Miracle management can change your life

We are all familiar with the concept:

• You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
• Positive reinforcement is a stronger motivator than negative reinforcement.
• Praise works better than criticism.
• Catch people doing something right.

Each statement, some so common that they are cliches, has been proven and re-proven - by scientific experiment and observation - to be true.

Intellectually, we know this, our parents knew it, and so did their parents. Even our children have been taught this is true. Yet we do not live as if we believed it.

We construct a juvenile and adult criminal justice system that punishes, secondary schools that give detentions freely (leaving a book in a classroom once earned my daughter a 10-minute detention), parents who routinely ground or spank their children and organizational "performance management" systems that clearly spell out the steps to getting fired (it's called the "disciplinary process") but no equivalent process for getting promoted. As a society, we have failed repeatedly to act on our most fundamental and widely held beliefs.

The disconnect between what we believe and what we do occurs whenever we feel attacked. If the flies bite, we want to attack back and make them as miserable as we are. They don't deserve honey! We want to "get even" with the 17-year-old who steals our car, we want to make him pay for his actions. And so we turn our backs on the intellectual knowledge that honey, positive reinforcement, praise and catching someone doing something right (i.e., kindness and love) would be far more effective in the long run.

And we perpetuate exactly the kind of environment that created the criminal or problem employees in the first place: hostile, fearful and attacking. Hostile, attacking behavior engenders hostile attacking behavior, over and over again.

The cycle can be broken by informed judges who reduce sentences (as in the British nanny case), by wise individuals who refuse to feel attacked (such as the Amish family in Ohio who visited and forgave the young man in jail who had driven drunk into their buggy, killing four of their children) and by managers who see their chance to work miracles - literally- by seeing the good in each and every worker and each and every situation.

Managers who see the best in us and bring out the best in us are often the catalysts for miraculous transformations. So be one of those managers and work a miracle for your employees. The healing will be as much yours as theirs.

Cowan-Gascoigne is founder and president of The Leadership Co., a Cleveland consulting firm. She was formerly an executive at the Cleveland Clinic and a consultant with McKinsey & Co.

This article was originally printed in the Working Women column in the Business section of The Plain Dealer on Sunday, December 21, 1997.

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