This charismatic individual is what is called a 'motivational speaker', or in layman's terms a feel good snake oil salesman.
ET makes a lot of noise. He really does, if you look at the video below, you'll have the scene set for you for the rest of this post.
Don't you feel psyched? Don't you feel like you could take on your business' next challenge? Great. We're done here, or we would be, except there's a slight problem. It's all horse manure.
ET is entertaining, as is his purpose, and he does make people feel good about about working in the service industry at a price. Don't sharpen your pitchforks just yet, it's just how he makes a living.
There are many others like him, and we'll talk about the "Motivational Speaker" as an archetype, but in his specific case I'd like to point out a few things:
Getting Pumped, Getting Motivated
Not every employee in a company likes doing their job.
It's a fact of capitalist life that you must exchange a service or good for the ability to procure a credit or tender to later exchange for one of your own choosing.This is the perpetuating kind of system that allows for the continuation of the system so long as the working class continue working for goods or services they can not continually afford. It's insane to believe that a working class drone of an employee has any sort of swelling of pride at the notion of having to obey ridiculous rules at the hands of their employers.
Not all employees work of fiscal incentives
Some employees perform worse if they receive higher pay for their work. This has been studied, especially in sales teams. When the sales team is incentivize for their work, they seldom perform any better than before and more likely trend towards performing worse.
Motivation is a Unique Experience
I was motivated to write an entire assignment, of my own volition and fervor, because I was taken aback by Eric Thomas' video. My parents are motivated to finish work for the week by the prospects of going to the beach. The family dog is motivated to action by the sound of the can opener opening his food.
The employee is not motivated just because someone puts on an atmosphere and a show, and even if they are visibly motivated then and there. The inspiration, however, is not cultivated within making the motivation temporary at best.
Everyone is differently-motivated.
The Costumer is Always Right
False. The costumer is a person, they can be wrong. the trick is to get them to realize it on their own before the urge to tell them overcomes your polite nature.
ET delivered an anecdotal story about going to a franchise at 9:30PM and ordering a shake to have the employee at the store confidently tell him that "we turned off the milkshake machine because we want to leave at 10". What a lackluster employee, right?
Wrong. If this story even ever bothered to happen (see Strawman Fallacy).
The employee was doing what he felt was right by the other employees and the maintenance of the store. He/She turned off the machine so that the rest of her co-workers could promptly leave the store on time, as is their schedule and contract.
They are torn between offering the off-chance costumer a milkshake at the end of the store's opening hours and obligating the contractual limitations to their employers taking into account their paid hours and their responsibilities.
Small Mistakes Cause Great Disasters
On this one, I actually agree with ET. If you have an oversight that causes a major catastrophe, it should have been your responsibility to deal with that oversight making you accountable for the result.Small caveat: You are only accountable, and by extension responsible, for the stemming issues from the oversight IF and ONLY IF it was an expected part of your job and was made immutably clear.
The mistake ET casually tosses out there, is the BP oil crisis.
The BP oil crisis, for those unfamiliar, happened in the summer of 2010. This oil spill has ramifications that, 3 years later (at the time of penning this sentence), the Mississippi River Delta is still unfishable.
He claims that it was the employees fault. Whoever he was, he needed to tighten the nut, or replace the battery, or keep the system up to date, and he's not wrong, but again, only if the responsibilities of the employee were to maintain the equipment up to a level standard. This lands the blame solely on the employee, this is a flawed and unacceptable claim.
If ET had followed up on the report, he would have seen that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean (the companies responsible for the drilling effort) were telling their employees to keep their costs down, in order to keep their profits high, of course. They chose to be negligent of the standards and regulation of safety equipment. What was to be expected of their employees, then?
Conclusion
The point I'm getting at is this, the employee is not some resource with stats or figures attached to him/her. They are a person with pride and a desire to feel important and useful. It stands to reason that if your business practices are generally lacking then your employee ethics will be similarly lacking.
If you want to motivate your employees to be better, to be motivated, be a better company.
Don't hire the motivational speaker, known simply as oxygen thieves .
Well, that video certainly got your dander up :-)
ReplyDeleteThink of the psychology behind motivational speakers. Why do they continue to get gigs? Because some people respond. Certainly, not all people are thusly motivated. But some are.
Most of the people I know want to do a good job at their work. They take pride in their craftsmanship, whether it's designing a circuit board, writing a press release, or fixing my hot water heater that is all cold water atm.
I agree that employees will feel a lot better about their work if their employer believes in and rewards a good work.
You stated, "It's insane to believe that a working class drone of an employee has any sort of swelling of pride at the notion of having to obey ridiculous rules at the hands of their employers." Why do you assume a business's rules are ridiculous? And are you saying everyone but the owner is a working class drone? I've worked at a number of companies; at only one did I feel like a drone...and it was because that's the way the CEO treated all women.
From secondhand experience as well as acquisition of company bylaw materials for the major franchises, I note that the company, especially when it becomes larger than manageable is more apt to prevent legal headaches (read:liability/responsibility) for themselves by controlling the one aspect of the costumer-company interaction they have on payroll.
DeleteThey like to curtail a lot of individualistic thinking or practices, and while that might seem like a logical thing to do, there are odd requests. The "costumer is always" right is more of a headache generator than a savvy practice.
The reason for this is because it usually entails that employees forgo basic intuition and logic, and instead perpetuates a fear/dread the interaction could cost them their job or reflect poorly on them.
There are amazing companies to work for, most of them value other things than the transactional ethics. Instead they focus on the more inwardly appearance their employees have on their company. Example of point would contain one ValveSoftware, most reputable vendor of the digital gaming medium compared to the ill-noted GameStop.
Valve corporation releases a product, by their own timetable, using developers they value, and make their costumer service unneeded by way of digital storefront.
Gamestop is the well known physical establishment that holds no relation to Valve, to clarify. Their store are numerous and scattered throughout the world. They enforce a strict behavioral conduct on employees.
Employees are not to even suggest that the costumer may be wrong, or attempt to insinuate theft when presented with falsified credentials. There even exists the draconian practice of purchasing back used copes of games from costumers exchanging it for store credit. The employee has to inform the costumer that the $60 game they are attempting to trade in, is barely worth $8 in credit. This usually infuriates the costumer trying to maximize his deal with the store, but the rage or frustration is directed towards the employee. Who isn't allowed to talk back, or to level with the costumer. It's very dehumanizing (I had associates work at one tell me they felt this way fairly often) and I can assume it's the same in every retail organization.
So when ET goes with the anecdote he went with about the milkshake employee, it makes me sympathize with the employee and no ET. He got to lecture a punching bag, for free, because the costumer is always right.
Psychology doesn't exist to be used in the manipulation of the working class to give the appearance of pride. Pride is earned by the working class so that it can be kept and cherished, and reflected back into the company.
I leave you with this, only because it reflects my point better than I could.
http://i.imgur.com/1Qnjn.jpg