Are we so different?

“use lots of encouragement, praise and rewards (positive reinforcement)…. Concentrate on developing desirable habits… Keep your training sessions short, consistent and always have fun”.  This is the advice on how to house train your puppy.  However, this is much the way that the banks chose to treat their traders, huge rewards for doing the ‘right thing’, loads of instant gratification and then off to look for the next ‘win’.  Today the Treasury Select Committee has said that the banks reward system was all wrong.

Within any team, family or group, we will get more of the behaviours we positively reinforce, so if we are not getting the results we desire, one thing to do is to consider what we are truly encouraging.  Don’t ask for teamwork and then reward individual achievements, don’t tell people you want them to tell the truth and then shout at them when they do, don’t ask for creative input and then tell people their ideas are stupid!  If the ‘results’ are wrong, look to your own behaviours and see what you are rewarding…

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.”   Robert Green Ingersoll

“For them to perceive the advantage of defeating the enemy, they must also have their rewards.”   Sun Tzu

Resources:

• How to train your puppy
• Treasury report
• Article: You get the Results you Reward

Tags: dog training, results, rewards, treasury select committee

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 08:05 and is filed under Business Change, Hints, Tips & Techniques, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.