The Challenge Workplace safety has always been a value for global mining leader Newmont Mining Corporation. The company utilizes many proven safety practices such as investigating incidents and taking corrective actions, creating proactive safety standards for management, and providing standard safety and technical training. As a result, the company achieved an enviable Total Recordable Accident Frequency Rate (TRAFR), the industry measurement of safety incidents that occur on the job per number of hours worked. Still, the company continued to experience fatalities and serious injuries and, in early 2010, Newmont’s board of directors requested that the executive leadership team develop a plan to work toward eliminating fatalities and serious injuries in the workplace. This directive led to the creation of a Safety Task Force, which developed six recommendations. First among the recommendations was to focus on Safety Leadership Behaviors. This meant company leaders had to figure out how to change behaviors to ensure that choosing safer behaviors became part of the company’s culture. The Solution Read our case study to learn how Newmont Mining used Influencer Training to identify vital behaviors, improve safety, and get the right results.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of three New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I am the manager of a small intensive care unit. I struggle to get staff to commit to using a tool that would make our patient care rounds more efficient and ensure that we cover all aspects of care. How do I hold sixty-seven crucial accountability discussions? Regards, The Messenger  Dear Messenger, Good question! Most managers, whether they work in healthcare or not, face this challenge. How do you implement process improvements that require new and reliable behaviors? Holding sixty-seven crucial accountability discussions sounds too time consuming and inefficient. I’ll suggest some strategies. Work through a team. You’ll need the support of two groups: formal leaders and informal leaders. The formal leaders include all of the supervisors and managers in the affected area. The informal leaders include the opinion leaders throughout the affected area. Focus a disproportionate amount of your efforts on these two groups of people. Once you’ve gotten their whole-hearted support, ask them to help you bring everyone else on board. Share your path. Don’t just share your final conclusions. Take the formal and informal leaders along the path you took as you learned about the process improvement. Tell the story of your initial doubts, your data collection, your evaluation, and what it was that eventually convinced you. Identify obstacles and objections. Ask the formal and informal leaders to help you identify all of the obstacles and objections the process improvement could face. For example, Lisa, a brilliant nurse manager at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI was working to implement bedside reports—a process that involves patients and their families in shift-change handoffs. This influencer actively collected every concern she could find. Some of her findings included: 1. Overly involved families 2. Verbiage to use in front of patients 3. May not know Plan of Care 4. Addressing patient needs in the moment 5. Cognitive status issues 6. Time management 7. Meal prep interfering with rounds 8. Psychosocial issues 9. Sharing information that might be embarrassing to patient/family 10. Drug-seeking behavior 11. Worry about creating two reports 12. Every patient needing something when you are in the room 13. How to have time to review the Kardex? 14. How to find people to get/give report to? 15. Is this going to take more time? 16. Physician rounds interfering with report 17. What information can I share? 18. Use of phones during report 19. Transfer of patients during report 20. Waking up patients Find solutions. Take people’s concerns seriously. Work with the formal and informal leaders to create convincing answers for each. Lisa asked her team to suggest solutions to real problems. For example, they decided to get phones for technicians so nurses wouldn’t have to leave during bedside reports. Answer objections. Many concerns people have require answers, rather than solutions. They reflect a lack of understanding, rather than a flaw in the improvement process. Lisa asked her team to create two-minute answers to every concern. These answers were usually three to four bullets long. Here is an example: Concern #9. Sharing information that might be embarrassing to patient/family • We will already have permission from the patient. We’ll know what we can share and what we can’t. • We will be the ones who ask family members to leave. • Sometimes, the embarrassment is really ours rather than the patient’s. Make sure all of the formal and informal leaders are confident they can answer these concerns. Ask them to take the lead in answering them. Bring everyone on board. Hold a meeting—or a couple of meetings—to orient and educate everyone who needs to change or support the process improvement. Make sure the formal and informal leaders play important roles in these meetings. Remember, they are the people who will tip the balance. Analyze and adjust. Anticipate and prepare for setbacks. Take extra care to find and quickly solve problems during the first few weeks that people use the new tool. Use the formal and informal leaders as your eyes and ears. They will learn about problems before you will. You won’t be able to anticipate every problem in advance but you can mitigate many issues by including this preparation in your plan. I hope these ideas will help. The basic idea is to involve formal and informal leaders in a systematic way. Use them to first refine the improvement tool, and then to advocate and educate after it has been implemented. This process will be far more effective and efficient than sixty-seven separate conversations. Good Luck, David

