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Treat people as they would like to be treated - Motivating others

A Foolproof Tool for Motivating Your Team (and Yourself)

Ten years ago, I was managing a team of talented marketers at Yahoo! when something unexpected happened. In a one-on-one meeting, a woman on my team said to me, “I wanted you to know that if I ever do a really good job, just pay me more money. I don’t care about recognition or awards and I’m not motivated by praise. If I do well, just give me a bonus or pay me more.”

I stuttered through a response while feeling a bit taken aback by her comments. They seemed, well, a little crass.

But then, as I thought about it more overnight, I realized something: if this team member hadn’t told me what motivated her, I’d likely never know. What’s worse, I might try to reward her for good work in a way that would be motivating for me but not at all for her, leaving her frustrated and less likely to perform well in the future. It would be a lose-lose situation.

In fact, I thought, if I wanted her to be happy and productive in her job, the most helpful tools I could have in order to ensure her happiness were the details of what motivated her. This is true in other relationships, too. It is often referred to as the “platinum” rule: instead of using the “golden” rule of treating other people as you would like to be treated, treat them as they would like to be treated.

(As a side note, this practice is also useful outside of work. Here’s one real example from my own life: I personally love to be doted on when I’m sick, while my husband generally likes to be left alone. For the first few years of our relationship, he ignored me when I was sick, and I fussed over him to no end. Both of us were upset, until we realized we were making faulty assumptions about what the other person wanted based on our own preferences. Now that we’ve figured this out, things work much better!)

So, based on this illuminating conversation at the office, I decided that the best way to keep people happy at work was to start directly asking all the people on my teams what motivated them. To do so effectively, I created a tool: The Motivational Pie Chart. (Yes, it’s a pie chart, not real pie, so apologies to those who thought this would be an article about motivating your team with pie. Though, to be honest, that certainly works sometimes too....)

Using the tool is easy. You just follow these three steps:

1. Write down categories for everything that motivates you at work: recognition, money, learning new things, etc. You can write as many or as few things as you want and there are no pre-set categories. Anything that matters to you can go on your list.
2. Give each category a percentage weighting in order of its importance to you. The total weightings should add up to 100%, thus giving you a comprehensive pie chart of the things that motivate you.
3. Use a “red, yellow, green” color coding system to rate how satisfied you currently are with each of the categories on the list. If you are very satisfied with your compensation, give it a green. If you are completely dissatisfied with how challenged you feel in your job, give that a red, and so on.

If you are using the tool as a manager, the next step is to have an open conversation with each person on your team to talk about ways you can work together to “get them to green” on all of their categories. If you are using the tool for yourself, it can help you think about steps to take to make yourself happier at work, including thoughts about whether you are in the right role or at the right company. The reason the tool is foolproof is because it starts with asking each individual what matters and then helping each person find ways to do more of what matters.

Since that original conversation, I’ve used this tool with nearly a thousand people at four companies, and I’ve learned two important things:

1. People are really different.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but vastly different things motivate different people. Every time I do this exercise, I encounter something new. I’ve heard everything from people being passionate about hobbies (rock climbing, singing, etc.) that require them to have flexible work hours, to people saying they are motivated by external recognition and wanting to be on the cover of a magazine. I would never have known about these specific motivators for people if I hadn’t invited them to share. Good managers understand that the individuals on their teams are just that: individuals, with different interests and needs.

2. People are more similar than you’d think.

Despite all those differences, I’ve seen common patterns emerge that point at a few key motivational factors for most people.

• They want “worthwhile work,” so they can know they’re doing something important and deserving of their time and energy.
• They want to understand how their personal contribution is important to the goals of the organization.
• They want to work with a team of people they admire and care about.
• They want to learn new things and feel challenged by their jobs.

Are those common patterns surprising? They were for me at first. Perhaps partly because of that initial wake-up conversation I had at Yahoo!, I thought classic motivators like title and compensation would come up more, but for most people, they seem to make up a much smaller portion of the motivational pie.

