Framing

“A leader… has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and like it.” ~ Harry Truman

Motivate your people. Don’t “make them” do the thing; get them “excited to have the opportunity” to do the thing.

Seriously.

Don’t change who you are. Don’t change what you are trying to accomplish. But use the words that get your people positively engaged. In psychology, it’s called “information framing.” If you tell people “this surgery has a 90% success rate” then they are more likely to consent to the procedure than if you tell them “10% of the people who have this surgery will die.”

Now, some of us have a contrarian nature (including me), and we will do the math on our own to fill in the “other side” of the mental equation. But many people don’t. And even some of those who do still get a strong influence from the emphasized viewpoint.

We don’t “have to do this project.” We “get to do this project.”

It’s not a deception—it’s still a true statement. But word choice matters, and people can be given information that makes the stuff that needs doing more rewarding to do. Give them that boost.

(image source: https://quotations.nimblefoundation.org/2024/04/12/leadership-quotes-blog19/)