cracking the reluctant volunteer effect


2005-9-21

As some of my more longtime-readers might recall, I have been struggeling alot with what I call the "reluctant volunteer" effect.

First a short re-cap: I call a someone "reluctant volunteer" if he/she comes to me for help, stating the intention to work at the problem, but then won't (or can't) implement the given advice.

Now I see this a lot in my environment. It goes all the way from personal relationships to the professional consultant thing in tech. "Show me how to do this" - "Ah, but we can't so that. Don't you have another answer?". The classical "Is there anybody else up here I could ask?" reaction to answers we don't like.

But instead of lamenting about people's inability to stomach the truth, I started wondering: "What if it's not the ,essage, but the way it is presented?"

All my reading of Seth Godin et al got me started down this way. It's a case of motivation. Real motivation, the one that come from the heart/gut. The emotional one, not the "I should..." variety. So how can I help to move this mind-motivation (I should be doing) donward into the gut-motivation (I really want to).

I would like to further explore this in future posts, but I would really love to make it an blog-discussion with others dealing with similar effects.

Similar

<< I'm not alone  |  overcoming reluctancy - burning desire >>


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