Last year, I took on an interesting role with Mahalo.com. I was a "Vertical Manager" responsible for managing labor, defining tasks, etc. Here are 3 things that I learned:
Educate people. Don't "teach" or "instruct" them. Truly educate them on what you need done, why, and what you expect the results to be. Education is a talent learned through experience. Not everyone is good at it and more often then not a failure in labor can be explained in part by the quality of education distributed.
If … Then rewards often fail. They can be demotivating and worst of all, people will naturally do the lowest amount of work or preform the lowest quality labor for the "then" reward. Dan Pink author of Drive authored an exceptionally good book on the subject of reward and motivation. You should read it.
Kindness, honesty and respect are conveyed in every action that one makes and if people know that you will treat them well, they will treat you well. Motivation isn't some secret science and "doing onto others" is perhaps the most significant cornerstone of it.
What is the difference between "teaching" and "educating"? These are perfect synonyms in my mental lexicon, so I can't really get the distinction you're trying to draw there.
I prefer to use the terms "train" vs. "learn" (educate). Big Companies talk a lot about training their employees and government agencies talk a lot about retraining laid off workers. Big Company Training in my experience only addresses the "how" and not the "why". As a result, it generally is non-transferable knowledge and often is inaccurate to boot.
Training is what I do to my dog when he pees on the carpet.
I actually think of training and learning orthogonally.
Learning is about increasing your knowledge and comprehension. Training is about increasing your skills. Learning involves study. Training involves practice. Obviously, the boundary is not stark, but you get the idea.
Contrast the feeling of wonder and amazement when you first learned some difficult theory or algorithm, with the feeling of power and confidence that comes from repeated practice using it to solve problems. In my mind, the first is learning, the second is training.
In my mind, the difference between teaching and educating is the same thing as the difference between an "instructor" and a "teacher" and explaining my definition of education might be better illustrated using these titles.
An instructor is usually hired (often by a community college) to open a book and deliver curriculum to students. Sometimes, personal anecdotes or experiences are peppered in but for the most part, it's cut-and-dry. A teacher on the other hand delivers curriculum using their own string of lessons and methods. A teacher gives part of his or her experience to each student giving them more then a simple instructor ever could.
"Instruction" is sharing the minimum knowledge required to accopmlish the task.
"Teaching" is sharing the minimum knowledge to effectively understand the task.
"Educating" is sharing the minimum knowledge to effectively understand the task and as much context as is necesasry to understand why the task matters.
I suspect he means "training" vs. "education". Training is what you give folks on Welfare so they will get a minimum wage job and get off the dole -- ie teach them very basic skills that don't give them much ability to think critically or create a future for themselves. Education is what you give folks who need higher level thinking skills, are expected to be leaders of some sort and need executive decision making skills, etc.
Educate people. Don't "teach" or "instruct" them. Truly educate them on what you need done, why, and what you expect the results to be. Education is a talent learned through experience. Not everyone is good at it and more often then not a failure in labor can be explained in part by the quality of education distributed.
If … Then rewards often fail. They can be demotivating and worst of all, people will naturally do the lowest amount of work or preform the lowest quality labor for the "then" reward. Dan Pink author of Drive authored an exceptionally good book on the subject of reward and motivation. You should read it.
Kindness, honesty and respect are conveyed in every action that one makes and if people know that you will treat them well, they will treat you well. Motivation isn't some secret science and "doing onto others" is perhaps the most significant cornerstone of it.