February 26th. Sincerity!
I have to say that after nearly two months of not writing, it was nice to see a comment or two from those people from far-away.
That started me thinking about positive comments, or positive reinforcement. A large part of my current job is building people up and giving/getting proper recognition for the things my "people" do. The very basic idea is that if people get the recognition at the end of what they're doing, it will spur them on to do more of the same. Pretty simple stuff. With volunteering, that can be a very important part of the deal. A little thanks can go a long way here or there, especially if that is all you are going to get. Whether it be your picture in the local newspaper, a pizza-night, or a thanks-for-doing-the-dishes-you're-doing-a-great-job sort of thing. It all adds up.
Where does it start to turn negative tho'? When do you think it starts becoming insincere? I have seen it from both sides now. Giving and getting positive feedback isn't all it's cracked up to be sometimes.
Aside from all of that thinking, who wants to kill people? I used to enjoy a game called "Black Death" where you played a plague trying to kill Europe. It was good stuff. Check out this flash game:
New Pandemic
That's it for now. Good times.
posted by valueburns @ 11:32 PM
5 Comments:
Black Death? Isn't that the one you picked up when we went to GenCon a few years back? Good times, good times! :-)
That's exactly what I was thinking when I was playing this game yesterday.
sigh
Good times.
Black Death is the game I picked up at GenCon...we played it down in the lobby of that crazy place we stayed (where we met that guy from Israel).
I can't remember all the names of our diseases tho'. Wasn't there one called the "galloping trots"? And there was a lethal foot fungus that not even Gold Bond could rid the world of... that was sometime later on down the road, but still memorable. So much infection, so little time. Good times indeed.
Ooh, ooh, I remember that!
Randy played the Wailing Scavvies, and I think I played the Glanders. You had to balance virulence and mortality, right?
That was fun. The Jesuit residence was not fun.
Wasn't there something about you and a Fisher Price barn? The animal noises? I remember fearing for your life because you were laughing so hard.
If the feedback is insincere, you oughtn't give it. The whole point of positive feedback, positive reinforcement, is that you have to honestly mean it. Otherwise, even to little kids (with whom positive feedback is extremely easy to evaluate), you see through it and begin to doubt and mistrust and it's just no good.
I know that if I've done a good job, someone will tell me I've done a good job.
Now, with volunteers, you have to *thank* them, regardless of whether they've fucked up the whole thing or not; you're thanking them for donating their time and energy. And that should always be heartfelt. It might just be a simple thank you card (very effective); it might be a pizza party; it might be giving them XP for playing the game well (you see where I'm going with this?). When someone works for you, even if all they do is stand around with their thumb in their bum all day, it means a lot to have someone (particularly someone they recognise as being a board member or staff member) just say "thanks for coming out! Hope to see you next time."
You can usually tell when someone is blowing sunshine up your arse, right? Often, simple 'thank yous' go a lot further than the ol' slap-on-the-back "you're GREAT!...just GREAT!" that you get from time to time.
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