On Topic: Manipulation versus motivation

A few years ago, the public radio program 'This American Life” aired a segment on superpowers. In it, producer John Hodgman talked about how he had asked people he'd run into at parties and other social occasions what specific superpower they would chose - assuming superpowers were real, of course.

Almost everyone, he recalled, chose invisibility or flight. But not to make the world a better place or fight crime like comic-book superheroes.

They would use their powers to mostly to steal stuff, they admitted - cashmere sweaters from department stores were mentioned - or fly into bars to check out the action, and presumably make a big entrance.

'Then I think I would fly to Atlantic City,” one man offered.

I'd long believed the superpower to possess would be mind control. Think about it: how it easy it would be to deal with fractious employees, convince all department heads of company goals or meet sales quota. No more squabbling over seating charts.

In your spare time, you could fight some crime, too, if you were so inclined.

But then I watched 'Jessica Jones,” the series on Netflix about the former superhero who'd hung up her cape to become a private investigator. Her arch enemy is Killgrave and he can control minds.

If he spies a high-rise apartment he likes, he tells the owners to invite him in, Obi-Wan Kenobi-like. Which they do, and he stays for as long as he wishes. He chooses what he likes at high-priced restaurants or high-end clothiers and never pays.

He also tells people he finds annoying to kill themselves, or gets others to kill them. So he's not a nice guy.

However - and this is the thing that got me - in an episode somewhere in the middle of the series he confesses to Jones that he no longer can tell if people do what he says because he's using his powers or because they actually want to do it.

Is it manipulation or motivation?

Since the 1980s mountains of books, articles and DVDs have been generated to embolden leaders to take up the holy grail of motivation. To achieve success for our company, our employees and (as we bow our heads with false modesty) ourselves.

More than a decade ago, management trainer Dan Bobinski on Management. Issues. com defined the difference between motivation and manipulation. In short, manipulation is trying convince others to do what you think is right, while motivation is working with other parties to find out what they need and want and then deciding on solutions that work for all concerned, he wrote.

Sales trainer Brian Tracy, in a more recent post on his own website, urges the latter approach: 'The leader of today is the one who asks questions, listens carefully, plans diligently and then builds consensus among all those necessary for achieving the goals.”

We know that kumbaya approach isn't always easy. That's why we get paid, right?

But, oh, wouldn't it be nice if, just once, you could stand out on office floor, loudly declare 'Anyone who is trolling Facebook right now instead of working needs to stop and take five laps around the building” - and see it come true?

All right, maybe only two. But still.

' Michael Chevy Castranova is enterprise and Sunday business editor of The Gazette. (319) 398-5873; michaelchevy.castranova@thegazette.com