Science has proven what we know intuitively. But why is business still playing to the myths of motivation? TED talk by Daniel Pink, author of upcoming book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Posts Tagged Attitude
I just found these stories. I’d saved it under a title that I’m sure made sense at the time, but upon recall, it made me think it was a different document.
Background – all three of these encounters happen the same morning, in the same building, for the same organization.
Scene 1 – I arrive to teach a seminar about Flex Spending Accounts. My mood is set, I feel great because I’m speaking and training today. I’m especially pumped because I love the thrill of applying my inspirational approach to financial matters that people expect to be boring (I have a financial services background). I enter the building and check in with security. A guard takes me to my first encounter.
In introduce myself to the leader who looks put out. She starts by treating me like I am a criminal or have done something wrong. Angrily she says: “I don’t know who you are!” She didn’t hide that she was annoyed and put out. She next challenged me as though I was lying “who sent you here? Who are you supposed to see? I thought this was Insurance, nobody told me you are here!” What’s flex spending?!
Scene 2 – The insurance rep and I (we’d both been invited by the main office) were in a conference room to answer questions one-on-one. The first employee that the Insurance rep (we were both scheduled for the day) had to deal with wanted the rep to make the changes for her. The rep didn’t have a laptop with her and the employee got snippy “your website doesn’t work!” The rep tried to verbally get the woman to come back to find out what the problem was. The woman was determined to be a snot and turned her back on the rep and walked out ignoring the pleas of the insurance rep to try to identify the problem to fix it.
Scene 3 – It is lunch time and I am in the employee cafeteria. Across the table from me is a woman who’s just sat down with her lunch. “This is a hamburger without the bun!!!” She was angry, you could tell she felt cheated. “They call this a patty melt! What the hell is that?! It’s a hamburger without the bun. By law this is a hamburger with no bun, everybody knows that!” She slams her food around looking hateful and angry.
This is the GarbageFactor™ in toxic doses. This whole building needs to be wrapped in a quarantine tent and a dose of attitude adjustment pumped in. Seriously folks, I’m sure many of you have worked in an environment like this, but what makes me so passionate about this one is that it was an elementary school. The “leader” was the school principal. The other two scenes were with teachers. This is crazy. No one should have to work with people with attitudes this bad, never mind subject our kids to it.
I have an assignment today. Look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are behaving like one of these people. If you are, find out what the cause is. This is beyond bad attitude, this is toxic behavior. If you need to get out, find a new job as fast as you can. If you need a break, take it. If you need to learn how to deal with the problem, take a seminar. If you need a shrink, find one. Whatever you do, take some positive action because everyone around you is being infected and you won’t be able to break the cycle of negativity until you do something different.
If you’re working in this kind of environment, your solutions are the same. If you need to get out, find a new job as fast as you can. If you need a break, take it. If you need to learn how to deal with the problem, take a seminar or read a book (mine is a great pick http://shop.marianmadonia.com). If you need a shrink, find one.
Whatever you do, take some positive action because everyone around you is being infected and you won’t be able to break the cycle of negativity until you do something different. If you are in a leadership position and this describes your environment, don’t go it alone if you’re not trained in turning this type of situation around. Bring in a consultant who specializes in workplace relationships (I know a few, so let me know if you need a referral). If you think a seminar or program would help, that’s my specialty (check out my video’s at http://youtube.com/marianmadonia). And if you need it, contact an arbitrator to help resolve conflict in specific relationships.
We all want to work in a job that has as little garbage as possible. What can you do today to reduce it?
Sometimes garbage just happens, and you have to decide if you are going to wallow in it, shovel yourself out of it, or recycle & reuse it. I’ve taken advantage of all three options at different times in my life.
This past Saturday, I decided to take myself out to dinner as a reward for dealing with a lot more garbage that had dumped in my lap than I’d expected. I’d hoped to be celebrating 2 straight weeks of blogging, but as I missed Friday because of the garbage dump, I couldn’t claim that. I had, however, still earned myself a dinner out.