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via MP3 Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes On a generosity scale from one to ten—one meaning "painfully cheap" and ten meaning "delightfully generous"—my kids think I’m a one. For years I thought all the "You’re Number One" cards, trophies, and plaques my children gave me on Father’s Day celebrated my best-ness. It turns out it was code. They were mocking my cheapness. In fact, they think my entire generation is cheap. Now, before you Gen Xers, Millennials, and other Post-Boomers join forces with my children in condemning my generation for being inordinately thrifty, take a walk in our slippers. See what life was like growing up as a teenager in the 60s. One look at a typical school day and you might replace your contempt for my generation’s penny-pinching with an appreciation for our financial conservatism. Stranger things have happened. When I was in high school, I would get up every weekday morning and face the same question: Should I pack a lunch? My parents were unwilling to give me money to "throw away on fast food," so if I wanted a noon meal I would have to make my own lunch—and it had to be sandwiches. This would have been fine, were it not for the fact that in order to save money, Mom generally purchased tongue, heart, liver, and other internal organs to be used as lunchmeats. So here was my typical school day. I would peer into the fridge and immediately reject tongue. Whenever I ate tongue, I couldn’t figure out who was tasting whom. Heart and liver were also out of the question because the mere sight of them freaked out my lunch mates. If I went so far as to take a bite of, say, boiled heart on raisin bread, it caused an epidemic of shiver-gags. I don’t even want to talk about the scene a tripe sandwich could cause. Later on as lunchtime rolled around, I’d be famished and, for reasons you now understand, without a sandwich. This presented me with the second question of the day. Should I take the quarter my parents had given me to ride the bus home and use it to purchase fast food? Or should I save my quarter for the bus and avert the hike home? If I sprang for fast food, my quarter would buy either a see-through milkshake or a tiny, pretend hamburger that contained no actual organic materials. Given these options, I typically skipped lunch, but to no advantage. At the end of the school day, I would again face the "eat vs. ride" decision. Only now, a bakery that sat next to the city bus stop made the choice even more difficult. It sold (and this was just plain cruel) twenty-five-cent cream puffs. While waiting for the bus I’d stare longingly through the bakery window at the delectable treats—fiercely gripping my quarter as if it were the key to Donald Trump’s safe deposit box. Eventually I would step out from under the bakery’s awning to see how hard it was raining. If it wasn’t raining too hard, and if the cream puffs looked particularly scrumptious, I would surrender my quarter, wolf down a cream puff, and walk home. Oh yes, one more detail. I didn’t merely walk home. I walked home while lugging a stack of textbooks. I completed this feat (as did all teenage boys in the 60s) by cocking my right arm unnaturally high and tucking my books into my armpit as if to say, "Look at me and my many muscles that can easily hold aloft these heavy books." This ridiculous balancing act was extremely difficult to maintain and made me think twice about walking anywhere. So, if it was raining hard and I had a lot of books to carry, I’d have to be a nitwit to give up my bus fare—which, I’m ashamed to admit I did regularly because I adored cream puffs and possessed not a trace of willpower. But not without consequences. Once I had given into the allure of French pastry, I’d grudgingly hoist my books to their unnaturally high position in my armpit and trudge a mile and a half up the hill to my house. Within a few minutes a city bus would mockingly cruise by while the kids inside pointed and laughed at the self-indulgent sap lugging books up the hill in the rain. All of this took place because I couldn’t stand tasting a sandwich only to have it return the favor. Now, keep in mind, this drama was about a quarter. Two bits. Twenty-five cents. You can only imagine what it took for me to spend a lot of money. I did earn money through various jobs, but every cent of that went to buying clothes. When it came to the frills, I had to skip lunch and walk home—sans the high-octane fuel of French pastry—often for days on end. For instance, during my senior year when I elected to go to the prom, for over six months I hungrily walked home in the rain, lugging my books like a stevedore. And while I did, here’s what I’d be thinking: "Let’s see, my date wants a purple orchid to match her dress—five bucks (or 20 quarters). The prom tickets cost four dollars (16 quarters). Photos are another four. Dinner—please don’t let her order steak!