Why Thinking About Vice Increases Your Chance of Giving In

In a recent Science Daily article - a study by researchers from Duke, USC, and UPenn explored for the first time how questioning can affect our behavior when we have mixed feelings about an issue. The study, forthcoming in the June issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, found that asking people questions, like how many times they expect to give in to a temptation they know they should resist, increases how many times they will actually give in to it.

A number of experiments were run including college students illustrating how questions that seemed innocent enough, actually encouraged people to lower their guard to the extent that they were actually giving in to the vice.
Despite very real negative repercussions, respondents to a question about their future class attendance engaged in the negative behavior (missing class) at a significantly greater rate than those not asked to predict their behaviour.

While the results were especially pronounced for those with low self control. Its implications only serve to strengthen why those of us in leadership and management have all the more reason to lean on the Lord and be rooted firmly in the Word so as to avoid the numerous vices that pervade our lives and societies.

However on a positive note - two moderators were discovered which can prevent intention questions from exacerbating indulgences in vices -

1. Having people explicitly consider strategies for how they might avoid the behavior.
2. Having people create a self-reward for sticking with their stated usage patterns.

5 Leadership Lessons: Leadership and Motivation

1. A wise leader will involve the team in decision-making as far aspossible, for the more that people share in decisions that affect theirworking life the more they are motivated to carry them out.

2. 50/50 Principle:Fifty per cent of our motivation comes from within us and 50 per centfrom without us—from our environment, especially the people around us.(These proportions may vary from person to person.) We are more like open systems than closed boxes.

3. Nobody inspires you more than the person who speaks to the greatness within you.

4. A Framework for Motivation:

1. Be motivated yourself. You can’t light a fire with a dead match.
2. Select people who are highly motivated. Build yourteam not from those who talk enthusiastically but from those who showeagerness for the business and steady commitment in their actions.
3. Treat each person as an individual. Theories andprinciples apply to the generality of people. You will never know howthey apply, even if they apply, to any given individuals unless youobserve them and talk to them. A good shepherd knows his sheep by name.
4. Set realistic and challenging targets. Your skill asa leader is to set and agree to goals, objectives or targets that bothachieve the task and develop the team and its individual members.
5. Remember that progress motivates. If you as a leadercan show your team, and to each individual member, that progress isbeing made, that it itself will feed the determination to pressforwards on the path of success.
6. Create a motivating environment. Leaders are thereto build teamwork, and that is a creative activity. All leaders in anorganization should work together to ensure that it is an interesting,stimulating and challenging place of work.
7. Provide fair rewards. The perception of unfairrewards does have a de-motivating effect on most people. Financial andother rewards should match he relative value of contribution, accordingto the market assessment for any particular kind of work.
8. Give recognition. A good leader should be swift toshow recognition to all members of the team or organization, howeverindirect their contribution is to the overall task.

5. Work as a form of service requiring skill, work that calls forcreativity in all its rich variety, work that fosters a deepcomradeship with our co-workers, is almost by definition work thatmotivates us to give our best. Or, putting it differently, when, as Kahil Gibran says, “Work is the expression of love, then motivation will never be our problem."Perhaps the real challenge of leadership today is to locate, releaseand channel the power of love that flows from deep inner springs withinus all.These five lessons are from Leadership and Motivation by internationally recognized leadership authority John Adair.