Where's Your Pain?

- By Jeanne Doheny (about the author)

On a recent visit to the doctor for back pain I got a lecture on how to lift properly. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I know how to lift properly - use your legs, not your back. I've seen the videos, the demonstrations, and the graphics and I know the technique. And yet, like many others, I did it wrong, one time, and the consequences were very painful and expensive. Toddlers learn not to touch a hot surface because of the pain of a burn, children learn that when you put a baseball through the living room window, the results can be painful; teenagers "feel the pain" of inattentive driving and a resulting accident. Women learn that it can be painful to interrupt viewing of a Sunday afternoon football game and men learn that it can be painful to be too critical of a woman's hair, attire, or cooking.

There is pain associated with each of these actions and we learn quickly (some more quickly than others). We become trained to act in a certain manner in order to avoid unpleasant reactions.

Think about your business. Are you training your staff and employees by inflicting pain? Are you getting the desired results? Really?

If employees are doing things a certain way to avoid pain, they are being trained,
		but we have to ask ourselves if this is the best training approach for the employee or the business. Consider if an employee works out of fear of doing something wrong because of what he/she may experience as a consequence of their actions, whether it be a verbal or written reprimand or docked pay. Instead of focusing on doing what is right, this employee may be preoccupied by the fear of doing something wrong and their overall performance and quality may suffer. They may perform the monitored task correctly (no pain),
but may be so focused on one thing that mistakes are made elsewhere because they were not trained properly or effectively.

If you piecemeal training - focusing on one task at a time - can you ever get all of the training done and implemented to achieve improved overall performance from your employees?

In upcoming issues, we will look at additional ways of training to help make the process more effective, lasting, and "inviting". We will look at rewarding desired performance.

Training - keep it on track...