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Getting your kids to co-operate

Ros Jay, author of Kids & Co, explains how to put your business skills to use as a parent. Here's a light-hearted look at how to get the best out of your children, and your relationship with them, by treating them like customers and colleagues

Children can be hugely enthusiastic and positive, and are capable of putting enormous effort into projects. They just have to feel motivated. You won't need to put any effort into motivating your teenage daughter to have her nose pierced, or your four year old to have a go on his new bicycle. However, motivation skills are essential if you want to get your children to do other things such as homework, or cleaning and tidying.

Managers need to motivate their staff just as you need to motivate your children. It can be a little tougher with children though. At work, your staff know that they have to put in some effort if they want to keep their jobs, so there is a level of self-motivation even if you need to build on it. At home, your children have no such incentive. You can't fire them, and they know it. Being your child is a job for life. So you sometimes find yourself faced with no motivation at all in your children, which you need to turn into sufficient enthusiasm to embark on a project and see it through.

As far as your role as manager is concerned, you need to keep firm control and be seen as a figure of authority and respect - rather than as a wimp - in order to get the performance you want to out of your team members. You need to use carrot rather than stick techniques to encourage your children to co-operate without undermining their confidence.

How can you get your children to want to do things they are not initially keen on? It might be cleaning out the rabbit hutch, getting their homework done, or going on holiday to somewhere you chose and they didn't. Or it might be a more long term issue: taking on extra chores, travelling to school on their own in future instead of getting a lift from you, or working harder at getting good grades in biology.

The truth about bribery
One of the best forms of motivation is bribery. It has a bad name among parents - it feels like cheating, but that's only because we associate it with a pathetic attempt at appeasement. It doesn't have to be. There's a world of difference between bribing a child to say yes after they've initially refused, and bribing them before you start. In other words, if you anticipate trouble, you can start out by saying "It's time to go shopping. Come on - if you're good I'll buy you an ice cream on the way home." It's not the same thing at all as begging your shrieking child, as they lie kicking and flailing on the floor of the supermarket, "Please be good, and I'll buy you an ice cream."

If you think about it, the first version - offering a bribe before they've done anything wrong - is only what managers do with their staff all the time: "If you handle this job well, you'll get more responsibility and a better job title next year."

So in future, we can stop calling these temptations bribes, and start calling them by the words we use at work: rewards, incentives, motivating factors. There. Now you don't have to feel guilty any more. You're not bribing your child, you're incentivising them. Just make sure you do it before they've misbehaved or failed to pull their weight.

Everyone is motivated by different things, as we'll see in more detail in a moment. But there are certain techniques you can use as a manager of either children or staff, which will help to motivate anyone. There are three key techniques:

Show them how they fit into the big picture
Set clear and realistic targets
Involve them