Tag: cat

Parenting and Setting Incentives (2-19-25)

Last week was about parenting, cleaning the house, and being flexible.  This week is about parenting and creating incentives.

We already have 2 cats in our house, but my son Cameron (11) really wants his own cat.  My wife and I ultimately agreed that he could get one for his 12th birthday.  Cam, ever the negotiator, talked to his to uncover what he could do to get it sooner and said he was willing to do anything to make this happen.  My wife and I saw this as an opportunity to provide an incentive for Cam to do the right thing to earn the cat sooner.

Before setting the incentive, the first thing my wife and I did was talk about our overarching goal for Cam, which is for him to grow up to be a kind and compassionate self-sufficient human.  From there, we got VERY SPECIFIC about what behaviors he could work on building now that would lead to this.  Based on our understanding of our son, we settled on three things.  First, we wanted him to get better at doing his chores without being asked or reminded, because this would help him learn how to take care of himself and his future house.  Second, we wanted to help him get better at stepping outside of his comfort zone, which in this case includes trying new foods which is really hard for him.  Third, we wanted him to continue to develop the ability to advocate for himself in situations, whether that is clearly expressing a boundary or just speaking up for himself.  With these things in mind, I developed a point system and Excel sheet tracker that shows his progress over time.  If he does those three things relatively consistently he will get his cat early.  We talked to Cam about these things, and he’s on board.  We even through in some extra hard bonus things worth a lot of points, and he’s strongly considering doing those things too.

How does this connect with anything?  Often when we think of incentives we think of base pay, bonuses, or some other compensation.  However, in my experience, we don’t do the best job thinking about the behaviors we are trying to drive in a culture or an organization.  Then, since we haven’t truly thought about the behaviors we are trying to drive, we don’t have a way to directly link those behaviors with incentives (compensation, bonuses, verbal praise, Inspire points, etc.).  Without that direct link, it’s difficult to reinforce the behaviors we want to see, which makes it hard to drive behavior change.

The challenge- Do you know what behaviors you are trying to drive?  Do your incentives connect to those behaviors?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Sharing your Reflection (4-1-15)

I don’t meant to brag, but I’m at least a 9.5 on a scale from 1 to 10 when it comes to attractiveness, because of my beard, beautiful hair, and a physique so chiseled people call me David (sculpture reference, what?)  Luckily, I don’t really think of myself that way.  As we’ve been talking about reflecting, it’s also important to take the time to share the way you see yourself with others to make sure that other people see a lion and not a kitten like the photo on the right.

Recently I set up time and talked to someone about how I’m perceived.  We talked about strengths (my beard, which is the only thing we could come up with) and my improvement areas (knowing when to flex my style and pull back a little bit, coming across as brash/obnoxious/silly, etc.)  After I shared I shut my mouth, listened, and only asked questions to better understand her perspective. I learned some important nuggets that day from her.

When it came to my strengths, she agreed with what I shared, but she also talked to me about other things I do well that I just took for granted.  She helped me see how these are unique things I can leverage in the future.  Without her help, I wouldn’t have realized that other people were seeing these things in me and how important those things I are for my current and future success.

When it came to areas of improvement, she told me that she found me annoying when we first worked together because we clashed, there was bad communication, and we were put in a difficult situation.  I almost hugged her.  Yes, you read that right.  I wanted to hug her, because she cared enough about me to be that honest.  By the way, I agree and totally saw how I came across that way.  Anyway, she also told me about something I do that I wasn’t aware of.  Sometimes when I’m working with folks and I have an idea or a question that’s a little different I’ll preface things with, “Weird comment/question for you…”  The people who know me laugh, and chime in with something like, “Big surprise.”  However, she explained that the people who don’t know me could take this as me apologizing for being different.  It gives them an opportunity to hold the uniqueness against me.  Instead of making the joke, I could just go in with, “I’m looking at this from a different perspective.  Here’s my thought…”  I walked away from that conversation after learning a few more things about myself and reaffirming that there is another person who cares enough about me to be really honest.  You can imagine how much more I think of her now.

Anyway, since I’ve shared a bit of my reflection consider this an open invitation.  If you ever have feedback for me you think I should know, send it my way.  On the flip side, if you ever want to share your reflection with someone and gather feedback, I’ll be happy to do that too.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry