Whale Done! 5

Today, we will continue to learn with Wes Kingsley in Ken Blanchard's book entitled Whale Done! It carries the subtitle "The Power of Positive Relationships." The message and the "to do" items meld nicely with our journey to culture excellence in safety, quality, ethics, production, in fact, with all we do.

Last time, our friend Wes Kingsley, along with a large room full of people, was vigorously taking notes as the Consultant explained about the four kinds of consequences in response to a specific behavior - No Response; Negative Response; Redirection; and Positive Response. The presentation continues ...

Consultant: "Catching people doing things wrong is easy. All you have to do is wait for them to foul up. Then you can look smart by pointing out their mistakes. I call that the GOTcha Response. Nothing to it. In fact, many bosses, as we've already suggested, are 'seagull' managers. They leave their people alone until they do something wrong. Then they swoop in, make a lot of noise, and dump on everybody. It's the old leave-alone-zap approach."  

 

There were so many heads nodding in agreement in the room that it looked like a "bobble-head" testing site. Was your head nodding, too? Maybe, just a little bit?

 

Consultant: "Catching people doing things right is what I've come to call - if you'll pardon the pun - the WHALE DONE Response. That response is much harder because it takes patience and self-control. Especially if you've been ignoring what people do right and have been using lots of GOTchas, you must learn to observe what they are doing in a whole new way. You may even have to deliberately look past the undesirable behaviors that used to grab all your attention. In other words, you have to change what you are looking for. Your search for something done well may require greater effort, but it has far greater payoffs in generating the kind of behavior you want from your people at work and from your kids at home."

 

A new slide appears on the screen at the front of the room reviewing the two responses the Consultant had named.

Consultant: "If you grew up being GOTcha'd a lot, maybe you've tended to perpetuate it with others. But if your goal as a manger is performance improvement, it's vitally important you start using the WHALE DONE Response. I think you can begin to see that a lot of us often do things exactly backwards. We focus our attention on poor performance rather than on good performance. In the process, we reinforce the very behavior we don't want!"

 

Another slide appears on the screen.

 



Consultant: "Attention is like sunshine to humans. What we give our attention to, grows. What we ignore, withers... Think about this. When do you generally pay attention to people? It's when they're doing things wrong, isn't it? And when do you pay little attention to them? When everything's okay. Wrong! Right then, when things are going well, we lose a great motivational opportunity. We go brain-dead, become inactive, and don't pay attention or communicate. But if you were to systematically give people positive, specific feedback after they did something right, do you think you would get more of that behavior, or less of it?"

 

The audience responds with a robust, "MORE."

 

Consultant: "Of course you would. That's why we need to wake up and do and say something positive and encouraging when people are exceeding expectations, or when they've corrected errors they've made ... When you accentuate the positive, you'll begin to pay attention to what you do or say after people perform. I guarantee their performance will improve, and so will your relationships. Just remember, you're always reinforcing something - even when you're doing nothing ... The more WHALE DONEs you do, the better."



So, have we learned all there is to the WHALE DONE Response? Does the Consultant have additional tips for us to catch people doing right? Find out next time!

Donald G Rosenbarger
Senior Vice President
Delta Companies Inc

Whale Done! 4

Today, we will continue to learn with Wes Kingsley in Ken Blanchard's book entitled Whale Done! It carries the subtitle "The Power of Positive Relationships." The message and the "to do" items meld nicely with our journey to culture excellence in safety, quality, ethics, production, in fact, with all we do.

Last time, Wes and hundreds of other people were attending a seminar to learn how to be better motivators and how to help their co-workers and their families achieve their goals. The Consultant was just about to share the four types of Consequences demonstrated by people after a Behavior is observed.

A new slide appears on the overhead screen in front of the large room.

Consultant: "The most popular, of course, is the first, No Response. People are so accustomed to being ignored, they think of it as a normal condition of work. The response people really pay attention to is the Negative. Most people are managed by a leave-alone-zap approach. They never hear anything from their boss until they screw up. The No Response is followed by a Negative response, which can come in the form of an angry look, verbal criticism, or even some kind of penalty."

The Consultant shares a few stories about the killer whales at SeaWorld regarding the first three responses. As you can imagine, the consequences of choosing the wrong response can be dire when working with these large animals. She goes into further explanation on the third response - Redirection.

Consultant: "Redirection is the most effective way to address undesirable behavior ... the trainers don't pay any attention to whales' poor behavior. Instead, they quickly redirect their attention to another task and then observe their performance closely so they can catch them doing something right."

 

After sharing this insight into working with the whales, the Consultant applies this method to working with people.

 

Consultant: "Now, how does Redirection work with people? First, let me tell you I think that Redirection is the best way to turn countless low-morale situations around. You will find this response will work in 99% of the cases where you might be tempted you use a Negative Response on a person. It's a very powerful response because it gets the person back on track, and at the same time it maintains respect and trust by not calling attention to the off-course behavior in a negative way."

 

The Consultant flashed a new slide on the screen at the front of the room, which further explained the Redirection Response.

