I was having challenges in getting my youngest daughter to sit down and practice past year papers in preparation of her final year examinations. I would say that her practice test results has been dismal with the marks ranging below 40%.
When we sit down and review the questions, most of the marks lost was not due to lack of understanding of concept but rather carelessness.
Different methods were used:
- Get her to do the paper by herself
- Sit next to her when she is doing the paper (maybe she needs companionship)
- Do segments of the paper rather than the whole paper (sitting down for 90 mins could be too Long and boring)
- etc..
All the different methods were still not achieve optimal results.
When I woke up one morning, the answer popped up. Compete with her!
Based on her DISC style, I knew that she is a D style. Some of the behavioral traits of a D Styles are:
- Competitive
- Results Oriented
- Problem Solver
- Direct
- Etc
If you wish to know more, please click on the link: https://www.success-frontiers.com/4-disc-styles
I informed her that we are going to have a competition, daddy will take the test paper with her to determine who is able to score higher and that was the special sauce.
Her eye lids up and her behaviors automatically changed. Her hand writing were neat, she was focused, there were minimal mistakes and most of the loss of marks were due to concept issues.
In her first mathematics competition test against me, she was jumping with joy as she beat me by 4 marks and she achieved 78%! Such a big difference in her score.
She is on fire, in fact, after we conclude the first test, she immediately stated that tomorrow she wants to do another paper to compete against me. The game is on and the pressure is off in getting her motivated as she is now highly motivated.
We are also doing this in other subjects.
Verdict
By knowing and just speaking the correct language to a person, we can connect and motivate / influence them easily and effortlessly.