Kudos to my wife for being awesome.
Our younger daughter, Jaz, was born way early, and then spent the first three years of her life giving back a lot of the food she tried to eat. (You should see our carpet cleaning bill. Wow.) Her body, not surprisingly, started storing every tiny morsel it could then, and fairly quickly, when the barfing stopped, she went from scrawny to the opposite of scrawny.
So what do you do when your four and a half year old comes to you and says she doesn’t like how her tummy is bigger than everyone else’s in the family?
Here’s what my wife did:
- She told our little one how beautiful she is. (Which, by the way, she is. The girl is gorgeous; I took her on a date last week and sat at dinner staring at her as if she were a living piece of art. In separate news, I am a total dork.)
- She had me hide the scale.
- She had me turn our extra bedroom into a gymnastics room with a bar, rings, and climbing rope—all of which I affixed to ceiling studs with enough hardware to support a gorilla—and made it the primary hang out room.
- She signed our daughter up for every activity she showed interest in. Ballet, soccer, tennis, double gymnastics? OK by us!
- She started talking about “healthy choices.” Not “diet” or “weight.” Her focus was on having our daughter internalize new habits, not on short term physical changes.
- She always told the truth. “I agree, lima beans are gross. You don’t have to eat those.” “I agree, your dad is a string bean.” “You and your sister can both have ice cream, but she played harder than you today, so she’s earned a little more.”
The results so far?
My daughter’s gone from wearing her hair down to cover her face to cutting her hair short and pinning it back. She’s gotten strong. She’s slimmed out. She’s started asking for vegetables for snacks because she realized she feels better and has more energy when she eats healthy.
She’s gotten confident.
I have a helluva savvy wife.
My wife was smart enough to know, remember, and trust that using results-oriented metrics—which in this case would have been weight-related—would have focused us on all the wrong things. She knew that engaging in the right activities would yield results in time, so she simply engaged our daughter in the right behaviors, and ignored everything else.
Most people I know would have done the opposite: they would have set up specific, outcome-related goals, broken those down into monthly interim goals, measured everything, and would have treated my daughter’s activities as a variable that could be changed depending on what the scale said.
Most people would have succeeded only in augmenting my daughter’s low self-esteem with food neuroses; good habits don’t form when there is an atmosphere of constant testing and no consistent focus on behavior.
Now, look at your business. Look at what you measure, and how often. Look at how closely you try to link activities and outcomes. Look at what you emphasize in weekly conversation.
And ask yourself the tough question:
You’ve got the scale out, don’t you?
UPDATE: The NYTimes ran a piece today citing a study that advocating abolishing the performance review. Before you scoff at my suggestion, know this: science backs me up.
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 
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Jason, kudos to you too for being a supportive dad and husband. You really got to me when you call Jaz a living piece of art. WOW. That is true love. I think when parents (or bosses) take the easy way out and try to throw metrics at things, they miss the real beauty inside the person. Children and adults feel better and perform better when they feel valued, loved, and appreciated. Thank you for reminding us that there is more to life than measuring every possible thing we do with a metric.
Jason, you tell amazing stories.
Thank you.
yeah, metrics are important. i, of course, am relating to the health side of this story and where metrics can often be terribly destructive. i was shocked when i recently read health advice that suggested weighing daily, if not more. if not more! eegad. that kind of focus can throw you down a deep, deep pit of despair.
i remember our talking about our daughters’ early concern for their weight. you and i both know they’ve got some rough years ahead — girls and our glamour society are pretty cruel. like you, we’ve focused on health and strength. and the body’s purpose: to run, to dance, to swing. here’s hoping they’ll take stock of that and not of the numbers.
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What a healthy and wonderful way to approach this with your daughter!
Jason,
Wow. Thank you for sharing 1) excellent parenting advice and 2) thoughtful consideration as to how this applies in business and our persistence in impacting the numbers.
Absolutely love how your wife (and you) handled such a delicate situation with your daughter. Not only have you shown her how wonderful she is ~ the way she is ~ you’ve given her the positive motivation and direction to make the changes SHE wants to make ~ all while staying true to herself.
Your ability to shift this personal story into business context is so brilliant. What I love most about what you highlight here is the focus on positive changes in BEHAVIOR, rewarding “play” and creating an environment conducive to making healthier choices complete with activities. Without focusing on the numbers/scale, IMHO, the life-long dividends achieved will absolutely outweigh (no pun intended) the short-term results. You’ve grounded her in trust and are teaching her more than she’ll know for quite some time but those kinds of dividends are too precious to even begin to quantify.
In business, there is a balance that can be achieved in measuring results of behaviors aligned to outcomes. The question is do you want short-term results that will inevitably backfire (using the scale)? Or do you want long-term results based on trust that will organically and positively impact org culture, speed, productivity and profitability (concentrating on behaviors and reward)?
Too often and very unfortunately, many continue to take the easy road. Wanting to see quick hit results that move those numbers. If they only knew…
~Charee
@Trish—”Children and adults feel better and perform better when they feel valued, loved, and appreciated…” Let’s be clear: people feel better and perform better when they are valued, loved, and appreciated… and when those feelings toward them are expressed. Too many people have been fed fake love for so long they no longer trust the real thing when it comes their way.
@Tammy—Wait ’til you read the one I’m working on with Elle… holy smokes, this girl is creative!
@Fran—More dancing… always a good prescription.
@HR Minion—My wife gets full credit.
@Charee—Until you get comfortable with yourself, metrics will only stress you out. If you don’t do that, you’re sort of up a creek… but as you point out, people take the easy way, and the first thing that goes is generally introspection. Can’t really blame folks, though: it’s dang hard to look in the mirror when you don’t. like. what. you. see.
Beautiful post. Recognizing and rewarding BEHAVIORS will always have a much more positive and long lasting impact than focusing on and rewarding results. I wrote more on this in response to the Time article about research on how best to motivate school kids. http://bit.ly/dqu3AX
Kudos to your very savvy and loving wife. If only more parents (and bosses) were as savvy…
What a great great illustrative example of aiming for results in the right way.
@Derek—Great points in your article; not sure that I would use the same semantics about recognition and incentives, but I do agree with that concept. Thanks for sharing that.
@Robin—My wife rocks.