Punishment is not an effective motivation for employees to make changes and this method will lower moral and be destructive for your company. By Gary Shotton #000155

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Punishment Mindset

Hello, my name is Gary Shotton. And we’re sitting here inside my machine shop, I’m in the finished goods area. It’s a quiet place so these recordings are not interrupted with a lot of clanging and sound. So I hope you enjoy these and I hope they’re beneficial to you. We’re trying to present truth that’s globally, truth that would apply in any culture, in any language once it’s translated would be applicable. And we can learn from people that went before us maybe even a hundred years before us or even a certain things that we can get a glimpse into history books like the Bible.

A thousands of years ago, we can see examples of documented literature of how these same exact principles worked back in the old days. And then we believe that they will work in the years to come so we’re not trying to teach things that are just going to be surface today. We’re going to talk about “punishment mindset” And not having a punishment mindset in your life or in your businesses.

Now I won’t be too personal when I tell about a family member, I’ll just leave it at that and this family member it wasn’t my immediate family it was a distant family.  just happened that the father was a military trained a military background and I hate this, that it happened but basically he was running his home with a ” punishment mindset”.

You do what I say or you’re going to have to be grounded for three days, you do what I say you’re going to take your cell phone away from you, what I say and you’re going to not going to be able to go to that party you do what I say or you can’t do this or here’s the conch went the consequences well almost consistently as these children got to be age 16 and 17.

They got out of there as fast as they could, because they didn’t respond to that kind of leadership. the punishment because you didn’t do something right, if you’re not careful you can approach your businesses that way you can create a long list of conditions and the appropriate punishment that goes with it the number of days off without pay, the number of penalties that you’re going to have you accumulate, too many latest you’re late now the fourth time so now you’ve got to take a day off because you’ve been late. III know that some people might be doing that but I’m personally not in favor of that, I think you’ve lost the point if you come down to that lowest level of leadership by only getting things done. Because you have a punishment a punitive mind to everything you’re doing, now I’m not saying just throw rules away, and everybody just do is what they want. No that would be foolish I’m sitting here in a safe part of our property.

But if I was in another part of this business. We have a policy of rule of safety glasses, we have a policy and a rule of hard toed shoes. But you know if I’m the one that has to enforce that if I’m the one that has to bring it to someone’s attention we’ve lost the whole battle. and if we have to have somebody that’s consistently pushing that edge we kind of need to ask that person why do I have to tease keep reminding you because we don’t have three-strikes-you’re-out we don’t do it that way, but you still have to wear your safety glasses.

So, we try to encourage from a more leadership standpoint. I would say a little bit more of a reward manner that the reward of this is that, we’re going to have a good income from this company and I can give pay raises and pay increases and they know that I’m willing to do that. and so we’re going to have a reward because, we can have lunch every once in a while it’s not all written down all documented you’ve got like a report card in our case, we try to maintain an atmosphere of encouragement a reward to our current business producers. The way we do things we’ve gone as far as we have what’s called an ISO, and that means we subscribe to a worldwide standard that includes safety and includes everything we’re doing.

and in that we’ve actually pretty well done away with a policy manual that’s why would we do away with something written like that well, because frankly it’s set over on the shelf and nobody knew what was in it, and nobody was reading it anyway, and nobody was referring to it and if we get all the way to the end and we finally had something bad enough. That we have to turn to page 12 I articled paragraph 14 line torture and say yes I told you, you’re going to get fired if you do that. It’s way too late you’ve lost the point it’s not going to be a value at that point so you’re going to have to come to your own way of management. but we don’t go around with punishments now we do go around and hold standards and maybe a good example of this is that, we have and might have heard on other teachings that we have a drug policy so we didn’t put in our manual we didn’t put in writing any place that we catch you with drugs in your system while we are at work and we’re going to do one, two ,three no we put in our manual that we’re going to take appropriate action to change basically your mindset we’re going to make it possible for you as the offender to make changes and that could  include them paying for a drug test . It could be them making sure that they do certain things like go through a drug rehabilitation course.  I’m not hooked on drugs well then stop using them you have to go through this course it’s four hours it isn’t administered by us and you have to pay for it so we’re going to reward you for doing what we have you to do or frankly that you’ve made the choice you’re not going to work here unless not you’re not going to take that step now in that particular one we believe we’re actually helping people because we don’t think that drugs is going to be beneficial for anybody’s life but I don’t have any say what happens at home.

I have say what happens on this property and I do maintain and maintain that, that’s very important. Guess what if you don’t maintain a controlled environment you will also lose it on the other end your good people will leave, your good people won’t want to work here. we have a demand for our workers and we have more and more good workers better workers we have the words out that we’re a good place to work we have a good culture we pay fair we are sensitive to people’s needs and we’re not always punishing everyone we’re making sure that we have a good culture and environment so people wanting to come to work force and the people that like working for us have been here 15 years, 18 years, 10 years and 7 years. Almost everybody that have been that our core people have been here many years because we set a standard. that’s not always walking over the sole shoulders trying to be the policeman to catch them we have a company that I was aware of put in cameras and they’re putting the cameras right over the top of them and so that there can record every single move that they’re making while they’re standing at their machine. they pick their nose, they’re going to have it under recording they turn this way they’re going to head under the recording you know, I just said that’s I don’t want to work in that environment and I can’t imagine anybody working for us that would want to work in that environment so what value is that if I’m not if I was going to record every single move somebody’s working that didn’t make sense to me well we’re going to have some clear and objectives. And sure that happens but it’s through a culture of giving encouragement. Yes guidelines yes there’s some penalties yes somebody walks over the line basically you’re fired when you don’t agree to changing your habits and your abilities. And there is a place that we fire people of course but it’s not regular well I hope this has been helpful I hope these ideas of maintaining an encouraging atmosphere rather than a punishment atmosphere is helpful to you, thank you.