The Power of Motivation
After asking around on the cost of cutting down the Acacia tree growing beside our house, we found out that it cost RM 300 to cut and cart the offending tree away. The amount of Acacia leaves and its yellow pollen was enough to fill up a large pail every morning. Being the true blue spendthrift Penangite that I was, I decided to save some money and to do the dastardly deed myself.
It started to drizzle when I tried chopping down one of the larger Acacia branch. The first person I asked for help was my dad. The help he gave me was ‘Here – take the saw, it slices like butter.’ That was all he had to say. And so, there I was that evening, with a saw in my hand and a parang ready to do battle with the offending 35ft tall acacia tree.
I needed to tie the branch so that it would fall on the road and not in my garden when I chopped it off. So I took a small rock, tied a rope to the stone and hurled it over the highest part of the branch. I then tied the other end to the road railing, in hope that the branch would fall across the road away from my property. After sawing away at the foot-plus diameter branch, I was ready to make the final cut which would bring the branch down. I chased my little boy indoors just in case. He went upstairs to watch the show from the window.
With my final cut, the big branch came down right over my fence, breaking my newly planted bushes and cempaka tree. So much for the theory of tying the branch down to avoid falling into our garden! My boy, being the tell tale that he was, immediately told the mother, ‘Oh, oh, Daddy brought the tree down into our garden. Oh, oh!’.
The 4-year old Motivator
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| The Motivator & his sidekick |
I was clearing all the mess including the newly planted shrubs for the next 2 hours in the rain. I still had to saw the main branch off which had just fallen across the road and our garden fence. To top it off, it started to rain even heavier. As I was sawing again, my kid again peered out of the window, shouting words of encouragement this time …. ‘You can do it, you can do it, Daddy ….’. It’s been 3 hours of work and I should have felt tired by this time, but you’ll never know the power of cheer that comes from a 4-year old until you have yours cheering you. With renewed adrenaline surging, I managed to saw through the main branch; hence, effectively clearing the garden of the final mess which I brought on myself.
‘Yeah, you did it, Daddy! You did it!’, my little Adric shouted from the upper floor of the house. I did a little bow and showed him my muscles in the now pouring rain. Nothing could damper my spirit nor the smile on my face that day. All because a 4-year old boy made an effort to cheer his old man on.
The Tiger on the prowl
How many of us plod through our jobs solving problems and triumphing over adversities without even the slightest bit of recognition let alone a pat on our backs?
I remember working in a 5-star resort under a very capable but extremely strict General Manager. He would walk the resort grounds a couple of times a day and you could hear the whispers over the walkie talkie, ‘Lau Hor lai liao’. It was the staff’s code and no matter what other languages we spoke, we all understood the words. The tiger is on the prowl. No matter how much we did, nary did we get any words of approval. Daily morning briefings were not something we looked forward to. Somehow, someone will be picked on and that person would get it good and proper. No one was spared. He was fair, I’ll give him that.
One day, I could not stand it anymore and approached the GM to get an evaluation of my personal performance. I told him that it seemed that none of us could do anything right. Is there anything that we did right that he could share with us? He said that he didn’t have time to sit down with everyone of us to tell us what we did right as he was too busy getting the hotel into shape.
It was not until much later that I found out from a manager who had been working with him for a long time that this GM’s way of praising a person was to give him more responsibility. To coin a phrase I’ve heard my missus quote, ‘Good work deserves more work.’ That was his way, but meanwhile, all of us still dreaded going to morning briefings. I cannot help but wonder if it would do more justice to the Lau Hor’s reputation if he had used a bit more of the carrot instead of the stick. I wonder if the other new managers will be better incentivized if they had an occasional pat on the back instead.
Learning
At a recent training session, we were identifying each person’s “monster” at work. 75% of the team said that the monster was their boss, the FC. She was the “Just Do It” boss and didn’t care how it was done as long as the job was done. The staff was a bunch of cheerful executives enlivened by a couple of jokers who always had the team in stitches. How did it come to be that when they talked about what they feared most at work was their boss? This FC sound very much like the “Lau Hor” that we knew. It was a pity too that this monster of theirs could not make it for the training session, enhancing her monster reputation even more. I actually knew their monster 23 years ago. She was certainly no monster then. In fact she was one of those high achieving and helpful person whom most of us voted as the prettiest girl in the school. How did she change from the “Prom” queen to the monster in 23 years?
When we are too result orientated, we sometimes lose sight of the humanistic side of our team. We forget that we are dealing with people who have feelings and are very much emotionally charged. A pay raise or promotion is nice but that only happens once a year. Sometimes a simple word of gratitude or a pat on the back goes a longer way to get a person motivated. Any form of recognition of a job well done is what drives most of us.
I know that I certainly would have felt better with a bit of cheering and I intend to cheer more for my team. Thanks, son for reminding me of the power of cheer. And oh, by the way, RM 300 to cut down a tree and to cart it away is really cheap considering the damages to shrubs, fencing and all the “To Ko” plaster my son had to stick on my back for the next three days.
Eric Chong
ES Pursuits Sdn Bhd
Eric Chong is the founder and principal trainer of ES Pursuits Sdn Bhd (Extra Sensory Pursuits) and he can be reached at eric@espursuits.com. For more information on the company, visit http://www.espursuits.com.
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