A short spoken segment from Dr. Robert Cialdini about how congratulating people for their commitment (rather than for progress already made) sustains motivation toward goals. He explains studies showing that praising progress can license coasting, while praising commitment keeps attention on the remaining goal and speed of pursuit. He illustrates the point with a personal anecdote about dieting before a reunion (deciding to order mint tea rather than dessert when thinking in terms of commitment).
So I have been impressed by a set of studies that showed that when you have employees who are making gains toward a goal than you've set for them, and let's say they're halfway through, they're making these advances, if you say to them, congratulations on the progress you've made towards your goal, it's a mistake. When you ask for. When you congratulate someone on their progress, they exhale a breath. Okay, now, so me time. I made this progress. You've actually asked them to turn around and look at all the ground that they've covered. I can stop pedaling so fast, I can coast for a while. But if you change one word and you congratulate them not on their progress to the goal, but on their commitment to the goal, now they maintain the pace because now you're asking them to look forward to the goal that's yet to be achieved, that's the direction, that's what remains. So that would be the sort of thing that I think that question would be informed. Why in this kind of research, what do you say to a person who is doing what you want to keep that motivation where everyone wins by the rapid achievement of the self described goal? That's so much on the bullseye. You can't fail to congratulate those individuals. But how you frame that congratulation. I've done it to myself. A while ago, I needed to. I wanted to lose five pounds before there was a high school reunion. And I remember that I would have a cup of black coffee, half a grapefruit for breakfast, and then at lunch, let's say, I went out for a business luncheon and the waiter came by and said, would you like dessert? I had already made this progress to my goal and I felt licensed to have dessert when I thought about it in terms of the progress I had already made. But then when I shift, when I saw this research and I shifted and thought of that cup of coffee and half grapefruit, not as progress, but as a commitment to my goal to lose five pounds, I ordered mint tea.