After leisurely dining (and catching up on some reading), I headed for home. Only my car didn’t comply. I put the key in the ignition, got a dashboard full of lights, but that was it. No click, no turnover, no anything…just lights. I went through my limited list of options (make sure the car is in park, put my foot on the break peddle, checked the battery cables) and found that nothing made a difference. She (the car) wasn’t moving.
I thought about my options. I’ve got AAA, but where do I have them take the car? All the repair places would be closed tomorrow. I didn’t want to leave my car in any of their lots when no one would be there. My reliable mechanic is 110 miles away. That’s not a misprint. I use this small shop in southeast Kansas. I use him because he’s reasonable (what one shop charges $1000 for, he usually charges $500 for). But better than that, I’ve NEVER had to bring my car back to him. What he fixes is really fixed. He maintains my car so well, that in 5 years, I’ve not needed a local shop. I knew eventually things would have to change and I’d have to get a local place, after all, my car is now 15 years old. I guess that “eventually” was now here.
I decided to think on it and make a decision on Sunday. I checked with the restaurant on what the staff thought of the relative safety of my car. The feedback was that since I was on a main street, and the police are usually at the mini-mart across the street, that I should be fine.
Now to get home. I was about a mile from home. The weather was good, it wasn’t too late, and I had comfortable shoes on, so I decided to walk home. Besides, it would take longer for a cab to get there than it would take for me to walk it. With 20 minutes to think on the way home, my mind started going through my options on fixing the car. It also started going through whether I’d done the right thing by leaving my car parked on the street. It’s not a bad neighborhood, but it’s not great. I live in a mid-town type of area, and it has its share of crime (that’s why the cops are at the mini-mart all night).
In between going over my options for repair, I argued with myself about the safety of my car. At home, I park it in my garage because that is the safest place. I do not park on the street in my own neighborhood because of how many neighbors cars have been broken into or stolen. The internal arguments went something like this “Why would they want your car? It’s 15 years old” “Yeah, but it’s a cool car (in my eyes…it’s a Dodge Avenger)” “A thief will want something easier to sell” “Somebody already tried to steal it once!”
Just as I was about to make the turn down my street, the absurdity of my argument hit me and I burst out laughing. “How on earth is someone going to steal my car when I can’t even get it started?!”
So, garbage happens. Sometimes we wallow in it, sometimes we start shoveling it out, and sometimes we recycle & reuse it. Saturday night, I did all of the above.
Focus on what you can control instead of what you can’t.
We are control freaks. We’d like to be able to control everything that happens to us and around us. After all…if we were in control…this earth wouldn’t have the problems that it does. Would it?
But as much as we’d like to control things, there are only two things on this planet over which we have control. We can control what we think and what we do. That’s it. That’s all that we can control. Everything else around us can be influenced by what we think or do, but nothing else can be controlled.
When you focus on what you can’t control, you create DRAMA. That’s right; Drama Kings and Queens out there are focused on the past instead of moving on. They are focused on what they can’t control about an event instead of what they can’t control. Everyone likes a good story, but if you’re not teaching or laughing (or trying to create laughter) when you tell a tale, then you are probably still caught up in the drama of it all.
Focusing on what you can and can’t control is the technique that I use over and over and have to remind myself of over and over. I especially needed to call on this technique, just two days before I left for a vacation.
I went to the gym about 5:30 in the evening on a Tuesday. An hour and a half later, I’d completed my workout and headed for home. When I got out to my car, I was pretty frustrated by the driver who’d decided to park next to me. The person had parked so close, that they were literally inches away from my car door. There was no way I was going to get be able to get in through the driver’s side!
So there I was pacing in the parking lot and having an argument with the driver of the other car regarding his/her ability to park. Of course, the argument was one sided as the driver of the other car was absent and likely in the gym having a great workout and oblivious no doubt to how inconvenienced I was.
