Are we humans really all that different from dogs in regards to behavior management? Great question and I’m afraid that I know the answer. Give a dog a bone and he will learn a new trick after just a few repetitions.
Lucy, my Great Dane, will sit and give me a paw as soon as she sees a dog bone. Her behavior is consistent, reliable and she performs without verbal command. If only our human friends were that compliant in regards to basic client interactions.
The key difference between instinctual behavior such as that of a dog, humans have a complex brain with short and long-term memory. How does this impact us? We express emotions through experiences in the moment similar to a dog however we also carry with us memories of past experiences albeit a few minutes, hours or days ago.
My dog is just as happy to see me at the end of the day as she is after not seeing me in two weeks. I can punish her for bad behavior however she will still sit and give me a paw as soon as she sees that dog bone.
Our human friends are different and therefore need to be treated differently. As a positude leader, we have made a pledge to get to know our team members, to give genuine love and to learn about their intrinsic drivers.
With this information in hand, we need to set out and do what we do with our dogs, we model the behavior we seek. We provide guidance, encouragement, and identify incentives that speak to the individual. We lead through context not control. We explain to our team members the “WHY” behind the behaviors we seek and the consequences for non-compliance.
To be effective customer service agents, we need to get it right 100% of the time. There’s little room for error in a hyper competitive environment. As positudeleaders, we need to recognize that we can’t just send a memo or a video clip to develop new behaviors, we actually need to show, model, practice, refine and repeat them many times until new habits have been hardwired into their new behaviors.
Have fun with your journey to embed new behaviors, we all learn better in positudeenvironment.
-W