Fill My Bucket

Conceptually, each one of us has a mystical bucket within us, unseen but strongly experienced, which yearns to be filled up .

Each time a positive stroke is given, a reward granted, a positive recommendation made, a prize received, a bonus earned or a premium granted, conferred or awarded, this Bucket would get filled up with credits... 2 mugs at a time !

Contra was true as well. Each time that a person was reprimanded, penalised or punished , chastised or corrected, the Bucket would get contaminated and then leak .... a mug at a time!

A leaders primary job thus is to let people have positive world experiences at the work-place and fill-up the Bucket seizing every opportunity to fill it up, 2 mugs at a time. Needlessly to state that leadership needs to ensure that the negative thoughts do not contaminate the filled buckets and negate impact of positive experiences.

The work design, the programs offered , organisation's internal climate and the developmental processes followed have all got to be so designed that it leaves behind multiple positive experiences.

Most Cos in comparative survey survey when asked only one simple question : 'How Filled Is Your Bucket?' responded to indicate unabashedly that by and large, their buckets were close to Empty !!!

Says Daniel Kahneman - the Noble Prize winning Psychologist that we experience approximately 20,000 individual potential moments during the waking day - each lasting a few seconds. These were opportunities when we could fill up the Buckets with positive people experiences ... But these buckets , by and large, remained empty or contaminated !

Contemporary Organisational research also indicated that 3 positive interactions had the ability to counter balance out 1 negative interaction. A bucket full of clean water could easily get contaminated by a few mugs of dirty water if leadership was unmindful. Clearly the opportunity of 20,000 individual potential moments to give positive strokes were frittered away.

Leadership cannot afford to only be mindful of positive experiences and ignore the impact of negative experiences. Most organisations adopt a 'pollyanna' approach where they focussed on giving their employees positive experiences but were unmindful of the negative impact the toxic environment was contributing to . Thus all positive efforts failed.