The Whale Story

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The Whale Story

Have you ever wondered how the whale and porpoise trainers at Sea World get Shamu, the 19,000 pound whale, to jump 22 feet out of the water and perform tricks? They get that whale to over a rope farther out of water than most of us can imagine. This is a great challenge - as great as the ones you and I face as parents.

Can you imagine the typical American managerial approach to this situation? The first thing would do would be to get that rope right up there at 22 feet - no sense celebrating short comings. We call that goal setting, or strategic planning. With the goal clearly defined, we now have to figure out a way to motivate the whale. So we take a bucket of fish and put it right above that 22 foot rope - don't pay the whale unless it performs. Then we have to give direction. We lean over from a nice high dry perch and say "Jump, whale". And the whale stays right where it is.

So how do the trainers are Sea World do it? Their number one priority is to reinforce the behavior that they want repeated - in this case, to get the whale to jump over the rope. They influence the environment every way they can so that it supports the principle of making sure that the whale can't fail. The trainers start with the rope below the surface of the water, in a position where the whale can’t help but do what's expected of it. Every time the whale goes over the rope, it gets positive reinforcement. It gets fed fish, patted, played with, and most important, it gets positive reinforcement.

But what happens when the whale goes under the under the rope. Nothing - no electric shock, no constructive criticism, no developmental feedback and no warnings in the personnel file. Whales are taught that their negative behavior will not be acknowledged.

Positive reinforcement is the cornerstone of that simple principle that produces spectacular results. And as the whale begins to go over the rope more often than under, the trainers being to raise the rope. It must be raised slowly enough so that the whale doesn't starve, either physically or emotionally.

             The simple lesson to be learned from the whale trainers is to over-celebrate - make a big deal out of the good and little stuff that we want consistently. Secondly, under-criticize. People know when they have screwed up. What they need is help. If we under-criticize and discipline less than is expected, children will not forget the event and usually will not repeat it.

In my opinion, the most successful businesses today are doing things right more than 95 percent of the time. Yet what do we spend the majority of our time giving feedback on? That is right - the 2, 3, 4, maybe even 5 percent of the things we don't want repeated and never wanted to happen in the first place.

We should set up the circumstances so that children can't fail. Over-celebrate, under-criticize.. and know how far to raise the rope.

Submitted by: Charles A. Coonradt

 From Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work, Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield,  Mark Victor Hansen, Maida Rogerson, Martin Rutte, & Tim Clauss.

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