About the Book

Written with top SeaWorld trainers, Whale Done! explores how positive reinforcement techniques used with killer whales can have a dramatic effect on our human relationships both at work, and at home.

Drawing from the second secret of The One Minute Manager®—one of the top-selling management books in history—discover how whales respond best to positive reinforcement; a lesson Ken has been teaching us for the last 20 years!

In Whale Done!, Ken Blanchard, Thad Lacinak, Chuck Tompkins, and Jim Ballard show how positive reinforcement and redirection can help increase productivity. These techniques are remarkably easy to master and can be applied equally well at home, allowing readers to become better parents, more committed spouses, and live happier lives.

Experience the difference between "GOTcha" (catching people doing things wrong) and "Whale Done!" (catching people doing things right)!

About the Book

“How is it they can get a killer whale to urinate on cue, and we can’t get our son to pee into the toilet?”

Most parents feel frustrated with their children from time to time, but killer whale trainer-in-training Amy Sheldrake has a unique perspective. She marvels at the complex behaviors her superiors are able to coax out of these enormous beasts, while she and her husband struggle to make their beloved— and much smaller—son Josh obey what seem like the simplest rules.

What does training killer whales have to do with raising children? As this engrossing and unique parenting fable shows, more than you’d think. In their New York Times bestseller Whale Done, Ken Blanchard and his coauthors—including two veteran marine mammal trainers—showed how positive training concepts used at places like SeaWorld could be adapted to the workplace. In this new book they apply these same principles to parenting. Once Amy and Matt get the hang of the five Whale Done principles, they see a dramatic difference in overcoming challenges like following bedtime routines, dealing with tantrums, introducing new foods, sharing, avoiding overuse of the word no, learning to care for a pet, and instituting time-outs.

The foundation of the Whale Done approach is respect. It emphasizes communication and praise rather than obedience and punishment—this is not some Pavlovian primer. Whale Done is much more than a set of techniques; it is a way of looking at people and seeing the best that is in them. Great leaders, saints, and sages have developed this skill. Since most of us are less advanced than those paragons, this book can serve as a guide for how to bring out the best in our children.