 

 

Consultant: "The fourth reaction people can get to their performance is a Positive Response. The trainers at SeaWorld might give the whales a bucket of fish, rub their bellies, or give them toys or playtime..."

 

Well, we certainly don't suggest you give your employees or co-workers a bucket of fish or even a belly rub. However, you might give them recognition for a job well done. (Be sure to utilize the Recognition Traits from our recent START session: timely, relevant, confirmed, specific, and sincere.) You can also provide a learning opportunity or perhaps even a promotion.

 

Consultant: "When a good performance is followed by something positive, naturally people want to continue that behavior. The intention of Redirection is to up a Positive Response ... it's important to emphasize here not to wait for exactly right behavior before you respond positively. Otherwise, you might wait forever."

 

Another new slide appears on the screen.

 

The Consultant explains that when the trainers at SeaWorld first begin training a new whale, the whale already knows how to jump. But he knows nothing about jumping over ropes or anything else for that matter. So the trainers start with a rope hanging underneath the water. The rope is high enough off the bottom of the tank to allow the whale the choice of swimming underneath it. If the whale swims underneath the rope, then the trainers don't pay any attention - No Response. However, every time the whale swims over the rope, they pay attention to him - Positive Response - they feed him.

 

Consultant: "The point here is that progress - doing something better - is constantly being noticed, acknowledged, and rewarded. We need to do the same thing with people - catch them doing things better, if not exactly right, and praise progress. That way, you set them up for success and build from there."

 

Our friend, Wes, has certainly taken a whale of a lot of notes (pun intended) during the Consultant's presentation. Next time, we will learn how to put all this together into the Whale Done Response.

 

Donald G Rosenbarger
Senior Vice President
Delta Companies Inc

Whale Done! 3

Today, we will continue to learn with Wes Kingsley in Ken Blanchard's book entitled Whale Done! It carries the subtitle "The Power of Positive Relationships." The message and the "to do" items meld nicely with our journey to culture excellence in safety, quality, ethics, production, in fact, with all we do.

Last time, the Trainer had put Wes in contact with the Consultant. Wes is attending a seminar with the Consultant as the main speaker.

Consultant to the audience which has just taken their seats for the seminar: "How many of you have people reporting to you, either at work or at home? I bet a lot of you don't think of yourselves as being managers at home. So you're all managing people in several parts of your life. Today I want to talk with you about motivating others. That's your job as leaders, you know."

 

The Consultant tells the crowd that there is a simple and profound truth right under their noses that will absolutely change their approach to dealing with people and the results of those interactions.

 

Consultant: "It's all about what you focus on. What we need as managers and team leaders and parents is a way to focus on what is bright and noble and wonderful in the people we work with .. I'm convinced that to motivate people and create a world-class organization or department, you have to know how to manage people's energy..."

 

The Consultant explains to the eagerly-listening crowd about her experiences at SeaWorld and, in particular, with the killer whales and their trainers.

 

Consultant: "Now, you might be wondering, 'What in the world does the training of killer whales have to do with motivating my people at work or my kids at home?' The answer is - everything. The very methods they use to train these marvelous animals work just as well, if not better, with people. Why? Because we can talk to people ..."

 

A slide appears on a large screen behind the Consultant.

 

Consultant: "Let's start with the A, the Activator. What we mean by an Activator is something that stimulates the behavior or performance that you want ... With people, an Activator can be a set of instructions, a training experience - or even a boss yelling at them. The most common Activators are goals ... All good performance starts with clear goals. If managers don't sit down with their people and develop smart, workable goals that are clear on both sides, their people are left without any idea of what they're expected to do or what good performance looks like. If your people don't know what they're being asked to do, what you do as a manager doesn't matter .. So the A in the ABC - whatever triggers the performance - is important..."

 

A is the trigger, the starter, the Activator. Got it!

 

Consultant: "After you motivate the performance you want by setting clean goals, you have to observe the behavior that follows. That's what B stands for ... Observing the behavior that occurs after initial activation is a step that if often missed by managers - even when they get the performance they want. Once goals are set and the necessary training is over, they disappear. When that happens, they don't have a prayer of taking advantage of the third and most important step in managing performance: the C for Consequence - what happens after you get the behavior you were looking for."

 

B is what we get, the performance based on the trigger, the Behavior. Got it!

 

The Consultant asks the audience what usually happens when we do something right? The audience quickly shouts bank: "Nothing happens. Nobody says anything."  Nobody notices or comments until - when? The audience answers in unison: "When things go wrong."

 

A new slide appears on the screen.

 

Consultant: "Does everybody notice where the spotlight is? That's to indicate that of the three steps, A, B, or C, C has by far the greatest impact on overall performance. Yet, as we all just recognized, the usual response we get to performing well is that we're left alone. Actually, there are three other kids of response you can make."

 

C is what happens when we get what we want, our response to the performance, the Consequence. Got it!

 

Next time, we, along with Wes, will learn the other three responses and, hopefully, how to deal with the negatives associated with each type of response.

 

Donald G Rosenbarger
Senior Vice President
Delta Companies Inc