He would come in daily to verbally smack me around and let me know I wasn’t hitting the mark.  I didn’t understand his leadership style but it certainly frustrated me.  As soon as I would see him (my Division Chief) my ears would turn off and my barriers would go up.  Still, I wanted to do a good job so (being the cocky person I was) one day I went into his office and said,  “Hey, Chief, I think we have a problem.  The only time I ever hear from you is when I am messing something up!  You never say a word to me otherwise.”

He was taken back by my question.  He took a moment and then replied, “No, Chip, we don’t have a problem….that’s just the way it is.  If you’re doing what I expect, you won’t hear from me.”  He then added, “You’re lucky I don’t take you out back and kick your ass when you make mistakes like the Chiefs did when I was growing up in the Navy!”  (I don’t think he really needed to add the last part but it was great for effect).

I walked out of his office a bit dumbfounded and then thought to myself, “Ohhhh…..he was training me…..and all this time I just thought he was being an asshole….”
In retrospect, I know now this is a great example of his using negative reinforcement to condition my behavior.    What he didn’t know is that I responded much better to positive reinforcement (and the right rewards).  I knew that was never going to happen so I had to adjust to match him versus he to me.

Many times we work for leaders that are clueless on what makes us tick.  They don’t take the time to know anything about us personally, what motivates us or what constitutes a reward.  When this happens we can take two routes.  We can put our barriers up and let our performance suffer or we can insulate ourselves from minutia and motivate ourselves to where we want to go.  I like to do well so I chose the latter.

From that day forward when he would come into my office, I filtered through the negative to find the nuggets of what needed to be fixed and then corrected the problem.  After a while, he quit coming into my office to smack me around and started coming in just to chat.  Twenty years later, he still sends me a Christmas card (go figure!?).

If you don’t have a boss that knows you, you have to know the situation and motivate yourself.  Sit back, reflect, and take control of YOUR situation.  You have the most to gain and to lose.