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Feedback is a powerful relationship tool, but people don’t always respond well to it. A friend recently told me a funny story about how she managed a relationship with a neighbor by applying the principle of “appropriate consequences.” “Several years ago I lived in a quaint semi-circle of cottages just off of Main Highway in Coconut Grove, Florida. A lovely two-lane street not far from Biscayne Bay, Main Highway wandered beneath a living archway of live oaks. Most of the homes and cottages that branched off of Main Highway were old—ours was built in the 1930’s—and surrounded by tropical jungle. From my front door I could see hundreds of species of plants crowding together, including various escaped houseplants stretching up for the light filtering through the high, lacy canopy of leaves, an orchid tree that showered our gravel entry in soft pink petals each February, and the mango tree from which I retrieved ripe fruit in June. “Coconut Grove attracted people who didn’t want a suburban life, people who lived left or right of center, what my Texas fighter-pilot father would have grinned and called “independent thinkers.” They were artists, entrepreneurs and dream-sellers who set their own schedules and met for cappuccino at the outdoor cafe at 9:00 a.m. The lawyers, accountants and bankers (closet independent thinkers) who also lived in the Grove donned suits early each morning for a short commute to a downtown tower. I was in the second group. “Several of the cottagers on my semi-circle were single women. We were careful. Not far to the west was an area of small deteriorating houses and run-down apartments, where an open drug market fueled unpredictable violent crime. On my semi-circle we took precautions—alarms, bars and dogs. The fashion model living two cottages over from me had a large stiff-mannered Doberman pinscher acquired after her first burglary. “I learned about the dog one day when I walked out of my front gate and stepped in a steaming pile of dog doodoo as I fastened the gate. I didn’t actually see the dog that day, just his disgusting excrement squished up the sides of my black pumps, the ones I wore with my black power suit. “The next day, returning from my morning run, I saw her letting the dog out her front door. She looked as if she had just dragged herself out of bed and was about to drag herself back. Sometimes fashion models keep odd hours. The dog ran to my front gate and squatted. I rang her doorbell and asked her, nicely, to please put the dog on a leash in the future and walk it away from the cottages. I pointed at her squatting dog and told her about my pumps. She said she was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again. But the dog left big loose piles at my front gate two more times during the next few weeks. I rang her bell and repeated the request two more times. Sorry, excuse, excuse, won't happen again. “The next day when I opened my gate I saw another mound of steaming poop. This time I scooped the offending pile into a baggie. I rang her bell and handed her the full warm, brown, mushy, stinking bag. “Hi. This belongs to you. Your dog left this in front of my gate. I'm returning it. Every time you let him out he squats in front of my gate. From now on, every time I have to scoop up his shit, I’ll be returning it to your front step with a friendly ring to your doorbell.” “I didn’t have to use the scoop again.” This story drives home the point that when feedback fails, maybe you should try appropriate consequences!
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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