If you love to train people and motivate them to a higher level of performance remember one golden rule “Ducks never become Eagles”. I have wasted many hours while trying to motivate some ducks as I always failed doing that.
The first obvious question should be “How to identify a duck?”Ducks always have one or the other excuse. Some of the common duck sentences are:
- Oh! I can’t do more I am too much busy. (Busy doing what? Playing Farmville/ Poking friends on Facebook!)
- Oh! I don’t think this is the right time
- Oh! I am comfortable doing what I am doing
- Oh! I think I can’t do it
- Oh! This is not made for me / I am not made for this
Even if a Duck will say yes it will love to swim and expect the team to fly!
The reason why a duck cannot be an Eagle as it has been made that way and it has lived that way. Duck will always like to Swim rather than fly but an Eagle will always fly, NO MATTER WHAT! If you try and use your best resources to make a duck fly like eagle, it will not.
You will not agree to me and say that “the leader should think for the positive and the best for others! Leader takes people from where they are to where they want to go!” I totally agree but my dear friend you must also remember that Leader’s first responsibility is to define REALITY- AS IT IS! And the reality is that duck is a duck and it only wants to swim not fly. It will only fly for a very short term and for a very short PERSONAL gain. A duck does not want to go anywhere except somewhere in the small lake it is in.
As a leader I always first identify who is the right person for the right thing. Once I identify that a person is an Eagle I work on taking that person to the next performance levels. I have practiced this in my profession as well as in the team at the social organization where I have lead since I was 15. Over there I helped in finding and mentoring leaders who performed to impossible limits. It was only there when I was 21, that I figured that I can never make duck an Eagle. Since then I have never tried to work on making a Duck and Eagle as it is against the Laws of Nature as they are two totally different species.
As John Maxwell says “Never try to do this, you will make the Eagles feel frustrated!”
