The ‘Reward’ Mistake We Don’t Realise We Make
If things are not going the way you want in your interactions - you are probably ‘unintentionally’ rewarding the wrong behaviour!
Let me explain with a story about a Snake and a Fisherman. It goes Like this…
There was once a fisherman who went out alone in his boat every day. One day, he saw a snake swimming by with a frog in its mouth. He felt sorry for the frog, so he took it out of the snake’s mouth and set it free.
Then he felt sorry for the snake who had lost out on lunch, so he gave the snake the only thing he had, some of his brandy, and the snake swam off.
A while later, the fisherman heard a repeated banging on the side of the boat. He looked over the side and saw the snake, with two frogs in its mouth.
Because what gets rewarded gets REPEATED! and EXPANDED!
TRY THIS...
Look at the behaviour you are getting but don’t want and ask yourself if / how you may be accidentally rewarding it.
STOP REWARDING IT!
Decide what behaviour you’d prefer to see.
Catch them doing it right (getting close/nearly doing that).
Reward it- IMMEDIATELY - Don’t over complicate it, just say thank you whilst being specific about what they did that you appreciated/want more of
Repeat 4 & 5
SOMETHING TO PONDER...
How does it feel when you think you’ve done something good but get no reward? (thanks, praise, attention)
How often do you think you’d do it without reward before you decide to stop bothering?
Who do you think has decided to stop bothering to try with you?
SOMETHING FOR LATER…
And whilst we are on the topic of decision making…
I created a quiz a few weeks ago all about decision making. I thought you might like to test it on your team.
The answers are loosely based on the 🟢🔵🟡🔴 of Insights Discovery so feel free to get in touch for the answers - but it’s not about the answers, the power is in the conversation you have as you do it.