Tuesday, May 18, 2010

understanding what motivates...

Excerpt from Seth Godin's blog:

Bad behavior and irrational decisions are almost always caused by fear. If you want to change the behavior, address the fear. And yet we don't.

Instead, we impose an embargo or throw someone in prison. We put a letter in the permanent file or put the employee on a performance improvement plan. We walk away from a prospect or blame a lack of sales on our advertising.

"What are you afraid of?" is not just a great line for a movie trailer. It's a shortcut in understanding what motivates.

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How true this is... sometimes, it just takes us a question to understand someone. It may not just be our employees or clients. It may be our parents, our siblings, our children, our loved ones. How many times have we really sat down and understand the fear that goes through our family members' mind? We go through life with such haste and speed that many a times, we forgot to take time to slow down.

I was watching this drama series on Channel 8 last evening and the was a really touching scene.

The words of the soul of a man who died in a car accident. He said to his daughter "If I knew I was going to die, I would not be working so hard. I will be spending all of my time with you." The unfortunate thing is that his daughter could not hear his words.

Let's slow down in our pace. Take your family for a walk in the gardens. Take a deep breathe and celebrate that you are alive.

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