4 steps to Managing People firmly and fairly

I highlighted on the title to focus on developing people.  That way, I will attract and keep the audience interested.  Some people will consider this applicable only to workplaces and those with direct reports but the tips are applicable to anyone or anywhere.  Whether at home or in an organization, or a team or just one person, if there are set goals and you want to achieve results, the pointers apply.

Now let’s do it, you might want to try using the words motivating people or empowering people, makes more sense, right?  Here are the steps:

1. Clearly tell the task; what you expect them to do.
2. Give them a reason to do it - “whys’” and make them want to do it - “rewards”
3. Make the job doable; provide tools and resources.
4. Give Feedback - positive or corrective to encourage and omit recurring mistakes

My guinea pigs for all the concepts that I’m learning and application are my kids.  Like organizations, we also have OGSM and one of them is Feed Your Body.  That means, they need to eat the right kind of food to get the right nutrition to be stronger, healthier and live longer.  Feed body with value and not just any food to fill them up.  To illustrate the pointers, I need to tell the kids what to eat and the reasons why they need to eat veggies and fruits aside from meat and eat less sweet food.  We have a weekly checklist on who finishes all the tasks assigned to them including finishing all the food in the lunch box and at the end of the week, we give them “rewards”. Because they are big boys now, money is our reward.  It could be saving for something big like a game add-on or something else. Visual tools really help.  We have a Poster of the Canada Food Guide in the kitchen so they will be reminded on how many servings of these nutritious food they are expected to finish each day. We also have recently bought different containers to use for their daily servings. Lito and I are now starting to use the Bentology containers to get the right portions.

It’s always hard to implement at first but we need to be consistent so we will achieve our goals.  I ask the kids what they like and don’t like about the food (of course, they will always say they don’t like) but asking for feedback helps.  We made a list of all the healthy food that they like and I’ll try to repeat what I know will mean empty lunchboxes from school.

Be creative. If we fail the first time, we try again and get better at it. I just want to mention that I found out about cauliflower rice and made the kids eat the fried rice without knowing it’s not rice. Research and find more ways to get the person understand more so that he will change the mindset and do it.  Once you let him experience the rewards, he will do it on his own. Do not give up on encouraging.  Good luck and I hope we achieve our goals in no time.