The fact is, I can’t control how somebody else parks. Having an argument with myself in the parking lot is not going to solve the problem. Even if he/she was there, arguing with him/her would likely not solve the problem. Because really…the only problem was that I needed to get into my car. I’d prefer to use the driver side…but not being able to get in the car is the real problem.
As for getting into my car, I got in through the passenger side and crawled over to the driver’s side. I got settled in my seat and noticed that something wasn’t right. The plastic on the top of the steering column was pushed up. I didn’t recall hitting it with my gym bag when I got out of the car. Then when I went to put the key in the ignition, I noticed that it too didn’t look right. It was pushed way in. I tried to recall whether I’d gotten out of the car in a hurry or had been rough with my key. I’d been in a great easy-going mood all day, so that didn’t even make sense.
I’m amazed at how slowly it dawned on me what might have happened. I started my car and backed it up 5 feet so I could get out of the driver’s side and look at the car. Just then a buddy from the gym, Aaron, yelled over and asked if I was o.k. I said, “I’m not sure…I think someone tried to steal my car.”
Aaron ran over to me and looked at the driver’s door lock and said…”It’s been pushed in. Someone definitely tried to steal your car.”
After dealing with the police, I drove home and packed for my vacation. It wasn’t easy, but I can’t control that someone tried to steal my car. I can control calling my insurance company. I can control whether I lock my car (I do), what I leave on the seats (nothing), and where I park (that’s going to change!). I did everything possible to protect myself. I even have a car alarm. I controlled what I could. I can only control my attitude and my actions. I could let the situation live rent free in my head for weeks, and tell every friend and acquaintance what happened to me (ok…I did tell a few because I could make them laugh as I imitated myself moving and talking in slow motion to demonstrate how slowly it dawned on me that my car was nearly stolen). Or I could go on with my life. The fact is that the car being broken into is now in the past. All the pacing, and talking about it, and thinking about it, is not going to change the fact that my car had been broken into.
Does it stink? Yeah, it stinks. I have a $500 deductible, so I had to spend $500 bucks fixing my car instead of investing in my business or fixing my house. But how you spend your minds time thinking about something is how you determine what kind of day, week, or life you are going to have. I could spend all my time thinking about how much it stinks or I can spend my time thinking “What do I need to learn from this?” or “What will I do differently?” and “When and how will I get the car fixed?”
Understanding the difference between what I can and can’t control has been the single biggest influence on changing my life for the positive. I wasted precious many years focusing on things I couldn’t control, instead of how I’d influence the future. How much of our stress do you think comes from trying to control the uncontrollable? I think most of it. In our minds, we’re trying to find a solution for something that has no solution because we focused on what we can’t control instead of what we can control.
How about you? How much energy do you give the past? How much of your life do you miss out on because your arguing whether your company shouldn’t have changed a procedure or policy, or your co-worker “borrowed” something of yours, or someone cut you off in traffic or “stole” your parking spot at the mall, or someone didn’t keep a promise, or the line in the store is longer than you have time for, or one of your kids dyed his or her hair blue. All of these are things we can’t control. We have to focus on the things we can control. What am I going to do or think in response to this situation that might help influence and cause a different result (even if the difference is just in my sanity)?
What do you need to do differently or think differently that might change your life?
(For ease of reading, I’m going to use “he” as the pronoun for what follows).
Let’s go back to my would-be car thief. Picture the thief sitting in my driver’s seat feverishly trying to hot-wire my car. Suddenly, a Jeep comes flying into the parking space right next to my car. The thief is afraid he’s been caught, so he opens the driver’s door to run. But the driver’s door won’t open past the door jam. He’s stuck. His only option is to crawl over the passenger seat, get out that door and run! I wish I had a video of the whole thing. I bet the would-be thief was scared senseless when he realized he was trapped in the driver’s side of my car. And that person who parked too close to me? I don’t think he inconvenienced me. I think he saved my car from being stolen.
Reduce your GarbageFactor™ with an attitude adjustment. I did it with my first motorcycle ride of the season today. How will you do it?
