an interview with Grant Donovan

Grant has worked extensively as a corporate coach throughout Australia, the United States, and Eastern Asia. He is a founding member of both the Australian and North American Workplace Global Networks and the principal organizer of the Megaperformers Conference held in Tampa in December 2000. His specialty is the formation of self-managed business units for high-level organizational performance. He is a frequent presenter at international management conferences and leads tours to the best performing worksites in Europe and North America.

With a background in sport psychology, including three years as “performance coach” for the Kookaburra America’s Cup campaign, Grant moved to corporate coaching in the early eighties after extensive work in wellness promotion. He began his corporate work with Motorola in the United States before establishing himself as one of Australia’s best management coaches.

He has conducted “Manager to Coach” education programs in Australia and the United States for more than a decade. In this time, over 5,000 managers from more than 400 companies have attended Grant’s programs. Grant helps highly competitive, control and command managers become more effective facilitators of better performing business teams.

Don: You are such a controversial guy, at least in the U.S., or so it seems, at least at the National Wellness Conference at Stevens Point. I consider the fact that you have never been asked to keynote this conference a disgrace. Why do you think you worry the leaders of this event so, and does this situation bother you?

Grant: Don, I think it’s your fault! Really, it goes back to the time we did that joint presentation about ten years ago on the nature of climactic wellness experiences. The politically incorrect issues we got people to talk about sent lots of suppressed, frightened people into palpitations. I guess the conference organizers worry that I (we) might corrupt the assembled masses by asking them all to think for themselves during keynotes and workshops. Personally, I think doing so would be a big improvement on the hand holding, hugging, and swaying that goes on ad nauseum.

It certainly doesn't worry me that I haven't been invited to keynote but I am a little concerned that the first time we see you on their keynote stage will be when someone projects your photo and asks for two minutes silence.

Don: Grant, if my memory serves me correctly, the session to which you refer addressed personal liberties in America, and got people to think about and comment upon how freedom, or the lack of it, affects our prospects to live life to the fullest, consistent with our best potentials for health and happiness. The idea was for everyone to address a series of hot button topics rarely talked about at wellness events, including the nature and limits of free speech, religion, sexuality, and U.S. drug policies. Why do you suppose that people here, in the land of the free, home of the brave and all that, find such discussions so controversial?

Grant: The problem is the level of stress, fear, and repression that ensues when mindsets are challenged. This upsets people who do not like others to decide for themselves, who do not want all the choices heard, and who are not comfortable objectively weighing evidence at odds with their beliefs. NWC conference organizers assume, perhaps with cause, that their audience is not ready for freedom of thought, that it is not good for business.

If invited, I would like to give a presentation on a sensible drug policy while describing the wellness dilemma affecting the issue. It should be obvious to any person with a functioning synapse that the drug problem in America will not be solved by more law enforcement. Crime is the problem with drug use made illegal, not the use of drugs themselves. Drug use and dependence should be addressed as health issues, not legal concerns. Drugs should be made freely available under controlled circumstances. A lot of people are shocked by this, but in a free society I believe we should have the right to self-destruct, to kill ourselves any way we want. Unfortunately, conservative dogma has such a grip on people that freedoms, choices, and critical thinking are in short supply.

Don: In the late 80’s and early 90’s, you organized the equivalent of national wellness conferences in Australia, sponsoring events in cities across the vast continent of Downunder! I was fortunate to make many trips as part of a small U.S. contingent that worked with you and your mates trying to gain the attention and commitment of Aussie corporations, the medical establishment, and others. Basically, after many years of innovations and start-ups of varied kinds, you abandoned that effort, didn’t you? What were the problems, and what are you doing now that might be more effective?

Grant: The truth is I got bored and the public couldn't relate to the word “wellness.” So we changed our focus to helping people learn critical thinking and self-management skills. It's made the world of difference.

Don: I sense from your presentations you are not optimistic that people can shift from a state of worseness characterized by learned hopelessness to one of personal empowerment (wellness), or what we both refer to as a capacity for self-management for health, personal effectiveness, and high performance. Is this true, and if so, why do you take this position?

