Thursday, December 22, 2011

Pink Truth: The Power of Negative Motivation

Pink Truth
Facts, opinions, and the real story behind Mary Kay Cosmetics.
The Power of Negative Motivation
Dec 22nd 2011, 12:00
Written by Raisinberry

Dream Big! Shoot for the moon! Even if you miss you will land among the stars! Show up to Go Up! Believe and You will achieve! Act enthusiastic and you will become enthusiastic! Whatever you say you will do, do it if you have to move heaven and earth!

Our Mary Kay [...]
I would love to hear some thoughts on this one...  Boiled down, Raisinberry is accusing her entire national area of using negative motivation to produce results.  And by 'negative motivation', she means sending out names of people that are not doing certain things, which she sees as a shaming exercise.  However, even in her own post, there seem to be some contradictions.

Namely, she starts by looking at a public list of who is attending seminar as a means to,  publicly embarrass Sales Directors for deciding not to participate .  But if you can't publicly announce something exciting like the people that will be going on a trip together without being accused of manipulating people, I'm not really sure if you can do anything right... at least as far as these people are concerned.

One of my frustrations with Raisinberry's style of writing is that it is not always clear what she is saying.  I am not sure if she is saying that people who were missing an event were 'committed to their business' or if the ones attending the event were.  In one scenario, it is a positive way for the director to excuse those not attending and keep team unity, in the other, it could definitely be seen as a manipulation that divides.

Is "these people are the ones I haven't heard from" a manipulation?

And again, is celebrating successes really a 'powerful guilt producer', or is Raisinberry (and most of Pink Truth) just being paranoid? 

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