The Cat Came Back
Our family cat, Motty-the-Cat (as some of you have previously read) is a cat of questionable heritage. He came to us by way of parts unknown. When he arrived he was completely dishevelled, had matted fur, he was rake thin and hissed and spat like a White Island volcano AND yet.
When the Cat came Back
He was so hungry, his wariness of humans was overtaken by the singular desire to eat. He has stayed ever since. He went away for two weeks once and made my Dad’s life miserable. My Dad looked for him every day and was loathe to put his bed away (just in case he came back). Two weeks later, the cat came back. It wasn’t exactly the very next day but gee my Dad had come TH-AAA-T close to putting his cat-bed away in the garage for good.
He was thin and tatty again, it took us a while to get the condition back on him but we did. He, at least had the good sense to show a minor modicum of remorse at having strayed. He stayed closer to home over the next three weeks. He gave up his gypsy ways after he’d visited the vet because he’d been in a cat-scrap. He’d begun to look like Lynley Dodd’s Scarface Claw. Really! We figured we might as well get everything he needed doing done while he was in the vet . He was a ‘stray’ cat so we doubt he’d ever been spayed or vaccinated so the deeds were done.
King of the Castle
Since the death of our beloved Furball Fraser, Motty-the-Cat has become the king of the castle. Yet he still displays the somewhat disturbing behaviour of scrounging around in the compost heap! What tha! The interesting thing, is that he’s not alone in that.
SME business people display similar behaviours from time to time. They get to be the kings or queens of the castle they’ve built after they’ve done the hard yards in the Start Up phase. Some stay in a place of ‘scrounging’ or skimping if you will around the compost of the familiar when they ought to be moving up and along.
Marketing guru Seth Godin says, “when you skimp all the time, you signal that you’re struggling”. I often think that ‘struggling’ begins in the head. It’s an intellectual thing. Perhaps there’s a safety net in behaving in particular ways, it’s familiar. It’s what we know and less threatening to us than moving forward into areas that stretch us and the business.
Praiseworthy Actions
A friend of mine came over from a Non-Profit Organisation to the commercial division of a company I was working in. I couldn’t help noticing that although he was very good at his job he rarely praised his team members who worked fairly hard. When I mentioned my observation, the vibe back was a little cool! Now, I’m not put off easily by a little coolness.
I asked him how his former bosses strengthened morale in a team. He responded they didn’t, it was just expected you got on with your job and that was that. I had a ‘light in the dark’ realisation actually. Praise hadn’t been in his work experience therefore his skimping on giving it to his team was simply a modelling issue. His team, to me, was clearly scrounging around for some morale boasting praise and he skimped on it because he needed to experience it in order to give it.
I practised on him for months, modelling praise. Giving praise where it was due, only when it was due. That way, it wasn’t a false sense of achievement. It was real and relevant. It still took some time but eventually I heard him praise one of his team. That is the power of genuinely directed praise. I think that team member lived off that one comment for months.
Genuine Praise
It’s the way with praise-starved teams and team members. When my friend skimped on genuine praise his team morale was low. The more he genuinely praised great work in and from his team members the more his team excelled. There was a direct correlation.
I’m not quite sure how this all works with Motty-the-Cat and I think I’ll need the more specialised help of my animal whispering friend OR I’ll just have to keep telling him he doesn’t need to scrounge in the compost any more. Whatever the case, I’m hoping it’ll give him paws to think.