Grant: In fact, I'm an extremely positive and optimistic person. I think it’s interesting, but not personally upsetting, that despite (or perhaps in part because of) the billions of dollars spent on health promotion in Australia and America, we have more obese and depressed communities than before the spending spree! This is called a paradox, and such phenomena stimulate me to no-end. I get a real kick out of watching clueless politicians and moral do-gooders manipulate varied communities to protect their own interests and mindsets.

Most people learn helplessness very early in life. Why? Because society largely operates on control and command structures. Few can recover from conditioning in such cultures over time. The norm is indeed Thoreau’s lives of “quiet desperation." Vast numbers of influential people (not just those on the margins) don't enjoy life. They know they're going to die and feel depressed about it, so they eat and drink more. They also seek in vain and search in vain for a little bit of fun of satisfying fun before they die.

Don: Do you think external punishments and rewards are effective in the workplace for purposes of promoting sustained changes in human performance?

Grant: Alfie Kohn wrote a book entitled Punished by Rewards, in which he shows that fear of punishment and the lure of rewards both cause performance to deteriorate. This helps explain why neither the fear of a heart attack or the anticipated pleasures of smelling roses won’t motivate people to get fit, stop smoking, or otherwise do the sensible, rational thing insofar as quality of lifestyle goes.

Most workplaces continue to offer incentives (rewards) and they use performance appraisals (usually punishments) to improve productivity. Unfortunately, these are all devious and doomed attempts to control human behavior. People who are controlled soon become victims. Victims, as we know, will walk in droves to gas chambers, no matter that but a few guns are trained upon them. Though the guards could be easily overpowered with very little loss of life, the conditioned victim masses march to their deaths, protesting meekly if at all.

Don: What are the alternatives to control and command systems for purposes of stimulating and supporting self-managing as well as work team successes?

Grant: Everyone values freedom, knowledge, involvement, and ownership, including those who do not realize they could exercise it with a bit of rebellion and adjusted mindsets. Give it to them, show them how it works, and they will soon perform much better. They will still die but they will fear oblivion less if they can have a bit more fun and a lot more freedom. Provide that and performance will improve while they're still alive.

Don: Why do you think some folks (like myself, for example) appear to have sufficient intrinsic motivation to choose wisely in a lifestyle sense, yet most do not exhibit this capability?

Grant: It's partly a genetic thing. People with optimistic chemicals reinforced by positive environments do well. But, for many, the random distribution of DNA produces negative chemical mixtures and, to make things worse, they are born into control and command environments where the extrinsic stick is all-pervasive.

Don: You, more than anyone else, have authored articles in my newsletter, The Ardell Wellness Report, all of which draw a lot of reaction, mostly favorable. In the 33rd edition, you suggested the government should PROMOTE, not discourage smoking! Many readers were appalled -- you said governments need MORE smokers, not fewer. Explain, please.

Grant: Government (in free society) should be the executive of the people. They should do what the people want. Instead they control the people based on the lobbying of small and large interest groups. They tax smoking while calling for an end to the habit. As you have often mentioned, Richard Lamm has shown that smokers die earlier and with less bouts of serious illness than non-smokers.

That sounds good to me. We all have lives that are ultimately meaningless, so helping a few wretched souls who wish to check out early via highly destructive habits is not the worst thing that could happen. It’s also consistent with maximum personal freedoms that we be at liberty to do what we like, not just what a majority approves.

Don: What does the future hold for Grant Donovan? Where might you be in five or ten years, doing what?

Grant: I guess I will be doing what I'm doing now, traveling the world having a good time with friends and family. And, in a bit of shock and awe at how so many fat people manage to get to, let alone through, the turnstiles at Disneyland.

Don: Do you consider yourself an effective, happy, self-managing, fulfilled person?

Grant: I'm happy and enjoying my ride. I don't want to be effective or fulfilled, I'm just happy challenging people who take themselves and life too seriously.

February 2001