09Sep/15

Giving Feedback that Works

September 9, 2015BlogCoaching, Direct Report, Employee, Inspiration, Leadership, Management, Motivation, Performance, Praise, Soft skillsVictoria

You Rock

How to Use Positive Feedback to Offset the Bad

Ever notice how the word “feedback” makes people nervous? Think about how quickly we are to tell someone when things go wrong? That’s because we believe it’s important to let people know when we are frustrated or angry. We want action. Fix the problem, fire the employee, do whatever it takes to meet our expectations of how it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t seem as important when someone gets it right because they are already meeting our expectations. There’s nothing tangible in it for us so the opportunity simply passes us by. I beg to differ.

Think back to the last time you received really bad service. You probably complained to the supervisor and then told everyone you knew about your experience. You wrote reviews, you put it on social media, you got the word out. What about the last time you received great customer service? Did you ask for a supervisor then? I’m betting you didn’t.

Now, put yourself in that supervisor’s shoes. How often do you tell an employee when they mess up? You probably call poor Carol into the office and said something like: “Hey Carol, I’m really disappointed in your work lately.” You then give her some specific feedback and end with: “so I’m going to issue a written warning and hopefully we can get you back on track because you’re a really good employee and we don’t want to lose you”. This is a common scene in today’s workplace. When Carol leaves she’s thinking that she could lose her job if she doesn’t get her act together. She’s probably angry, scared and frustrated. How do you think this affects work for the rest of the day?

I’m not saying that the discussion and the subsequent write up is it warranted. But I am saying that if this is the only feedback Carol gets to hear about her work performance it may be hard to correct at this point.

Balancing Your Feedback to Motivate

Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager, talks about “catching people doing things right”. I cannot begin to tell you how important this is. We forget to celebrate the things that do work but continuously punish the things that don’t. This unbalanced feedback can result in continued poor performance and poor morale that slowly spreads throughout your organization. It’s not rocket science. The better people feel about their jobs the better job they do.

Let’s get back to Carol. She’s mad and ready to quit because she’s pretty sure you don’t think she can do anything right. But what happens when she does things correctly (because no one screws up 100% of the time and stays employed)? Do you stop and say “Hey Carol I noticed that you been doing great work these days and I want to thank you for all the things you do to help us succeed. I’ll make sure it’s noted in your personnel file. Again thanks”? If you do, Carol may be more apt to step up and get her performance back on track. Why? Simple, it’s because your feedback is balanced. Carol has no option but to believe that your critique is solely about her work and has nothing to do with how you feel about her personally.

When dealing with difficult employees, I often encourage my clients to document the conversations by sending a confirming email referencing the discussion. Wouldn’t it be just as easy to do the same when they do something great? Think about it this way: when you continuously catch them doing things wrong, they begin to watch their backs. When you start catching them doing things right, they start watching yours.

22Mar/15

The Drama Triangle

March 22, 2015BlogConflict Resolution, Critical Thinking, Karpman, Problem Solving, Self-awarenessVictoria

The drama triangle is a tool developed by Stephen Karpman as a way to illustrate conflict resolution. While developing the theory of Transactional Analysis, Dr. Karpman created this model to show what happens during conflict as roles change as the situation unfolds.

Here’s how it works: imagine if you will, a triangle. At the top of the triangle is the rescuer. We’ll call this person A. The first leg of the triangle goes from person A to the victim. We’ll call that person B. The last part of the triangle is the persecutor. This is person C and of course, it leads back to the rescuer for our final leg of the triangle.

Now that we have all the players in place let’s see how this works. A great example of the drama triangle is the old Tom and Jerry cartoon. The victim in this case is Jerry, the mouse. The persecutor, of course is Tom the evil cat. And Spike the bulldog is naturally, the rescuer.

In the first scene, Jerry is minding his own business when all of a sudden Tom pounces. A chase ensues – around the house through the yard ultimately ending in front of the dog house. At this point, our victim looks at the bulldog in the doghouse and pleads for help. Here comes the rescuer. Spike now comes out of his doghouse and begins to beat the living daylights out of Tom. The rescuer is now the persecutor and the persecutor is the victim. After all, this poor cat is being wrapped around trees and thrown through fences. He needs help. He can’t go to Jerry because Jerry is now turned into the persecutor. Jerry is making Tom’s life miserable because he knows Spike will continue to beat Tom to within an inch of his ninth life. And on it goes, Tom chases Jerry, Jerry goes to Spike for help, Spike beats up Tom, Tom beats up Jerry and we’re back at the beginning.

At this point Tom and Jerry’s roles are interchangeable. Once Spike starts to rescue Jerry the mouse becomes the persecutor and the cat becomes the victim. There are two ways this can go: Tom can look for his own rescuer to beat up on Spike i.e spikes owner or Tom can take out his frustrations and anger on Jerry, picking on him even more evoking an even stronger response from Spike. The roles have become reversed, entangled, and obscured. Everyone’s changing roles with no end in sight. In fact, once Tom goes to spikes owner for relief the problem escalates with Spike now becoming the victim. So where does it end?

Simple, if Jerry addresses the real issue, he understands that he is not a victim. He could then take steps to deal with Tom on his own. As a victim, Jerry immediately goes into a fight or flight mode. Part of the answer may be to find out why Tom is chasing him. Part of it may be choosing to take steps so that he’s not attacked again. But once he introduces Spike into the equation, the triangle is complete and drama ensues. The goal is to not let the triangle develop. So the challenge my friends is this: when you encounter conflict, figure out if the triangle exists, if so identify your role and then develop options to avoid the drama,

27Jan/15

Leaders and Effective Communication

January 27, 2015BlogCommunication, Knowledge, Leadership, Management, RelationshipsVictoria

Leaders, are you getting your message across?

Good leaders know that their communication skills can make or break a team. Simply put, the ability to clearly get the message across is the the lifeblood of an organization. Why? Because strong communication skills create strong relationships and strong relationships are the key to success. Poor skills create confusion and invite misinterpretation. When the message isn’t clear, people tend to fill in the blanks for themselves. As their personal spin gets passed on, the message gets distorted and anyone who has played the children’s game “telephone line” knows what I mean. In that game, a message is whispered to the first person in the line. The receiver is supposed to pass the message word for word. The end goal is to have the last person repeat the same message as the first but that rarely happens. What really happens is that the message moves down the line, words get dropped, meaning gets reinterpreted and the end result is a message that is nothing like the original. An important part of any leader’s job is to make sure that the same message gets relayed up and down the line.