Positive and Negative Input and Diffusal

We regularly find ourselves having to communicate with people regarding their actions. When performance is significantly above or below our standards we often express ourselves about it. Our intent it to give them feedback on their performance with the idea that they will want to improve or keep up the good work. This is especially important in management and relationships where our expectations of others are most important.

Unfortunately these comments, especially the negative ones, can result in blowback from the person receiving them. This is not necessarily because your comments are inaccurate, but rather that they create a negative emotional state for the listener who then attempts to recover their mental balance. This can result in unproductive interactions, name calling, hurt feelings, insubordination reports, etc.

So how do we avoid this? It is actually simpler than you might think. If you have to give negative feedback on something you can make a small shift to what you say and get an entirely different response.

The original statement might be-

"You aren't very good at this are you? Look at how badly this is messed up."

The altered statement could be-

"This isn't done the way I would like it, please redo it like this."

Or-

"This is a different result than was expected."

The shift is fairly simple, make the comment about the result or outcome of the event, not the person you are giving feedback to. This way their response is then about the situation, not one of compensating attempting to maintain their personal balance. Try each statement out on yourself and you will probably notice the difference in your response between the different comments.

When giving positive feedback shift in the other direction.

If the original statement is-

"This came out well and looks great."

It has an entirely different response as-

"You are very skilled at this, I am glad I asked you to take care of it."

What is happening here is that you are attributing the success and your happiness with the outcome to the person who performed it, complimenting the person rather than the outcome. As with the negative comment, try this out on yourself and feel the difference in your responses.

These small shifts can have a huge result in your communications. By not triggering negative responses to critical comments and creating very positive response to praise you can improve your interaction with almost anyone. These small shifts are not sugar coating or changing your response, just the way it is delivered to the listener.

Try these out and remember that small changes make big differences!