Great leaders truly understand and apply the wisdom of this principle to empower their teams.
I discovered this principle originally when reading Dale Carnegie’s classic book, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’.
The first place that we come unstuck in trying to get others to do tasks that they don’t enjoy is by trying to make the task itself seem enjoyable. The truth is that the majority of everyday tasks are simply not that sexy. So even if you gain compliance and the task gets achieved today, you will need to go through the same process tomorrow or come up with a new way of describing the task to make it appealing.
The key here is to discover a motivation within the person responsible for the task that resonates with them. Something that connects with an internal driver that generates genuine enthusiasm.
I’ll share two examples of how I have done this in my own life, firstly with my oldest son and secondly with myself.
Some years ago I recall watching my 14 year old son undertake his weekly chore of washing my car. This was a significant ‘first-world’ problem for Josh. To say that he hated this task is an understatement. And needless to say, his disdain for the task was reflected in the absence of any form of quality in the finished product.
At the end of one of these particularly painful sessions I sat Josh down and had the following conversation…
Me: You don’t like doing this job do you mate?
Josh: No, it sucks.
Me: You know mate, it takes you about an hour to do this job with a really bad attitude, which is an hour of your life that you hate each week. How long do you think it would take if you had a good attitude?
Josh: I dunno
Me: It would take about an hour mate, but at least it would be an hour that you enjoyed. Tell me something, would you wash it differently if it was yours?
Josh: Hell yeah!
Me: (chuckling) Well, thank you for your honesty mate. So okay, let’s think about it for a second. Why don’t you pretend from now on that it is your car and let’s see how that works.
Josh: Alright
The following week when I walked out to see the finished job that Josh had done I was confronted with a young man, beaming from ear-to-ear standing in front of a vehicle that you could swear had been cleaned by a professional. Still beaming, his eyes sparkling he said, “I pretended it was mine!”
The enjoyment for Josh and quality of the job continued from then on however, from time-to-time I would speak with him about further motivation for doing the job that he could relate to, for example, taking personal pride in a job knowing that it was a reflection on him. I earned the right to speak into his life about the character building aspects because I first aroused an eager want in him that he could relate to.
The following example is how I aroused an eager want in myself to do, what I considered to be, an unappealing task.
In my mid-thirties I had a desire to deepen the understanding of my personal faith and as a result I attended Bible College for a year. As part of our attendance at the college students were required to give an hour of their time each week as an act of service. The tasks to be completed included: vacuuming the 2,000 seat auditorium; gardening or; cleaning the toilets.
As my thumbs are anything but green I immediately volunteered for vacuuming the auditorium (which, by the way, meant that you got to use this really cool back pack vacuum cleaner).
Cleaning the toilets had no appeal to me whatsoever and I failed to see initially, how I could ever arouse in myself an eager want to ever do this task. However, upon reflection I realised that no one else enjoyed the task either and by me doing this unappealing task I would be saving my fellow students from having to do it. So I aroused in myself an eager want to do it and received an additional benefit which was the gratitude of my fellow students.
There are always a multitude of logical reasons for completing a task however, if you truly want a great job done and to minimise the need for monitoring ongoing performance, then first, arouse in the other person and eager want.