The power of positivity....

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Corporate Executive Retreat at Marineland Dolphin Adventure. This was incorporated with our board retreat for Meeting Planner International North Florida. It is currently my responsibility to find venues and plan all of our luncheons, meetings and board retreats. When I had the opportunity to take the board to Hammock Beach, I knew we had to incorporate Marineland. What I did not know, was that they were going to take it to a whole new level. Not only did we, of course, get to swim with dolphins but we had the amazing opportunity to participant in their corporate retreat program.

What you may not know is Marineland has partnered with co-author Thad Lacinak of "Whale Done!." This book is written with one of the greatest book leaders in management, Ken Blanchard of "One Minute Manager," "Who move my Cheese," and "GUNGHO." Those are some of my favorite books of his that I own. Fun fact, I won the GUNGHO award for the company when I worked at Bluegreen Vacations.

Back to Marineland; this was an incredible opportunity for our board to learn from one of the founders in animal positivity behavioral training. He took over the Killer Whale program at SeaWorld for 22 years and used the power of positive behavior to train these amazing animals to perform the tricks we all love to see and watch. It was interesting to find out that most of these tricks were developed during play time with the mammal and trainer. These animals loved getting the positive reinforcements from their trainers and in return they wanted to listen to the direction they were given.

Wow! Think about that....someone wanting to do something because of positive behavior. We all want to be successful but that can be managed on so many different levels. Is it a raise, bonus, time off, praise. The list can go on but the number one thing an employee wants from their employer is recognition. It is the one thing that is free and so many forget about it. The main reason employees leave their current jobs is because of management. We all know how much it cost to hire a new employee. What if we focused on the positive and maybe we could save a spot from opening.

If we ignore bad behavior (to an extent) and reward positive behavior, will that change the outcome? If you continuously give feedback every time an employee does something right, they are going to want to keep doing things right. This also prevents the uncomfortable confrontation of "what you're doing wrong" conversation. This was the bases of the "Whale Done!" philosophy. I walked away ready to come back and only be positive with my employees. Let me tell you, they love it.

If you like these thoughts, one of the best behavioral books I have read was "Dealing with people you can't stand." This book helps you identify different peoples personalities and how to manage to them. We are all different so why should we be managed the same?

#intheoffice #management