The Hindu Business Line : Tired of sticks, try some carrots

CARROTS are valuable Vitamin A sources. The word has its origin in Latin carota, and has been known since ancient times, they say; and it is believed to have originated in Afghanistan and adjacent areas. But can carrot make a big difference in your work? Yes, say Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton in The 24-Carrot Manager, which is `a remarkable story of how a leader can unleash human potential'. A few carrots:

The majority of managers have little hope that anything could coax more ideas, efficiency and productivity out of their staffs. They have given up on trying to help employees gain a better understanding of what is expected of them.

Some of us have even progressed to the advanced stages of recognition deficiency. We're the ones who never have been given real carrots ourselves.

Instead of serving up mass-produced, generic-label carrots to your work group, try this: Put together a chart of all your people and recognise one person in each weekly staff meeting until you have publicly recognised them all. Recognise specific behaviours that are important to your organisation, not `overall greatness'.

You'll be amazed at how easy it is and how nobody feels left out. You'll also find yourself recognising faster — on the spot — for the `right' behaviours. In most cases, you'll also notice your employees recognising each other and vying for more of your recognition.

In the work world, we've all known bosses who've fired out glibly, "Hey, buddy, you're doing a great job," or "I appreciate all you do," or "You sure look busy." Unfortunately, these hollow phrases often leave employees wondering, "Does this guy have any idea what I really do around here?" And, yes, it is important to employees that we know what they are doing.

Check with your HR department to find out when your next employee will receive his or her service award. About a week before, spend a few minutes preparing remarks and asking co-workers to speak. Make this employee's day special, and your investment in time and energy will come back to you tenfold.

Employees attach more value to a reward they find personally meaningful than to a generic gift. In a year 2000 survey, 63 per cent of employees said their loyalty would increase if the employer offered an ongoing incentive program that allowed employees to choose rewards that were personally relevant.

If given a choice, choose the book as a reward.

Will you read this, please?

`Good manners get you good name,' is what your granny should have told you long ago. But Mary Mitchell believes that good manners create good relationships and good relationships create good business.

She is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Business Etiquette and her new book Class Acts is about personal accountability, value of apologising, meeting conduct, celebrating in a multicultural workplace, maintaining humanity in cyberspace, and disagreeing without being disagreeable. A few snatches of good manners:

Good manners are about treating others the way we want to be treated. Is it not rude to think only of oneself? Yet, is that not what happens when corporate officers report inaccurate financial results?

An individual with good manners is responsible for his conduct and the consequences of his behaviour. Individuals with good manners define themselves by their actions; their words merely support their behaviour.

The first step toward effective communication is ensuring that what you say, how you say it, and how you look, send the same message. If even one of these three elements is out of synch, you are sending mixed messages.

If you're afraid to call someone to discuss a sensitive subject and think that firing off a message via e-mail is the easy way out, think again. E-mail is a flawed medium, because the sender often forgets that the e-message is not the last word. You could toss away someone near and dear because of a misunderstanding that is made worse by e-mail exchanges and could have been cleared up with a simple telephone call.

Never, ever correct or criticise your boss in public. No matter the problem, bite your tongue until you can discuss it one on one, with the door closed. Always make your boss the first stop for any significant idea you're hatching. Bosses hate surprises. And there may be important considerations to your great idea to which you are not privy.

As work intertwines more and more with our social lives, the relationship waters we need to navigate can easily become muddied. This means that we need to learn a whole new layer of civility to protect ourselves from inappropriate entanglements — either real or perceived. The less of your personal life you bring to work, the less chance it has to negatively affect your career. A class act doesn't mix romance with work.

A book that you can mix with business.

Lingo stuff

IF YOU always wanted to read Noam Chomsky, a good book to begin with is On Language, which presents in one volume his classic works Language and Responsibility and Reflections on Language. Read on:

Language is used in many different ways. Language can be used to transmit information, but it also serves many other purposes: to establish relations among people, to express or clarify thought, for play, for creative mental activity, to gain understanding, and so on.

There is no reason to accord privileged status to one or the other of these modes.

Anybody who teaches at age fifty what he was teaching at age twenty-five had better find another profession. If in twenty-five years nothing has happened which proves to you that your ideas were wrong, it means that you are not in a living field, or perhaps are part of a religious sect.

Let us define universal grammar (UG) as the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or properties of all human languages not merely by accident but by necessity.

Thus UG can be taken as expressing `the essence of human language'.

I would like to distinguish roughly between two kinds of issues that arise in the study of language and mind: those that appear to be within the reach of approaches and concepts that are moderately well understood — what I will call "problems"; and others that remain as obscure to us today as when they were originally formulated — what I will call "mysteries".

This can add depth to your understanding.

(Books courtesy: Landmark, Chennai. www. landmarkonthenet.com)

Tailpiece

"Should temple be built?"

"Thank god, you didn't complete the question with `by us'."

ReadingRoom@TheHindu.co.in

D. Murali

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