130 Part II: Winning Friends and Influencing People
Moving Towards/Away From
People invest time, energy, and resources moving towards or away from
something that they find enjoyable or something they want to avoid. They
use their values to judge whether an action is good or bad and whether the
result they get gives them pleasure or pain.Can you remember the last time you started an exercise regime or began a
new diet? Perhaps you were all fired up and eager to start, and consequently
you made terrific progress: your weight began to come down and you felt
so much better because of the exercise. Suddenly, though, you lost your
momentum, the weight stopped going down, or worse still, started creep-
ing up. The visits to the gym became more sporadic. As things started to
go downhill you got all fired up again until.... You were caught in a roller
coaster of being motivated and losing your focus.‘What happened?’ you cry in despair. Chances are that where your health is
concerned you have an away from meta program, which means that you’re
propelled to take action to get away from something, in this case weight or
perhaps lethargy. Figure 8-1 illustrates how someone whose motivation to
health is primarily away from may have their weight loss yo-yo over a period
of time.Proactive reaction to a reactive department
The information technology (IT) department at
a university in south-east England was always
fire-fighting, trying to provide a service for the
bursar’s and registrar’s departments. The two
departments that used the computer systems
had no communication and the IT department
didn’t trust the users enough to train them in
the use of their systems. No documentation
existed for which programs needed to be run
and when. This situation had been in place
for several years and was accepted as the
norm. Guess what preference the staff in the
IT department had? If you guessed reactive,
you’re right. Then a relative newcomer, with
a more proactive bent, came to the depart-
ment and instigated the following three simple
steps:✓ Created and maintained a list of tasks, con-
taining operating instructions and when
they were needed.
✓ Organised regular meetings between the
registrar’s and bursar’s departments.✓ Trained the administrative staff to produce
their own reports.
These changes reduced the considerable
stress that the staff of all three departments
experienced, especially at peak times, and
opened communication channels between the
two departments using the computer systems.
The self-esteem of the administrative staff
really soared as they took some responsibility
for running their own systems.