When the Work-Slave Wants to Become the Boss

You have heard it before, people complaining about the lack of value in their employer. What do they do? they say. What good are they? Maybe you have asked these questions about your own employer, or employers in general.

The answer - apart from any specific management, technical or specialist skills they might possess - lies in the original master-slave and master-servant relationships. These are what the employer-employee roles are legally based on.

This master-servant division is based on a belief that the former knows and has the skills to create and drive the work required, while the latter carries out the work required.

This division of roles relates to attributes or character or class or mental facility or education or evolution - according to its origin in the past when servants and slaves were a normal part of the workforce, and when master-servant relationships reflected principles and beliefs about superior and inferior humans.

This hierarchical attitude to human capacity is also the basis of our other major relationships: the parent-child and the student-teacher relationships.

What your boss does for you

The original master-slave arrangement assumed that the slave or servant did not possess an inherent desire to do what the master wanted of them, and so force had to be applied to ensure the work was carried out. The master fulfilled the roles of motivator, discipliner, direction-setter and the creator and maintainer of focus.

Similarly, children, needing to be taught many things including socially acceptable behavior and school lessons, also needed the parent and teacher to perform these roles of motivator, discipliner, direction-setter and the creator and maintainer of focus.

Your limitations

Now, let me clarify a vital point here. Employees, along with children, need to motivate themselves to perform their individual required tasks. They need to say, 'I will write that report now', or, 'I will wash those pots now', or 'I will teach that class now'. Yet behind these acts of self-motivation there is the primary motivator: their employer keeping task expectation up, continuing to provide the job, and continuing to provide the pay-check.

Do not confuse secondary task motivation with primary motivation. Primary motivation becomes easier to see when you imagine taking the employer out of the equation.

· What then propels you out of bed in the morning specifically to work, every morning rain, hail, late night or shine? · What gets you to the subway on time? or · Focuses you on that difficult task first thing? or · Keeps you away from the television during the day? or · Insists you learn new and difficult skills? or · Ensures you return calls to unhappy customers while being nice to them? or · Entices you to stick with it during the eighth hour when you are tired and you know the family will be home any minute.

This belief that children and employees could not or would not be made responsible for these primary motivational roles themselves is the basis for enormous problems that many people experience when they decide to take the big step of moving from being an employee to running their own small business or home based business. They may have never performed this role in their lives before.

The need to avoid disaster

Having been free of the responsibility for these primary roles, many ex-employees find themselves with all the necessary skills to do the actual work, such as, massaging clients, building water-features, cleaning houses, writing ebooks or building websites. But if they don't go out of their way to acquire the primary motivating skills they will find themselves with a failed business.

Do you have what it takes?

Do you have these skills? Do you have the ready ability to:

· self-motivate everyday, through thick or thin, · discipline yourself and your workload whether you feel like it or not; · set direction, business plans, marketing plans, weekly and daily goals and tasks and stick to that during every half-hour block of the day; · create and maintain focus without there being anyone looking over your shoulder; · day in, day out, on and on with no-one knowing whether you are doing that or not.

Equality of responsibility has only in more recent decades become something people have considered valuable within certain, more entrepreneurial fields. And it only works where the responsibility for self is taught and promoted, obviously because that is what is needed, yet largely missing.

Skills you need to acquire to fill your boss's shoes

Generally, the employer-employee relationship is still largely based on an 'us and them' belief system. So, if you are moving from employee to owner-manager let's make sure you will have what it takes to provide your home business with the basics.

Click here for checklist - http://www.seismicfish.com/selfmotivationchecklist.html

· self-motivation - I want · self discipline - I will · pain and pleasure incentives - carrot and stick · daily and weekly focus · finding your weak spot: the thing you deny needs to happen, or be done.

Other resources:

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Copyright 2005 Seismicfish.com