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The last time my wife and I went to our health club, we returned to the parking lot and I unlocked my door. On our Camry, unlocking the driver’s side doesn’t automatically unlock all four doors; I have to touch the "Unlock" button. I must have been thinking about something else, because I sat down before unlocking the doors. Once we were headed home, she said, “Honey, you’re very sweet, but sometimes when you don’t unlock the doors right away, I have to stand and wait. I don't know what to do because I don’t know if you forgot or what.” That was a very nice way to put it. In fact, it was excellent feedback, focused strictly on my behavior, with a description of how my behavior affects her. She was able to communicate it in a purely factual way—no venting, no criticism, no diatribe. Excellent. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t want to create problems, especially for people I care about, especially for her. I didn't realize that I was inconveniencing her. It helped to have that mirror held up to me. My work in various human resources positions, management consulting and 360-degree feedback technology has kept me focused on the issue of interpersonal feedback for nearly 30 years. It’s something I’ve thought about a great deal. People aren’t perfect, so they sometimes do things that create problems for others. It's a fairly common occurrence in the workplace and in personal life. The problem is, we don’t see ourselves as others see us, so we’re not always aware of our impact on them. This is a natural set-up for relationship problems. No one likes criticism, and most people don’t know how to give constructive feedback. Because it’s so difficult to bring up these issues, most people don’t bother. They just stew. The solution has been in the public domain for decades, but most people aren’t aware of it. The trick is to give feedback in a factual, non-offensive way, the way Kathleen gave it to me. The first tip is to do it in private. Calm down and get over your irritation first. Assume that the other person has good intentions and will want to deal with the problem. Don't overwhelm; give feedback about only thing at a time. Be brief, but cover these guidelines in roughly this order: 1. Balance your feedback. To avoid making feedback sound like criticism, don’t make it strictly negative. Begin by referring to relevant positive tendencies. Example: "...Most of the time you're good about letting everybody know what you’re doing." 2. Describe the problem behavior. Clearly state what the person did, and only that. No anger, name-calling, insinuations, lectures, questions, etc. Example: "...But this morning you called the client to propose a new solution, and none of us were aware of that, what you said, or what the client agreed to." 3. Let the individual know how the behavior affected you. This helps him understand why he should do something different. Example: "...So we were still cooking away on the old plan, thinking we were on track. That was a big waste of time, because now we’ll have to go back and redo some things." 4. Tell the person what you need. Example: "...It’s not that we don’t trust you. We just need you to keep us in the loop. It would be nice to have a chance to make suggestions, but in any case we need to know what you’ve been up to." A worst-case scenario would be to just forget about the incident, rationalizing that it probably won’t happen again. But if someone doesn’t know his actions have caused a problem, he may very well do it again. Repeated offenses have a way of causing hard feelings. If you know your feedback is carefully worded to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, you’ll be a lot more willing to bring it up.
Article Source: http://www.articledestination.com
Dennis E. Coates is CEO of Performance Support Systems, author of MindFrames, a brain-based personality assessment system (www.initforlife.com) and co-founder of the Train-to-Ingrain alliance (www.train-to-ingrain.com, info@train-to-ingrain.com, 800-488-6463), which delivers a reinforcement-centered approach to learning and development that achieves permanent, measurable improvements in workplace behavior and positive impacts on business results.
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