The exception, of course, is that when people feel they are being paid significantly less than they are worth, they will often cite money as their top motivator. It's analogous to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: once people feel their basic needs are being met financially, and that they are paid fairly for their capabilities, then they quickly move on to focusing on motivators like meaning, collegiality and learning. Note that the pie chart can and does change over time. That is to be expected – just as our careers change, so do our motivations.

This tool can be incredibly useful, both for productive conversations between managers and their direct reports and at the company level to extract patterns of what matters across large numbers of your staff. At Change.org, we’ve taken these patterns of common motivators and built them into our company culture. To connect people to worthwhile work, we host an all-team call once a week where everyone in the company joins to share and learn about the incredible impact our 40 million users are making every day around the world. To help with building connections with colleagues and learning new things, we are starting a program to encourage staff members to shadow someone from another team for the day to build stronger relationships while picking up new skills. And we’re taking learning a step further, giving each employee access to free language training. (With staff in 18 countries, it’s also an essential team-building initiative!)

How could your company use the motivational pie chart to improve how it serves its employees? How could you use it personally or as a manager? Share your plan in the comments – and if you do give the chart a shot, let me know afterward what motivates you and your teams!

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130721155935-407452-a-foolproof-tool-for-motivating-your-team-and-yourself?trk=mta-lnk

Published paper July 16th, 2013

A Step-by-Step Guide to Stop Procrastinating

How many times each day do you try to work yourself up to tackle some undesirable task? If you’re like me – several. Nothing is more exhausting than the task that is never started, so I’ve come up with some tricks to use on myself:

1. Put yourself in jail. If I feel pressure to jump in and finish something in a rush, and therefore can’t bear to start, sometimes I put myself in jail. If you’re in jail, you have all the time in the world. You have no reason to hurry, no reason to cut corners or to try to do too many things at once. You can slow down, concentrate. You can take the time to get every single detail right.

2. Ask for help. This is one of my most useful Secrets of Adulthood. Why is this so hard? I have no idea. But whenever I have trouble getting started because I don’t know exactly what to do, and I ask for help, I’m amazed at how much it…helps.

3. Remember: most decisions don’t require extensive research. I often get paralyzed by my inability to make a decision, but by reminding myself that often, one choice just isn’t that much different from another choice, I can get started. Also, I try to identify a knowledgeable person, and just follow whatever that person does.

4. Take a baby step. If you feel yourself dismayed at the prospect of the chain of awful tasks that you have to accomplish, just take one step today. Tomorrow, take the next step. The forward motion is encouraging, and before long, you’ll probably find yourself speeding toward completion. In the same vein…

5. Suffer for 15 minutes. You can do anything for fifteen minutes, and fifteen minutes, day after day, adds up surprisingly fast. That’s how I finally dug myself out of my crushing (if virtual) load of digital photos. Fifteen minutes at a time.

6. Do it first thing in the morning. The night before, vow to yourself to do the dreaded task. Get everything ready — any phone numbers of information you need, files assembled, everything ready to go. And the next day, at the first possible moment – as soon as you walk into work, or when the office opens, or whenever – just do it. Don’t allow yourself to reflect or procrastinate. This is particularly true of exercise. If you think you’ll be tempted to skip, try to work out in the morning.

7. Protect yourself from interruption. How often have you finally steeled yourself to start some difficult project, only to be interrupted the minute you get going? This makes a hard task much harder. Carve out some time to work. Shut the door.

8. Remember, work can be one of the most pernicious forms of procrastination. Don’t kid yourself.

Note: Pay attention to the amount of time you spend working on tasks you dislike. No one enjoys getting invasive medical tests or preparing tax returns, but if you feel like your life consists of nothing but going from one dreaded chore to the next, you might be better off figuring out a way to avoid some of those tasks altogether.

On the other hand, novelty and challenge, as uncomfortable as they can be, do bring happiness. The chore that feels onerous today may give you a huge boost of satisfaction tomorrow, when it’s behind you. Keep that in mind, too.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130703112641-6526187-8-tips-to-stop-procrastinating

Seminar presentation at University of Karachi, Department of Education

Story writing time : Human and Wisdom

Our 'Fear of Missing Out' is Disconnecting Us

I pose the question are we so busy staying connected that we have disconnected? Some months ago I urged my readers to take the 21 day challenge to not use a smart phone in the presence of others. Some thought it a great idea – others thought it crazy. I can assure you that my teenagers looked at me as if I had gone mad.

