Feedback: Positive Reinforcement/Change yourself first

One of the more interesting concepts used on the NLP course that I did last year was the idea of only giving positive feedback to people.

The thinking behind the theory (which I think comes from Robert Dilts, one of the early thinkers behind NLP) is that people know what they are doing wrong and already beat themselves up about it; therefore there is no point you mentioning it as well.

I was initially sceptical about this approach as it seemed a bit too idealistic for my cynical mind. I found it extremely difficult to start with and didn’t give any feedback to anyone for quite a few sessions. Eventually though something clicked for me and by the end of the 18 day course I feel I did gain a greater respect for and recognition of the talents that other people on the course had. The need to focus only on the positive actually seems to drive the mind to see more in this area than it otherwise would.

Although noone likes it when they are criticised, I think there are some occasions when someone criticising you can prove to be extremely motivational. This basically involves them completely writing you off and you then being determined to prove them wrong. For example at school I was told that I would definitely fail the Pure Maths modules of my A Level Maths course. Completely unimpressed with this verdict I persevered with it for months eventually scoring 85%. Job done.

I think sometimes when giving critical feedback it can say more about you than it does about the person you are giving it to, and this is where it’s vital to step back and think why you are giving the feedback.

I find at least for myself the tendency is to want to point out things people do that annoy me, which in effect is me trying to make the person more like myself. Steve Pavlina suggests that the things we hate the most in other people are the things we actually hate in ourselves. Therefore his suggestion was if you find something someone else does annoying, first look at yourself and try and improve yourself in this area.

I’m not sure if I totally subscribe to why this approach would work but I definitely agree that it is way easier to change yourself than it is to change someone else.

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• Giving effective feedback

Treading the jungle between extroversion and introversion

I am or at least used to be the uber introvert.

To put this into perspective, at University I must have spent at least 80-90% of the time alone in my room while other people around me were out partying. The best example of this came during my first year when both of my friends from school (who were also at the same University) went home for the weekend on a Thursday afternoon. I went out of my room twice between then and Monday morning.

Contrast that to last night at 9pm. I was just sitting around waiting for Match of the Day which was due to start at 10.30pm. I couldn’t handle it anymore so picked up my coat and went up into London, watched my friend do a stand up set in Angel before heading south to meet some guys from work who were at a bar in Soho. I got home at 5am.

I’m not sure exactly where the crossover occurred or if indeed there has been a crossover so to speak, but things certainly seem different. I used to be the one who barely said anything in a group conversation but now people think there is something wrong if I don’t speak for 5 minute. Strange how things change.

Active listening

One of the first unusual (to me) things that I noticed from the trainers at ThoughtWorks University was that when they were listening to participants they would often ask questions and re-frame the participants’ comments. Intrigued and impressed by this I spoke to one of the trainers and was told that they were engaging in ‘active listening’. Wikipedia defines the term as follows:

Active listening is an intent “listening for meaning” in which the listener checks with the speaker to see that a statement has been correctly heard and understood. The goal of active listening is to improve mutual understanding.

I believe this is a very useful skill to acquire, and I certainly hope to improve my ability in this area.

It reminded me of the 5th Habit that Steven Covey speaks of in his book titled ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Certainly easier said than done…but then again we do have two ears and only one mouth so perhaps there is a good reason for that!

Browsing the ThoughtWorks Blogs yesterday evening I came across a link to an interesting site which spoke of the ‘Eight barriers to effective listening’. I found this particularly useful as not only does it point some of the common problems one can have when listening to someone else, but also suggestions as to how these can be overcome.

