Jason Ewart is a Sydney-based transformation writer and speaker who obliterated obesity & demolished debt. 

Today I would like to throw a third and final way we can approach our uniqueness into the mix.  I’m sure there are many other ideas so please share them with us via the comments or directly.  I hope you continue to see more opportunities for your teams, families and clients.  Thank you for your feedback.

I was recently asked to bring my 2 cents worth to a discussion regarding reward & recognition. An interesting point raised was different values placed on possible rewards, often motivated by demographic or our uniqueness.

For example, a young lady who is a few months out from getting married & moving out of home for the first time stated that she is motivated by shopping mall vouchers so she can set up home.

An older guy with school age kids may be motivated by paid time off so he can have the rare but valued experience of being the school taxi driver or even attending a mid day school event.

I think there is worth for our teams & families to explore this aspect of our wiring ie. incentives & motivations.

I value quality time together.  For my upcoming trip, I am keen on sitting in cafes & restaurants with particular people. Sure, I will see some sights along the way but for me, that’s bonus!

I have a friend who isn’t motivated by lengthy time together but gets “pumped up” by encouraging words.

What can we be intentional about today regarding reward, recognition, motivation & incentive?

Could it be affirmation, time together, or even giving something material/tangible?

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Jason Ewart is a Sydney-based transformation writer and speaker who obliterated obesity & demolished debt.  

Previously we took a look at the DISC assessment

This gave us a framework to help us understand how ourselves and others are “wired”, and also to assist us in improving personal & work relationships.

After all, what is the cost for not improving working and personal relationships?

Today, we consider another framework that I have experienced value with, particularly in the arena of facilitating training.

It is known as VAKOG learning styles

It stands for Visual – Auditory – Kinesthetic – Olfactory – Gustatory.

Due to being “wired” differently, people learn in a variety of ways. Sometimes it is a combination of the above.

For example, I am a Visual/Kinesthetic learner.

Whiteboards, powerpoints and video work very well for me.

Notetaking helps me engage as I view a presentation and also get “hands on” by drawing diagrams, capturing quotes and writing questions inspired by the presenter.

Some people are able to learn effectively using a “lecture theatre” model. Others flourish in an “apprenticeship” environment, working alongside the “master”, getting their hands dirty.

I was able to tap into gustatory style during a presentation on meditating for an audience of young people. Equipped with my wife’s amazing cooking, I served up meditation or “chewing over” an idea from this angle. Using other resources, I also attempted to engage other learning styles at the same event.

Clients and team members are unique. Your tribe may be united by a product or service but a presentation of features and benefits or processes and systems may need to be delivered in a variety of ways.

What is the cost to your business for not discovering relevant learning styles?

Shark Attacks Predicted To Decline With The Economic Crisis

The newscaster said shark attacks are directly related to the economy, because in order to have a shark attack two conditions apply:

1. People Have To Be In The Water
2. Sharks Have To Be Where People Are

Then he proceeded to explain that as the economy declines less people go to the beach (People In The Water), because they don’t have the money.  He followed that up with a stupid line that basically disproved his theory, “But surfers are not deterred by the economy, and are out in the water everyday, regardless of the economy, so they stand to have a much greater risk for shark attacks!”

Shock Attack!

Stories like the above are ways the television and radio news teams sucker you in to listen to the entire newscast by giving you a teaser headline, “Economists Predict Decline In Shark Attacks In 2009! The complete story after these commercials.”  They just baited you with a shocker.

First, why would an economist be predicting shark attacks?

Second, why are shark attacks declining?

Shocking headlines tend to grab your attention and pull you in.  You are going along on your merry way and you hear something that does not make complete sense to you. You have to know more.  They baited you.  You listen and they tease you until you are fully hooked, you listen all the way through the story until the stupid anticlimactic conclusion and you leave ticked off that you wasted your time.  But they got you.

Tweeting A Big Juicy Worm!

Social media is like that, you can keep people engaged with golden nuggets that pull people in.  You can ask open ended questions that require people to reply to you. Tell funny stories that can only be completed on your blog.

These are ways you can bait people into your sphere of influence.  Using humor, love and good information.  Seducing your audience like a fisherman uses a lure or a worm to tantalize a big bass from under the log in the lake.  He may look at it suspiciously for a few minutes, but if you don’t scare him off, he’ll bite.

Ride It Like You Stole It

As you know Lance Armstrong had a one of a kind bike stolen during one of his races this week.  The guys who make his bikes didn’t waste a second getting another bike to him.  They inscribed a great motivating quote on it that you just have to read:

Lance uses twitter as a way to stay in touch with the thousands of fans he has all over the world, and he receives an insane amount of motivation from those people who follow him!  But he makes sure that he keeps them fed with good content, he will send out videos, blog posts and pictures like the one above that inspire.

I don’t think Lance has a strategy in his use of twitter.  Instead, I believe he is genuinely interested in his fans and he allows them the chance to look into his life 140 characters at a time.  When he needs to communicate more than that, he has his images, blogs and videos.  His communication with twitter acts as a distribution center as it directs people to his more detailed information.

Fishing With Headlines

Your tweets should be the bait for the bigger story.  Like Lance, you should be giving a glimpse into your life without revealing everything in a tweet.  You should be saying to yourself as you write a status update, “take a peek, but if you want more, come to my blog, or my flickr page, etc.”  Each tweet is the headline of the newspaper, and the reader can decide if it is interesting enough to follow to the website.

You can really be sneaky and see if anyone is paying attention.  Start a story, and don’t give anyone a place to go to find out more.  If you have done it right, you will get a lot of @replies asking you questions about what you started.  Mark Joyner calls this the Zeigarnik Effect, where people have to have completeness in their lives.

On television, you see Monk always completing sequences, or putting a book back on the bookshelf to complete a series.  Same as puzzles, they are so addicting, because they are incomplete.  If you only give readers a couple of hints, it will drive them nuts until they get the complete story.

If you don’t want a riot, you really shouldn’t wait to complete your story until your next blog post…