—fifteen bucks (a whopping 60 quarters). Plus there’s the tuxedo and. . ." I hadn’t thought about that prom until one day over thirty years later when my mother produced a piece of paper she had set aside the day after the dance. It was an itemized list I’d made of what I had spent. At the bottom of the list I had calculated the total dollar figure and divided it by the number of hours the date had lasted—revealing that the prom had cost me six dollars an hour. I know, I know. The fact that I calculated how much the prom cost per hour brands me a hopeless cheapskate. Nevertheless, having just walked in my slippers, I hope you now understand my cautious ways. You know that as a young man I rarely had any money or a chance to get any. That is, unless I walked a mile and a half uphill in the rain carrying a stack of books jammed under my armpit. So, dear friends, forgive me my frugality. Show patience as I—and others from my generation—ask the restaurant cashier for change for a quarter and then return to the table to leave an exact 15 percent tip. Smile knowingly when we refuse to turn on the air conditioning, buy discounted label-less cans, and wash and reuse the plasticware that comes with fast food. Take pity on us old codgers who, on occasion, can appear to be a tad cheap. We have our reasons.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Candace Bertotti is a Master Trainer. READ MORE This article was originally published March 3, 2009. Is it ever appropriate to move to silence?   The first question to ask yourself is, "Is this conversation crucial?" If the stakes aren’t high (someone was rude, but you’ll never see them again), emotions aren’t strong (sure you disagree, but you’re not upset or that passionate about it), or there are no opposing opinions (it may be a touchy issue, but you’re all in agreement), then silence may be an appropriate course of action. That said, know that your silence communicates something, and by not speaking up, you inherently give other people the power to determine your meaning rather than stating it clearly yourself. If the conversation is crucial, then what? If you find that your motive for speaking up is not healthy, your negative emotions are controlling you, you lack respect for someone, and/or you don’t feel safe, it may be appropriate to move to silence—but only temporarily while you take a quick step back. Be careful not to use this "pause" as an excuse to sweep the problem under the rug or venture down a road of paralyzing analysis and unending preparation. Taking an hour or two to collect your thoughts, connecting to a healthy motive, finding a way to respect the other person’s dignity, and/or finding a private space to talk can make a big difference. Your opinion that someone else is an idiot is better left unsaid. Starting a dialogue about working better together with that same person in a private, safe space is essential.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, Recently, I have been put in a very difficult situation. My CEO wants me to do something I consider very unethical; he has also instructed me not tell anyone about it. I am very concerned. First of all, I don’t want to do it. Secondly, I don’t want to withhold things from my boss. Also, I feel like I am becoming the "fall guy." If the CEO gets caught, I will be the one blamed and fired. How can I explain to my CEO that I don’t want to be part of this unethical thing without losing my job? Signed, The Fall Guy  Dear Fall Guy, There is no easy answer here. I will not mince words with you. You face risks either way. If you comply, you will compromise your morals, undermine trust with your boss, and expose yourself to sanctions. If you decline, the CEO may feel it is a risk to keep you around. Or he may externalize his guilt through aggressive action against you. If he has crossed the line of innuendo and made overtly unethical demands of you, you must accept these risks and respond accordingly. The world has changed and you must respond to the reality you’re in. First, plan for a worst-case scenario. You feel most powerless when you are least prepared for the worst. Increase your own sense of safety and control by limiting your downside risk. Document everything to ensure you can defend your rights for wrongful termination or progressive aggression should either occur. Talk to a lawyer. Involve HR or others with fiduciary responsibility to protect your rights. You are most vulnerable when you are most alone, so get support. Then, act to create a better scenario. Having taken appropriate steps to reduce your risk, you will feel more empowered to take some risk. If you feel that the CEO is redeemable, consider confronting the issue directly with him. The best way to help someone feel safe when asking them to acknowledge moral lapses is to genuinely appeal to their best self. If your relationship is strong enough, start the conversation by inventorying those things that you admire in the CEO. Then candidly disclose that this recent request is out of character. For example, you might say, "One of the things that has appealed to me about my job is the chance to work for a man I admire. When Anna was ill and you personally paid her out-of-pocket medical costs, I thought, ‘This is a company that cares about people more than profits.’ That is why your request that I inappropriately allocate revenues in our financials has been surprising to me. That is not how I see you." Finally, help him find a way back. Having confronted the issue, don’t leave him alone. Explore the motivations that drove him to act unethically. Help him find a creative and honest way to accomplish the same goals. Often our first moral lapses are bad ways of accomplishing good things. It is only when a lapse becomes a habit that corruption becomes intrinsically appealing. You might say, for example, "We can shift accounting staff to work on aggressively reducing receivables. Would extra liquidity accomplish the same thing?" I honor you for taking a stand. Take it wisely and this agonizing circumstance may bear unanticipated fruit. Warmly, Joseph

