The stick, the carrot or the arm?
According to the internet…
The expression “Do you want the carrot or the stick?” refers to the “carrot and stick” approach, a method of persuasion and motivation that uses a combination of reward (the carrot) for desired behaviour and punishment (the stick) for undesired behaviour. It implies offering a choice between a desirable incentive or a negative consequence to influence someone’s actions.
The idiom is rooted in the image of a donkey driver dangling a carrot in front of the animal and holding a stick behind it. The donkey moves forward to get the carrot (reward) and moves away from the stick (punishment), thus the cart moves.
In the world of leadership and coaching, it can often feel like these are the only 2 methods of persuasion. You either give them the carrot or the stick. We are learning that the more effective approach, is the arm. An arm around the shoulder, that is.
That is what Eugene Simonov did for our team when he visited us in the last week of September. Eugene is our global leader for our missionaries partner development. Our team leader, Pravani and her family hosted him at their home and he was modelling the concept of building relationships for collaboration in ministry. He spent four days with our team, teaching us:
- How to care for our missionaries (put an arm around them and guide them;
- How to develop a coaching strategy for our national ministry which includes a buddy system for peer coaching;
- How to get better results by guiding and inspiring our people and showing them how to guide and inspire others.
A key take-away from his time with us, was learning the concept of Sharing Your Toys. Our missionaries struggle in their fund development when they hold their experiences, time, resources and goals, close to their chest – like a child clutching his toy. The paradigm is this, “This is my private struggle, I am alone, I must do this alone. I am scared and ashamed because I am not producing results.”
You see, no carrot or stick will get our people out of this paradigm. They need an arm around the shoulder; they need a hand that will hold. We need to lead them to the big room where they see how freeing it is when we share our toys and help each other.
Please pray for our team that we will create a safe environment for our missionaries to share their toys and thrive in the area of developing their teams of ministry partners.
Pravani Kelderman
Discipleship Ministry Partner Development