I have been on a family holiday this week – in the most idyllic location just south of Port Douglas in far North Queensland. The house is right on a beach – and we have seen dolphins playing in the water right in front of the house. The sun sparkles and dances on the water – the palm trees are laden with coconuts. I have read two books in the hammock overlooking the beach.

There is limited mobile connection – but we do have wifi. Our teenagers are now in the final months of their high school studies – we deliberately chose a holiday that would allow them to disconnect and do home work in a quiet – ‘luxurious’ place. I have watched our teenagers this week never allow their smart phone to be more than a few meters from their hand... My daughter attempting to focus on her physics and chemistry is constantly interrupted with a snapchat from friends – often many ‘conversations’ going on at the same time. I urge her to set aside her phone so that she can concentrate; she looks at me as if I have asked her to cut off her arm.

She admitted that she doesn’t know how to turn off her phone – and that she ‘would miss out’ if she turned it off.

One of the teenagers wants to go to a concert with his mates the night of a family wedding, he thinks he can do both – even though there is two hours travel time between them. “But I have spent a week with you” he implored. “I have not seen my friends in a WHOLE week!” Yet he was constantly present with them via the phone.

Endlessly we are presented with images of what other people are doing in all forms of social media... we are bombarded every moment with what other people are eating, drinking, experiencing – not just people we know, but ‘celebrity’ gossip too. Everyone seems to be having so much more fun.... yet the art to happiness is being connected and present.

Recently I read an article with some new research from Deakin University. (I like the fact that as you get older you are likely to be happier) called the ‘Golden Triangle of Happiness’. Simply put it found that you are likely to be happy in you have these three things:

1. Someone who loves us
2. A household income that provides the necessities
3. Connected to the community

Life is not perfect, it is not a constant party – without sad or bad times it is hard to appreciated good times. 

Our society is changing quickly. The world is shrinking; the amount of information is endless. Yet I am left wondering if I’m the dinosaur from a past era not keeping up with the times? Am I the old fashioned one urging people to ‘smell the roses’, ‘enjoy the journey’ ‘discover and see what is around you’?

What I do know is that depression is on the rise in western society.

These are the thoughts I am sharing with my teenagers?

1. When making a choice about where you spend your time, ask ‘who will remember in a year from now?’ Your family is with you for a lifetime – friends come and go over the years.
2. Is the grass always greener? Is it possible to simply be where you are – be present, curious and enjoy it for what it is?
3. To give is to get – and the greatest gift you can give is your time, listening and presence. When you do this you will feel as sense of comfort and satisfaction.
4. More, more, more does not give you happiness. Comparing yourself to your friends and peers often leads to a great sense of insecurity and dissatisfaction.

Instead of living life based on a the fear of missing out... Perhaps live with respect, responsibility and resilience... and see if you move your own Personal Happiness Index.

Let me know how you go. Are you going to put that smart phone away in the presence of others?

The Conversation Prism has represented the number of businesses that have grown because they are tapping into “the Fear of Missing Out”... no wonder I am feeling a little overwhelmed.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130704021054-1291685-our-fear-of-missing-out-is-disconnecting-us?trk=tod-home-art-medium_1

RJ Research based Textbooks on Art aesthetic and languages/ICT

RJ Research based Textbooks in Language/ Art & Aesthetics/ ICT

RJ Research Project based Text books on ICT

Profile link at Mendeley

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Yasmeen Jumani Book Jan 2013

New arrival by Yasmeen Jumani January 2013

Empowering students' voice through innovative pedagogy

Listen, reflect, apply & learn by YASMEEN JUMANI

Listen, reflect, apply & learn

By Yasmeen Jumani

MENTAL unavailability of students in the classroom, when important discussions, activities and interactions are at its height during a project work can be a source of great displeasure for the teachers. However, few students partake in discussions and put forward their ideas and thoughts hence their physical presence in the classroom can be quantified very easily.