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of three New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I have a very hard time getting my children to do their chores. They often volunteer to help people outside of the house but, rarely make extra effort to help out at home. Growing up, my siblings and I saw what needed to be done around the house and just did it. My kids don’t seem to have any motivation to do anything. When asked to do a specific task, the normal response is to do the bare minimum (not always a good job at that) and not an iota more. While I’m sure it’s my fault that they are this way, I don’t know where to start to change things. Help! Sincerely, Last Straw  Dear Last Straw, Thanks for asking a question that is truly universal. I think every parent from every society and era can relate. I’ll offer a few tips on influencing children to take responsibility for tasks around the house. The goal is to build responsibility, not just obedience. One of the challenges we face with teens (and many adults) is that they prize independence and autonomy, but don’t always act responsibly when they have it. As parents we want them to be independent, but only if they are responsible. Household tasks can be a wonderful laboratory for building independence and responsibility. Build an accountability system that doesn’t rely on you. Currently, you are responsible for all aspects of accountability. You tell your children when chores need to be done, evaluate their performance, and administer praise or sanctions. You are their supervisor. Your goal should be to replace yourself by making your children responsible for each of these elements. This will allow them greater independence, while also making them more accountable. Expect this to be a learning process. I think you will discover that your children aren’t as unmotivated as you might think. Sure, they don’t like being interrupted in the middle of an important video game to "clean their room right now!" But the real barrier they face will be ability. Few children have ever been asked to create an accountability system before—and it takes some learning. Ask them to set clear standards. Let’s imagine a few household tasks you might have them do: dishwashing, laundry, and keeping their rooms clean. Ask your children to create a checklist for each task. For example, their steps for doing the laundry might include: collect clothes, sort clothes into darks and lights, wash clothes in separate loads, dry clothes, sort and fold clothes, put clothes away. You should not be the one making this list. Have one child make the list, and then have the other children evaluate it and add to it. Give them as much independence and ownership as possible. Have them establish roles, times, and reminders. You don’t want to be the one who has to remind your children to do their part. Instead, ask them to figure out who will be responsible for which tasks, how that person will remember, and how they will remind each other. You might need to help them come up with ideas. For example, you could create a responsibility bulletin board where assignments can be kept—e.g., Jamie does the laundry checklist on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Make sure their plans include reminders that don’t come from you. For instance, they could set alarms on their phones. Let them set the times for doing their chores—within reason. These bite-sized pieces of autonomy will mean a lot to them. Set up peer evaluations. Don’t accept the disciplinarian role. Instead, have your children evaluate each other’s performance. For example, they can use their checklists to check on each other’s quality. In my experience, they will be as strict or stricter than you’d ever be—and they’ll appreciate the autonomy and independence. Use deliberate practice. Don’t expect your children to be as good at doing household tasks as you are. They are unlikely to be as fast or as effective. For example, there is no reason why it should take them more than fifteen minutes to clean their room (pick up floor, make bed, put things where they belong, vacuum, and dust)—if they stay on top of it every day. Make it a challenge. Have them practice while a brother or sister times them and checks on the quality of their work. Doing a great job in ten minutes should be a source of personal pride for them. Manage the team and the system, not the individual and the exception. Your children won’t always follow this new system, and you’ll have to hold them accountable. However, don’t hold a one-on-one with the individual child who has failed to do their chore. Instead, hold a brief family meeting, and focus on the accountability system. Point out that the system isn’t working well enough, and challenge them to fix it. Maybe they need to build in better reminders or maybe they need to get better at holding each other accountable. Don’t allow them to put you back in the supervisor role. Make them continue to manage themselves. I hope some of these tips will be helpful. Of course, you will have to modify them depending on your children’s ages and your own family situation. Best of Luck, David

