"Brains, like hearts, go where they are appreciated."

--Robert McNamara, Former U. S Secretary of Defense

Glenn Tobe & Associates conducted a survey in which they asked supervisors to rank the importance of ten motivators for their employees. They then asked the employees to rank the same list in order of what they most wanted from their supervisors.

Here is the list of what the employees wanted most and a list of what their supervisors thought they wanted.

Employees

Appreciation
Feeling "in" on things
Understanding attitude
Job security
Good wages
Interesting work
Promotion opportunities
Loyalty from management
Good working conditions
Tactful discipline

Supervisors

Good wages
Job security
Promotion opportunities
Good working conditions
Interesting work
Loyalty from management
Tactful discipline
Appreciation
Understanding attitude
Feeling "in" on things

Excerpted from "Heart at work" Page 145 by Jack Can field & Jacqueline Miller

Intelligent attitudes that help you win

Accuracy is a winner's policy

Few executives consider accuracy a special virtue--they just expect it. The makers of loose and exaggerated statements may seem to get more attention, but the habit of accuracy casts a long shadow ahead. Its users are trusted, relied on, and so become obvious candidates for responsibility. After all if you have a choice between a guess man and a fact man, which do you trust?

Inaccuracy irritates all kinds of human relationships. Accuracy in all our dealings, on the other hand, sweetens relationships, averts misunderstandings and helps keep the peace.

Facts--do your homework

We live in a time of the instant opinion, the prefab argument and the pseudo-statistic. Facts are not always known or easy to interpret. But we must do our homework so we at least know what the facts are thought to be. Further, we must give proper weighting to all the relevant facts, not 'picking our cases' and ignoring those that weaken our position.

Precision--develop the reference book habit

Accuracy is not just a matter of facts, it is also correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, measurement, context, relevance--in a word, precision.

As Dr. Richard Asher told aspiring medical writers in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "Look up everything you quote. You may be certain there is a book called Alice in wonderland, and that it mentions a "Mad Hatter;" there is another book called Alice through the Looking Glass; that Sherlock Holmes said, 'Elementary, my dear Watson'; and that in the Bible story of Adam and Eve, an apple in mentioned. In all five cases you are wrong."

The first book cited was originally Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It refers only to the "Hatter," never to the "Mad Hatter." The other Alice book is Through the looking Glass. The Holmes passage runs: "excellent", said I: "Elementary", said he." Finally, Genesis mentions no apples.

Similar situations occur all the time. And to discover the facts then requires that we carefully weigh conflicting evidence and build one observation on another. This takes discipline as well as a healthy skepticism. The accurate person will more often withhold his judgment than hazard a wild guess. He is more willing than most to say, honestly, " I do not know."

At its best, accuracy is a painstaking, caring, patient and reasonable faculty of mind. And ultimately it is creative, too. For it not only looks up facts, it discovers them in the first place.

By Evan Hill, excerpted from "Mind power" -Selected and edited by the editors of Reader's Digest.