A Little Tip on Changing People's Behavior

The task of management is to change behaviors. If one of your employees has been missing a production goal, then you may want to change their behavior so they reach the goal.

Many times when dealing with people, what you focus on can make a big difference. One tip you can use right away when encouraging a person to reach a goal is knowing what to focus on when discussing their progress toward that goal.

Let's say it is early in the month and your employee has finished 10 of 50 tasks for their monthly goal. At this time you have two options:

• Talk about the 80% they have left to do

• Talk to them about the 20% they have completed

In situations like this one where they are early in their progress, talking about how they have already completed 20% is going to be much more effective than discussing the 80% remaining.

Interestingly, when the month (or project) has moved further along, everything flips. When the person has completed 35 of 50 tasks, then talking about the 30% remaining is much more effective than talking about the 70% completed.

While this might seem like a trivial change in the way you are talking about the project and moving forward experience and research consistently shows that this approach results in more motivated individuals and reaching the goal more often.

#Tip #Motivation