To help more of our readers with their crucial conversations, accountability discussions, and behavior change challenges, we introduced the Community Q&A column! Please share your answers to this reader’s question in the comments below. Dear Crucial Skills, Our high school uses a model that requires the student-athlete to lead discussions as issues arise with the coach of their respective sport. We currently have a situation where a student-athlete asks their coach what they can do to improve and get more playing time. The only recommendation the coach has given is: "Keep working hard. It will be fine." What can a student-athlete say to a coach who seems too general in their feedback? Sincerely, Stuck in the Middle

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, A group of my family and friends is flying to a wonderful resort for a family wedding. Everyone usually gets along, but when we travel together, one family member can be the deal breaker! She can be demanding and outspoken. Because I am a retired psychiatric nurse, I am usually called upon to help settle situations with her. I’m happy to help, but this is my holiday too. What can I do so that I can also relax? Sincerely, Needing a Vacation  Dear Needing, Congratulations! You are obviously skilled at resolving interpersonal conflict, dicey situations, and family squabbles. That is a good skill set. Over the years, I’m sure you have been the reason that dinners, barbeques, holidays, and vacations have been salvaged and reasonably successful. So again, great work. Wouldn’t it be great if every family had a designated helper? Or two or three or four? I’m hinting at the solution. The question is, what do you need a vacation from? On the first level, you need a vacation from work, routine, and stress—like we all do. On the next level, you need a vacation from being the designated conflict resolver. The need, I’m thinking, was self-created. When you saw a conflict, I’m imagining that with good intentions, you alone stepped up and then stepped in to resolve the conflict. Or you waited until tempers exploded, gossip overflowed, or family members were packing, and then someone begged you to help. Again, you intervened. Don’t get me wrong, during these many cycles, you helped a lot, but you also sent a message that the people arguing, domineering, bickering, or brawling, weren’t responsible or didn’t need to worry about their actions. The super nurse would always save the day, the trip, or the event. If you’re like me, saving the day can bring some personal gratification. But you and I, and others like us (you know who you are) have created a cycle that is tiring and stressful—a cycle that we now need a vacation from. So with that introduction, I offer a little advice about how to create your own vacation. It begins by thinking about what gaps you need to consider and who you need to talk to. Scenario 1 Who you address: Everyone in the party. Gap: People need to resolve their own conflicts. In the past, you have always stepped in. Strategy: You don’t do anything—before, during, or after. You send a non-verbal message that it’s not your job. The outcome is predictable and not pretty. I don’t suggest this possibility. Scenario 2 Who you address: The demanding and outspoken family member. Gap: We need everyone to behave well, and historically she has been domineering and outspoken. Strategy: Talk to her privately about what would help the wedding go smoothly, and what could cause it not to. Ask her for her help. If she is agreeable, I’d ask if you could help by giving her an agreed upon, but very subtle signal, if she begins to behave in ways that might not help the other guests enjoy the wedding. This strategy is best if you and she have a friendly relationship. If not, I probably wouldn’t attempt it. You should note that the previous scenario is preventative. It helps create clear expectations and comes with agreed-upon, real-time subtle cues. The next scenario is also preventative but takes a very different approach—a coaching approach. Scenario 3 Who you address: Anyone who has had a falling out with the original demanding and outspoken family member. Gap: They need to resolve their own conflicts. In the past, they have let these issues go from bad to worse, or asked you to intervene. Strategy: Meet with them privately and tell them that you have intervened in the past and feel that you need a break. Tell them that they need to resolve the conflicts themselves. They can try to avoid conflict by being patient or avoiding behavior that eggs the other on. Or if there is a conflict, they can work it out themselves. Offer coaching help, but assure them that your time as the designated conflict-resolver is over. If they ask for coaching, share your ideas. I’m sure you have many helpful tips that work. (It might be too self-serving on my part if I suggest you recommend that they buy a copy of some good book on the subject.) In conclusion, I again offer you my congratulations for having the ability to resolve conflicts. It seems you have saved a lot of events from completely unraveling. As a result, you have helped create some dependencies that now need to be reevaluated. I think that the last two possibilities I’ve noted will help you be less central in preserving your family unity. I’m sure you have the skills to do them; to the extent that they work, you will have earned your vacation. Enjoy, Al

