Why Does She Complain?
Question: Years ago I was talking with friends at dinner about a co-worker
who constantly complained. Why did she do it?
Answer: The answer is at the heart of Michael Leboeuf's management book,
The Greatest Management Principle in the World. And that principle, in short,
is this: what gets rewarded, gets done.
This applies to countless situations. The one we care about is the constant complainer.
The reason my co-worker complained so often was that she was getting rewarded for it.
She got attention from the boss. (Not always positive attention, but we crave it so
badly that we'll often take anything we can get.)
More than attention, she also got results. She was the squeaky wheel, and subsequently
got the grease--in the form of more money and more power.
As a president or manager, remember this rule: what gets rewarded, gets done. Often we
don't realize what we're rewarding with our time, attention, and energy. It could be
giving incentive to the wrong people and for the wrong reasons.
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