But this greatly depends on the mode of teaching — whether it is child-centred or teacher-centred approach. No doubt, the child-centred approach focuses on the involvement of children through an exchange of ideas during the teaching-learning process, whereas the teacher-centred approach focuses on the teacher’s behaviour towards his or her students.

There is a Chinese proverb, “I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.” Experiential learning is that process of learning which invites the learners to partake and decide what they wish to learn. Until the student plans out what is it that has to be discovered, elaborated, identified, experimented upon, etc., active learning cannot take place. The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language describes learning as “the act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skill”. The Webster definition describes learning as “the cognitive process of acquiring skill or knowledge: “the child’s acquisition of language” however, there could be a variety of responses about “simply doing” or “the activity or participating in the experience.”

In the words of John Dewey, “Experiential learning takes place when a person involved in an activity looks back and evaluates it, determines what was useful or important to remember, and uses this information to perform another activity.”

Dewey in his book The School and Social Progress (1907) advocates the gap between the two. ‘School’, known as a learning institution, merely emphasises on the cognition rather than application. He thinks that discipline is acquired through experience and it comes from within. Today’s schooling is not providing ample opportunities to engage into constructing their own discipline, rather they are promoting behavioural responses.

He proposes ‘active inquiry learning’, a methodology for the children to develop knowledge, skills and attitude that further enable them to seek holistic development. Thus experiential learning infuses in them an ability to be self-developed and self-disciplined.

Socrates was known for using an oral questioning procedure and dialectical reasoning in his teaching. He would ask a question, receive an answer, and then ask another question to compel the student to think about the defects, limitations, or contradictions in the first answer. This method used by Socrates became the foundation of educational techniques, designed to motivate the learner to think carefully, to test himself, and to improve his knowledge.

According to Robert fisher (1990), “Thinking involves critical and creative aspects of the mind, both the use of reason and the generation of ideas. Thinking is involved in a mental activity that helps to formulate or solve a problem to make a decision or seek understanding.” Thus learning is seen as the creation of knowledge through the transformation of experience.

On the other hand, Dewey’s experiential learning is indeed an advance form of learning where learners are involved in a particular process to reach a point by creating experiences where they could contrast their own knowledge. During the whole process the quest for seeking new meaning would bring on a curiosity to explore and identify the skill to present knowledge.

The pedagogical approach enables learners to partake in the process embodied in constructivism (Jonassen, Peok and Wilson; 1999). On the other hand, constructivism rests on the notion that instead of absorbing or passively receiving knowledge that is out there, learners should gain thorough experiential learning — personal involvement, self-initiated deep thinking where they can actively construct knowledge by integrating new information and experiences into what was taught.

The pedagogy that is based on the constructivist theory such as class discussion, group presentation, project work is supportive in stimulating students’ creativity and fostering their learning.

My own teaching approach was based on constructivism where teaching strategies such as think-pair-share and group presentations, project work, role-plays, and skit presentation were commonly used.

Experiential learning opens new windows in teaching. Despite the fact that it is a time-consuming and effort-requiring teaching approach, it also creates the capacity in facilitators to strengthen the classroom environment by improving classroom attendance and the participation level with the ensuring of harmony between the facilitators and the learners.

According to Nayak and Rao (2002), “Effective learning in a classroom is negated if there is no enabling of professional caring and a dedicated and peaceful environment as learning is associated with a change in behaviour as a result of experience and practice.”

Bligh (1971) reports that “students are more attentive, display better comprehension, produce more work, and are more favourable to the teaching method when they work cooperatively in groups rather than compete as individuals.”

Researchers identify the following aspects that encourage students to become more self-motivated:

• Give frequent, early and positive feedback that supports students’ beliefs that they can do well.

• Ensure opportunities for students’ success by assigning tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult.

• Help students find personal meaning and value in their work.

• Create an atmosphere that is open, positive, and conducive to learning.

• Help students feel that they are valued members of a learning community.

Thus experiential learning sets up learning situations where the participants are involved in learning through listening, reflecting and applying by raising questions that are then answered with more questions that make one think further about the topic at hand.

The writer is part of the teaching faculty in the education department of a private institution

IOE Alumni Post January 2013