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Albert Bandura is the most cited living psychologist and the David Starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University. READ MORE Following a school shooting in Ohio, Joseph Grenny shared his thoughts about the media’s effect on these events. Tragically, we witnessed yet another shooting in Santa Barbara, California this past week. Our mentor and friend, Albert Bandura—one of the greatest living and most influential psychologists of all time—continues the conversation by sharing his thoughts on the topic of violence in schools, based on years of social science research. The ideas and opinions expressed in this article are solely the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of VitalSmarts. The following article was originally published April 4, 2012. Public-school shootings strike fear in the public at large. Such occurrences have three factors that make them especially frightening. The first is unpredictability. There is no forewarning when or where a shooting might occur. This makes every student a potential victim. The second feature is the gravity of the consequences. Shooting sprees leave in their wake many deaths and severely debilitated survivors. Easy access to semiautomatic handguns, magnified in killing power with large magazines, increase the risk and carnage of heavily-armed attacks. The third feature is uncontrollability—a perceived helplessness to protect oneself against such an attack should it occur. Over the years, I have studied the social modeling of unusual modes of violence. Airline hijacking is but one example of the contagion of violent means. Airline hijacking was unheard of in the United States until an airline was hijacked to Havana in 1961. Prior to that incident, Cubans were hijacking planes to Miami. These incidents were followed by a wave of hijackings, both in the United States and abroad, eventually including more than seventy nations. Hijackings were brought under control by an international agreement to suspend commercial flights to countries that permitted safe landings to terrorists. D. B. Cooper temporarily revived a declining phenomenon in the United States as others became inspired by his successful example. He devised a clever extortion technique in which he exchanged passengers for a parachute and a sizeable bundle of money. He then parachuted from the tail of a Boeing 207 to avoid entanglement on the tail or stabilizers. The newscasts provided a lot of details on how to do it. Within a few months there were eighteen hijackings on Boeing 207′s modeled on the parachute-extortion technique. They continued until a mechanical door lock was installed so that the rear exit could only be opened from the outside. Cooper became a folk hero for eluding the FBI, celebrated in song, on t-shirts, and in fan clubs. For reasons given earlier, public-school shootings are especially alarming. The media face a challenge on how to report violent acts without spreading what they are reporting. There are two ways they can minimize the contagion. The coverage should avoid providing details on how to do it. Nor should killings be widely publicized. The Columbine massacre, which received massive coverage, was followed by a series of copycat school killings. Other teenagers were arrested for plotting a school shooting on the anniversary of the Columbine massacre. They had the guns, ammunition, and plans on how to disable the school camera system. They modeled themselves after the two Columbine killers to the point of wearing black trench coats. Once an idea is planted it can be acted upon on some future occasion given sufficient psychosocial instigation to do so. For example, in his ranting video and manifesto, which was publicized by one of the networks, the Virginia Tech killer mentioned the two Columbine killers. In the electronic era, where anyone can post most anything online, mitigating detrimental contagion presents a more daunting challenge. As a society, we need to step up to and find a solution to this challenge. Albert Bandura

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via MP3 Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes "Call on me!" I quietly implored as I used my left arm to hold my right arm high above my desk. Miss McCloud, my first-grade teacher (and the most wonderful woman to ever walk the earth) had just asked the class to identify the color of the flower in her hand. I waved my arm wildly because I was confident in my answer. To be honest, I saw myself as a bit of a color savant. Plus, I really wanted Miss McCloud to admire me for knowing the correct answer so I could bask in the glow of her approving smile. Did I mention she was the most wonderful woman to ever walk the earth? At that time in my academic career, I had been in school long enough to have figured out the three axioms of education: (1) questions have right and wrong answers and it’s good to give the right answer, (2) it’s even more satisfying to give the right answer after someone else has given the wrong answer, and (3) it’s pure bliss to give the right answer after everyone else has given the wrong answer. Then Miss McCloud really piled on the praise. As the years passed, the axioms didn’t change much, but the nature of the questions did. By the time I was in college, the average query was far too complicated to be satisfied with a simple answer. I still raised my hand every chance I got in hopes of gaining attention, but rare was the day when others gave