A couple of months ago I read a book titled ‘Coaching Yourself to Leadership’ - although I found it quite heavy going in places, it too touches on some listening barriers, namely:

Advising: After hearing only a few words, you believe that you know how to solve the person’s problem and you start offering advice. Comparing: As you listen to the other person, your insecurities get triggered, and you start comparing yourself to the person—assessing which one of you is better, more knowledgeable, more competent, etc. Daydreaming: You get triggered by something the other person says and you’re off in your own world. You don’t have a clue what the person said to you. Derailing: You find the subject matter uncomfortable, so you abruptly change the subject or interrupt with a joke. Filling-in: You don’t let the other person finish her sentence; instead you finish it for her. Filtering: You only listen to the part of the message that is important to you, and tune out the rest. You either pay attention to things that might be emotionally threatening (and fail to hear anything good), or you only hear what is good (and fail to hear the parts that are negative). Identifying: You identify with what the person is telling you and swing the conversation back to yourself, telling how something similar happened to you. You become engrossed in telling your story, and don’t really listen to the other person or allow her the space to continue her story. Judging: You make hasty judgments about people before completely listening to what they have to say. Mind Reading: You look for what you perceive to be the truth, and end up making assumptions that have little to do with what the person is actually saying to you. Placating: You want to be nice and supportive; therefore, you voice agreement with everything that is being said, even if you don’t really agree. Because you don’t really want to disagree, you don’t listen deeply enough to fully examine the other person’s viewpoint. Rehearsing: Rather than listening, you are mentally preparing what you are going to say. You might look interested, but you’re really concentrating on planning how you’re going to respond. Sparring: You quickly disagree with the other person because you have a strong point of view. The other person feels like she hasn’t had a chance to be heard.

I hope this is ok to post on here - I’ve just written up the points straight from the book. Copyright of the author Peter O’Brien and all that.

I know I do at least 3 of those, and that’s being kind to myself!

Giving effective feedback

One of the most interesting things I have discovered since starting at ThoughtWorks earlier this month is the emphasis that is placed on giving feedback.

The first lesson we were taught about giving feedback was that it could be one of two types. Either it should Strengthen Confidence or Increase Effectiveness.

In Layman’s term that means that if you want to make a positive comment about somebody’s contribution then you should make reference to something specific that you believe they have done well so that they can continue doing it. Equally if you believe there is an area that they could improve it, a specific example of this behaviour/fault should be noted along with a suggestion for how they can improve.

As a member of Toastmasters since January I was already used to this concept of feedback and there are certainly parallels in the feedback system encouraged at Toastmasters and that used at ThoughtWorks.

Although Toastmasters do not define types of feedback, there is an expectation that evaluators will apply themselves in a certain manner when carrying out their job.

One of the things which is frowned upon is known as ‘whitewashing’. This is where an evaluator would say that a speaker was ‘brilliant’ or give a summary just using complementary adjectives. Although the speaker may well be flattered, it does not really tell them anything or leave room for improvement. The use of the word ‘brilliant’ or ’superb’ is only the perception of the person using it, and the failure to make use of the word with regards to a specific behaviour or action means that it is rendered meaningless.

Equally when the evaluator believes there is an area that the speaker can improve in they should make a reference to the specific negative behaviour or action so that the speaker can recall their mistake and go about making the improvement. When giving feedback it is very poor practice to attribute your own feelings to the speaker - you are giving them control over something which they do not have control over! For example, if an evaluator were to say: ‘I felt bored listening to your speech, you should make the next speech more interesting’. In this case the evaluator is giving the speaker the power to make them feel bored. It is ridiculous to let someone have that amount of control over you and if we consider that another person listening to the same speech may have felt really engaged, a property of the speech cannot be that it was ‘boring’.

This is very similar to the way that ThoughtWorkers are expected to give feedback, although it is also emphasised that when giving feedback one should speak only for themselves, and not try and speak for a group of people. Doing this would assume that mind reading is possible and as far as I’m aware this feat has yet to be achieved. An example of committing this mistake would be to say something along the lines of: ‘It would be better for us if you could do x’. In this case ‘us’ is not defined and it is unlikely that one person can speak precisely of the feelings of other people.

This concept is very similar to that of Generalisation in the NLP Meta Model, which states the following:

“Generalization is the process by which elements or pieces of a person’s model become detached from their original experience and come to represent the entire category of which the experience is an example.”

This is an area that I am actually working on myself, and I am finding it very difficult to speak only for myself because I’m so used to generalising! Of course there are still times when generalisation is vital, and we would find it very difficult to live our daily lives without generalising on some things. Giving feedback, however, is one area where this ‘technique’ is counter productive.