The Pet Nanny

You see, kids who don't get their way, who learn to hit, manipulate, scream and throw things, grow up and go to work. By the time they're adults, they've replaced their aberrant behaviors, like spitting, with more socially acceptable ones like sarcastic zingers and verbal tirades. They're the liars, the saboteurs, the bullies, and the road-blockers we meet up with at work. And I've met my share.

I learned in twenty years of managing there's one key that can change everything. Figure out what you're rewarding. It doesn't matter if you're five or thirty-five, whatever gets rewarded gets done. But, it's not as easy as it sounds. And don't confuse rewards only with something positive. If a co-worker gets you irritated enough to yell at him, he may feel rewarded because he's "gotten to you."

I've watched a few episodes of Nanny 911 and with the chaos, out of control children and seemingly irreparable behavior, it strikes me as a precursor to Workplace 911. No, not a new reality TV show, but everyday workplace problems.

But here's the thing. Just as those parents are challenged by the Nanny to identify and correct what they're doing to encourage and reward their children's behavior, we need to challenge ourselves to do the same at work. If you want to be winning at working, you need to uncover what you're doing to encourage and reward behaviors that you don't like. You need to recognize which hot buttons hook you into unproductive patterning at work and which, like those parents desperate to contain their children's behavior, reduce your results.