a flat-out wrong answer that I could easily correct in order to earn the professor’s special approval. So I had to learn a new skill. I had to learn how to spot flaws in others’ arguments. Sure, my classmates would offer answers that were mostly correct (or at least correct in principle), but if I applied myself to the task, I could always find a flaw, point it out, and grab the spotlight. When I moved on to grad school, I discovered that finding flaws in what others had to say wasn’t merely a rewarding hobby; it was academia’s prime directive. My classmates and I would sit in our Colosseum-shaped classrooms, listen to each other’s comments, eagerly spot a mistake, and then in gladiator fashion, swoop in and strike down the egregious logical lapse or factual faux pas. We were nit-picky, we were brutal, and we loved it. Later, when I became a team leader, I used my growing talent for detecting mistakes by practicing what is known as "management-by-exception." I wouldn’t say much to my direct reports when they were doing well—that would be disruptive. However, if they took a misstep, I’d speak up immediately so the problem wouldn’t escalate. Raising children was no different. My eyes were drawn to mistakes far more often than they were to success. Nobody walks by two children playing quietly and praises them for playing quietly. It’s inconceivable. If kids are playing quietly, you don’t even see them, let alone praise them. Once when I was working in Brazil, my "spot the error" routine was challenged. Dale Carnegie, in his classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, suggested that in order to be a decent human being, I ought to look feverishly for things done well and then offer up hearty approbation and lavish praise—not just once in a while, but all the time. If this wasn’t radical enough, Carnegie challenged me to praise a total stranger, just to see what it was like. Of course, to follow his advice, I would have to spot something praiseworthy. And if anything should be clear by now it’s that I hadn’t been trained to see "things gone right." For several days I looked for a praiseworthy accomplishment, but to no avail. Then I finally struck gold. I was riding a bus through the streets of a small town near Rio de Janeiro. Inside my head Dale Carnegie was screaming, "Look for something good!" It was really annoying. Suddenly, the young man taking money for the bus fare caught my eye. He had a dreadful job. He sold bus tickets by winding his way through a crowded, speeding bus. People crabbed at him, the driver ridiculed him, chickens pecked him, and then there was the ghastly smell of a crowd of passengers who believed that bathing was for sissies. In spite of all this, the young man was the picture of professionalism. I told him just that. I pointed out how well and quickly he made change. I mentioned that I admired his ability to keep his balance and remain polite and pleasant. And I meant it. Bingo. I had done it. I had followed Carnegie’s admonition about approbation. Now what? First came a pause. The guy was thinking about what I had just said. Finally the young fellow smiled widely and gave me a big hug. Tears were running down his cheeks. The bus employee introduced himself as Carlo Pereira. He explained that he had dropped out of school at age fifteen and worked as a ticket taker to help support his mother. I was the first person who had ever praised him, despite the fact that every single day for three years he had tried to do his best. Carlo then introduced me to everyone on the bus as his "American friend," and from that day forward wouldn’t accept my money if I happened to board his vehicle. Carlo’s devotion only grew. As I was walking down the street one day, he had the driver pull over and pick me up. Then Carlo told the driver to change routes so he could deliver me to the door of my next appointment—which, as you might guess, didn’t go down well with the other passengers. They were about to be transported blocks away from where they were originally hoping to go and were now threatening to cause Carlo bodily harm. Carlo didn’t care. I was the only customer he was concerned about. I was the only person who had ever complimented him. Naturally, I was stunned by Carlo’s reaction to the heartfelt but simple praise I had expressed. But I later I made sense of Carlo’s response. I learned that in annual corporate surveys, the number-one complaint of employees is always the same. Their leaders don’t recognize them for doing a good job. Since most bosses go through the spot-the-error educational system I went through and observe their own leaders routinely model management-by-exception, they also focus on problems, not success. In fact, generous praise isn’t even a small part of most leaders’ influence repertoire. Employees hate this lopsided treatment. They do their best work and look around to see if anyone notices, but nobody does. It turns out everyone is Carlo. Everyone is waiting for a heartfelt compliment. And now for the punch line. You can be the stranger on the bus. Maybe you already are. But if you aren’t, or aren’t as often as you’d like to be, now is your chance. Supplement your talent for spotting problems with the ability to see things going right. Then break years of tradition and say something. Remember, be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise. Not because you want a free ride for the rest of your life, but because Carlo is doing a wonderful job every single day—and he deserves to hear from you.