Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Influencing behavior via modeling instead of coating with chocolate syrup.

I recently read an article written by a mother describing how she had her children eat vegetables. The answer applies to all behaviors that are distasteful to some persons.

There is an old joke about a farmer who fed his dogs spinach. Another farmer asked if the dogs ate the spinach. The spinach-feeding farmer replied, “They didn’t for the first three weeks.” The punch line meaning that given enough hunger and pain, dogs will eat spinach.

The article written by the proud-as-can-be mother related how she combined vegetables with something her kids liked. She covered the vegetables with chocolate syrup. Not literally, but she coated the vegetables with something her kids liked. She taught her kids bribes work.

When my children were young, someone gave me wonderful advice about vegetables and all that. When you put green vegetables on the table, proclaim, “Ooh, aah, asparagus. I love it. You can’t have any until you eat all your mashed potatoes and meat. This is great!”

This worked. My kids loved the green vegetables because I loved them.

Management consultants call this modeling behavior or something that has enough syllables to warrant outrageous management consulting fees. If I want others to do something, I do it first.

As I sit sipping coffee and typing words, a little boy across the room is climbing all over a chair, bouncing, sitting upside down, and generally doing everything to the chair that you shouldn’t do. It is evident that the parent hasn’t modeled the reason and use of chairs.

I have sat in business offices and watched new employees doing everything on company time that is like the little boy and the chair. It is evident that the supervising employees haven’t modeled what is deemed as appropriate uses of company time. Hmm.

As a manager, have you eaten asparagus in front of the new employees and proclaimed their goodness? Hmm. Let’s do better.