Vitamins or Aspirin?

Dan and Chip Heath, authors of the book Made to Stick, made an observation that many businesses make the mistake of trying to sell "vitamins" rather than "aspirins". According to their premise, while it is true that someone may develop chronic headaches due to a poor diet, until you stop the pain (with the aspirin) you aren't likely to move that person on toward any lifestyle changes. It's hard to concentrate when you are in pain.

This same premise holds true for your employees in relation to motivation and improved performance. As leaders and coaches, we have a tendency to try to "rally the troops" through motivational meetings and pep talks. To our surprise and disappointment, they seldom if ever achieve any lasting change. A deeper investigation into the situation might prove that we are trying to "feed" our head-achy employees vitamins when aspirins are needed; we're trying to motivate them rather than find out what is causing the poor performance in the first place. Instead of holding pep rallies we need to be holding clinics.

Assuming you have the right employees "on the bus", motivation will not be a problem; the right people don't need to be tightly managed or fired- up. They are self-motivated by the inner desire to produce the best results and to be a part of creating something great.  

A supervisor's responsibilities then,  in relation to employee performance, lie in making sure that the right people are in place and impediments to excellence are minimized or eliminated. 

Take some time this week to do a health checkup in your practice.