How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Life and Work

How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Life and Work

Tom Rath and Donald O. CliftonGallup£11.99ISBN:1595620036

Most Americans leave their jobs because they do not feel appreciated. In fact, 65 per cent of people surveyed said they got no recognition for good work last year, according to the authors of this book.

The Gallup Organization surveyed some four million workers on the topics of recognition and praise, and they delivered startling results. Along with the 65 per cent of people who reported receiving no recognition on the job last year,an estimated 22 million workers are presently “actively disengaged”,or extremely negative in their workplace. This costs the US economy up to $300 billion a year in productivity – undoubtedly an underestimate because it does not account for absence, illness, and other problems that result when workers are disengaged from their work and their companies.

We know about this disengaged workforce but the authors here focus not on the disengagement itself but on the impact that positive interactions make on people’s lives – both at work and at home.

The book is based around the simple metaphor of the theory of the dipper and the bucket. The metaphor suggests that each person carries an invisible bucket of emotions, along with a dipper, which he or she can use either to add to other people’s buckets or to dip from them. Research suggests that filling someone else’s bucket benefits both parties – the person who gave the praise and the person who received it.

Those (few) companies that are smart enough to have recognised this and introduced positive recognition and praise report:

• increased individual productivity;

• better safety records/fewer accidents on the job;

• employees stay with the organization longer; and

• higher loyalty and satisfaction scores from customers.

The book outlines five strategies for reducing the negativity our culture seems to cultivate:

• 1.

  Prevent “bucket dipping”. Increase your own awareness of how often your comments are negative. Work toward a ratio of five positive comments to every one negative comment.

• 2.

  Shine a light on what is right. Try focusing on what employees or peers do right rather than where they need improvement, and discover the power of reinforcing good behaviours.

• 3.

  Make best friends. People with best friends at work have better safety records, receive higher customer satisfaction scores, and increase workplace productivity.

• 4.

  Give unexpectedly. A recent poll showed that the vast majority of people prefer gifts that are unexpected.

• 5.

  Reverse the golden rule. Instead of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, you should “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.”

How Full is Your Bucket? is written in an engaging, conversational style and includes a number of illustrative stories, making it a pleasant– positive (of course) – read!