The power of a positive message

How a positive message can be effectively used has been proven in one of the American hospitals. The experiment was to help improve hygiene in the wards by washing or sanitizing hands each time before contact with patients.

Cameras have been installed in the hospital and staff have been informed that attention will be focused on hand sanitizing before entering and leaving a patient’s room. The fact of constant observation was to force the staff to behave in a desirable way and all staff knew that they were being watched.

Despite this, only one in ten people washed their hands before or after leaving the patient’s room.

As an additional intervention, an electronic board was introduced, on which the results of individual changes were displayed. Every time someone washed their hands – the bars went up and the whole shift got to see how they fared compared to other teams.

After a short time from the introduction of the board, the statistics went up by … 90%. Thanks to this experience, a similar principle was introduced to other departments and the results also improved significantly.

So why did the electronic scoreboard work so much better than the pressure of being watched?

Because instead of using warnings and intimidation, 3 basic factors are used that actually guide our mind and behavior.

Three steps to greater motivation

1. Social incentives

The results of the hospital experiment showed that staff could relate to how the other shift and the rest of the staff were doing. After all, we all love to see what others are doing, we want to do the same, and of course we want to do it better than others.

Looking at how others are doing, we care not to stand out from the rest. This knowledge was also used by the British government to convince people to pay taxes. The initial threats had little effect. Instead, one sentence was added to the communication: “9 out of 10 UK residents pay their taxes on time.”

This one sentence made the number of people pafrom  Whatsapp Mobile Number List accying taxes in the allotted time increase by 15%, which translated into money amounted to … 5.6 billion pounds.

So we love to know how others are doing and we don’t want to stand out from the rest.

2. Instant reward

Hospital staff could see the results of their actions immediately as the bars grew on the electronic board. Employees could therefore feel better seeing their advantage over other changes.

They saw their award NOW, and it meant more to them than any other award in the future.

Not that we don’t think about the future at all, but the future for many of us is far away. Of course, we all want to be healthy, happy and successful in the future, but it’s hard for us to think about rewards in the long run.

If I told you that I would give you PLN 100 today or PLN 200 next year – which would you choose?

Giving others and ourselves a sense of immediate reward makes us much more engaged.

Instead of saying “I need to lose wet and love Optin List to be taughtight because I’m too fat”

give yourself a positive message and vision of the reward by saying:

“If I lose weight, I will feel better or perform better in sports”

Changing behavior will be identified more with a reward and will become a habit faster. You will start giving yourself rewards NOW for something that is good for you in the future.