WHALE Done!

Read a book called 'WHALE Done!' by Ken Blanchard and three other authors. Blanchard is the co-author of best sellers like 'One Minute Manager, and 'Who Moved my Cheese?'. This book is about the Power of POsitive Relationships.

In my Research Paper titled 'Purpose, Empowerment, Praise (PEP) Model for leadership and motivation I have stressed the need for Praise as a powerful motivator.
Let me quyote from my paper which was presented at Athenaeum the National Symposium conducted by the Centre for Contemporary Management Research attached to Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Trichy:

"Leaders motivate by praising people. Leaders appreciate that team members at all levels work under stress and self-doubt. Even the best performers have a lurking fear that they are somehow going wrong.

Covey makes the following powerful statement about the need for Recognition and understanding that resides in everyone:
“People are very tender, very sensitive inside. I don’t believe age or experience makes much difference. Inside, even within the most toughened and calloused exteriors, are the tender feelings and emotions of the heart.”

To understand the Power of Praise, it is necessary to appreciate the concept of Emotional Bank Account, which Covey postulates.

An emotional bank account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that has been built in a relationship. It is a feeling of safeness you have with another human being. Deposits are made in the bank account through courtesy, kindness honesty and keeping commitments.

Successful leaders use every opportunity to top up their emotional bank account with team members. The best and arguably the most enduring method of doing this would be through honest, impartial praise, which is meant to encourage and motivate the team member.

This the concept behind WHALE Done!

Whale Done! Is a small yet powerful book that reinforces the need for Praise and “the need to catch people doing things right in order to develop productive home and work environments”.

The book tries to apply the animal-training techniques used by the trainers of killer whales in Shamu Stadium, Sea World, Orlando to management.

The more attention you pay to a behavior, the more it will be repeated. We’ve learned from the killer whales that when we don’t pay a lot of attention to what they do wrong, but instead give lots of attention to what they do right, they do the right thing more often.

If you don’t want to encourage poor behavior, don’t spend a lot of time on it.

While praise would make large deposits, criticism or punishment, however justified, would deplete the balance quickly and make the account overdrawn. In fact most team conflict situations stem from such indiscriminate and unnecessary withdrawals.

A good leader appreciates that team members need to be corrected and disciplined. She also accepts that criticism and threat of punishment would only aggravate the situation especially in view of the stringent regulations and statutory prescriptions. Therefore she chooses the PEP model and tries to locate at least three positive things that could be said about the team member’s performance. Having said it, she moves on to suggest meaningful and constructive suggestions that are capable of being implemented immediately in the work situation. In situations of extreme deviation from norm, the leader politely yet firmly, delivers the ultimatum. The whole exercise is carried out by questioning specific behaviour through descriptive observations that are based on fact rather than evaluative statements that are based on opinion. Most team conflict situations arise due to exchange of opinions rather than sharing facts about the situation. Once opinions are ignored and the facts are analysed colorlessly, the conflict may not survive.

The PEP Model prescribes Praise as a component because it is the most powerful positive influence that can influence as well as motivate people to perform far beyond their best performance levels.

I found a lot of similarities between PEP and Whale Done!