the company regularly recognizes performance, such as top performers or biggest movement.

If your employees are motivated by recognition, it is important to create means whereby they can be recognized. These can be informal, such as daily aknowledgement of efforts like making phone calls or obtaining promises, or more formal, such as with certificates or awards of Days off or other forms of recognition.

Money. Some people are motivated by the cold, hard cash. If this is the case with you, track those areas of your performance that are tied to your company's incentive bonuses. Create a way to know, at any given moment, how you stand in terms of that bonus.

If your employees are motivated by money, share these same forms with them. Help them see where they are, and how the way they perform their work duties affects that bonus.

Service. Maybe the times you thought of involved helping other people, and you feel the best about yourself when you're doing good things for other people.

There are lots of opportunities to serve in any job. Everyone is paying for a good or a service that they need, and the way you help with that can, at the very least, brighten their day, and, depending on the product or service, make a difference in their lives. By focusing on how your job helps others, you may find the sense of satisfaction you need.

Fun. The things you thought of may have been things you really didn't think of as "work." Maybe for you, you want play, plain and simple.

Well, that's great! What ways can you bring fun into the office? What appropriate music can you play? What games can you involve the store in?

One large store rotates lunch each week--each day, someone prepares lunch for the entire store. The next day, someone else does. They take turns helping customers during the lunch hour, and they get to sample a lot of different foods from a lot of different people.

One store made a daily checklist on a big board with magnets. When they finish an item on the checklist, they "cross it off" with a magnet, and intial the clipboard, which hangs from the board.

Finding ways to make the workday more fun makes your store more pleasant for you and your customers.

There are lots of other possible ways you can motivate yourself and your employees. All of them may not work for you, but no one item may be complete either. If you have several CSRs, you'll probably need to use a variety of techniques to motivate all of them. Getting to know your CSRs will help you do this.

Remember--as tough as any job can be, as intense as you want to be, that doesn't mean it always has to be unpleasant or rough. The more effort you put in to making work pleasant, the more free your employees (and you!) will feel about giving their all to their work effort. Just like trying to get out of bed in the morning, the less you can find to be excited about, the harder any job becomes.

But the more you have something to look forward to, the more likely you'll be to leave that snooze button alone.