The beatings will stop when morale improves.  This somewhat humorous statement highlights a conundrum of changing group or individual behavior.

Care needs to be taken to ensure the approach to make changes and successfully achieve the desired goals does not contradict the overall objective.

Using Pressure to Attain Calm

Pushing for a quality result, or a wholesale change in culture or perspective needs to be accomplished in a way consistent with the expected outcomes.

A pressure cooker environment might drive results but if the intention is to do so in a way the participants are relaxed, calm and enjoying themselves, obviously the two goals diverge.

Pushing Yourselves or Others

Motivation is required to succeed.  At a high level, motivation is either a push, pull or combination of the two.

Pushing is by it’s nature, demanding and does rely on pressure and anxiety somewhat to drive results.  This approach can backfire if the stress level gets too high.  Many of us just shutdown when that happens.

The pull approach is often more difficult to set-up and must be enticing enough to the target audience to get results.  A pul could be overlooked or even ignored.

The Middle Ground

As with most things balance is a great approach.  In this case combining push and pull techniques can have the advantage of  attention getting without the negative aspect of consequences.

Most people prefer to make their own choice, or at least believe they chose freely.  Influencing people in a way that initiates self motivation is usually far more effective than flogging.