The Best Compliments in the World

Compliments. Praise. Recognition. Affirmation. Gratitude. Appreciation. Positive feedback. Positive strokes. Pats on the back.

Good stuff!

Unfortunately, most of the feedback we get is negative. You know - CRITICISM. People bothered by something we've done and they want us to stop.

What we need is more of the good stuff. Actually three or four times as much praise as criticism would be nice. It's amazing how motivating a compliment can be!

If it's done right, that is.

Here's the secret...

Instead of giving a general comment, mention the specific action that pleased you. AND - how you really feel about it.

Situation: My computer programmer changed the way a function works in a new program.

General feedback: "Good job!"

Specific feedback: "I really like how this new function works!"

Even more specific: "The way the program leads me through the three steps makes the process seem effortless. I love it!"

General praise is OK. I could have said, "You da man." Actually, I've been known to say this when I'm pleased. No harm done. At least he knew I was happy with what he did.

But by being specific, my programmer knows exactly how I feel - and exactly what pleased me.

So he knows what to keep on doing right.

Powerful.

Another example...

Situation: My wife took out the trash, even though it's my week to do it.

General feedback: "You're so sweet!"

Specific feedback: "Honey, I really appreciate that you took the trash out for me. I've been so busy on this project I hadn't gotten to it yet. One more thing I don't have to think about!"

I'm sure my wife likes it when I say, "You're so sweet." But to tell her how I really feel - and why - hits home even stronger.

We need to give more compliments. More praise. Catch people doing things right!

And with a little effort, you can go from good feedback to great feedback. You can give the best compliments in the world.

Bonus post - What happens when gratitude fails...

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2013. Building Personal Strength .

The 5 Top People Skills for Parents of Teenagers

There are five people/communication skills that are so important to parenting a teenager that the failure to use any one of them - even just once - can cause problems in a relationship. My research of the literature has taught me that there are actually nearly 100 different people skills. In ProStar Coach, we focus on two dozen of them. In my free coaching ebook, we focus on eight people skills. But if you're parenting or mentoring a teen, you can narrow the skill set even further. These five are crucial.

Listening. Not just paying attention and hearing what the teen says, but observing the nonverbal messages, too, and checking to make sure that what you think the teen is trying to communicate is actually what they intended. When you don't listen this way, you can misunderstand. A teen who is ignored or misunderstood is likely to assume that the adult is either clueless or doesn't care - thoughts which can produce additional negative emotions.

Stimulating Thinking. Most adults think they know more than the teen, and visa-versa. In my opinion, the most important thing an adult can do for teens to prepare them for adult life is to get them to learn how to think for themselves. This is not the same thing as giving advice or solving a problem for a teen. This is about asking them questions that get them thinking about their situation.

Guiding Learning. A lot happens to a young person during adolescence. A secret: just because it happens to them doesn't mean they learn anything from it. The skill involves asking five questions that guides a person to learn from an experience. Like the above skill, it stimulates critical thinking.

Giving Feedback. Because teens are young and unformed and enduring a difficult time of life, their self-esteem is vulnerable. And low self-esteem can make them susceptible to peer pressure. Criticizing teens makes self-esteem worse and they resent it. Instead, giving feedback, both constructive and positive, focuses on behavior in a way that avoids criticism.

Giving Encouragement. Teens make a lot of mistakes. They have a lot of problems. They fail a lot! They have a lot of bad days. People need encouragement during the teen years more than any other time of life. Encouragement can help young people recover from what they perceive as adversity. If you do it right.

Have I ever known a parent who had all five skills? Sorry, no. When my boys were teens, I had two of the skills. But I rarely used them. And so it goes.

Have I ever known a parent who had just one of these skills? Yes, but rarely. Very rarely.

So this is where we are today. It's a grim situation, and a big part of the problem with teens doesn't lie with the teens at all. It's the parents. They make gross communication mistakes 95% of the time, with awful consequences - problematic parent-teen relationships.

So I'm just going to throw down the gauntlet here. If you're a parent of a teenager, I challenge you to take responsibility to improve the way you interact with your child. A good start would be to click on the links above and learn more about the skills. Another would be to get the free ebook on coaching skills. Depending on how much you care about your teen, you've got work to do.

Also, consider giving one of these books to your teen...

For girls - Conversations with the Wise Aunt

For boys - Conversations with the Wise Uncle

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

Accepting Feedback - The Breakfast of Champions

I remember when I finished my first draft Conversations with the Wise Uncle.

The storyline was inspired by a good friend of mine, who told me about a life-changing conversation he had with his uncle, back when my friend was 12. When I heard that story I wished that I had had a mentor like that when I was young. It would have made a huge difference. And then I thought, what would the ideal wise uncle interchange be like? So I decided to create it in the context of a story, in a format similar to the classic, The One Minute Manager, for the benefit of teenagers who will never have such a conversation. That would be 99.99% of all teens.

The good news was that my vision for the book was as clear as my passion to write it. I set a neighborhood, city, county and state record by finishing the draft in two weeks. Hoo!

The bad news was that the book needed improvement, and it would take time to get some distance from it.

But I'm lucky. My wife, Kathleen Scott, is an excellent writer herself, experienced in both fiction and nonfiction, and she enthusiastically agreed to read it and give me her recommendations.

She took two days out of her busy schedule and did a careful, thorough reading. When she returned the manuscript, every page was covered with notes. And she verbally gave me the highlights. Her feedback was amazingly valuable. She spotted three or four fundamental problems that needed attention throughout the book. It was like having a live-in book editor!

With her notes and insights in hand, I began a careful revision. The revision was much better, and I gave it to more readers to get more suggestions for "kicking it up a notch."

But I have to tell you, it was HARD to listen to Kathleen's feedback. I knew her comments would be priceless, and they were. But my stomach was in knots and a voice in my head was saying things like "You're wrong. You don't get it. There's nothing wrong with this. I don't want to hear this."

For some reason, I always hear that voice whenever I get feedback, no matter how much I want it and how well-intentioned, true and valuable the feedback is. It's not easy to give feedback well. I think it's even harder to receive it well. Receiving feedback is a major people skill. If you don't accept feedback graciously and follow through appropriately, you may never get feedback again. And then where would you be?

So even though my gut says I doesn't want to hear it, to resent both the message and the messenger, my challenge is to put those feelings aside and listen, take notes, engage in clarifying discussion, thank my feedback giver, use the feedback, give her credit, and keep her informed.

Maybe that's why some people jokingly say, "Feedback is the breakfast of champions."

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use photo purchased from istockphoto.com)

My Five Most Popular Blog Posts of All Time...

As I write this, I've been sharing my experiences and insights on this blog for about 2 years, with over 625 articles archived here. I try to write about things people will find interesting and helpful, and I try to be honest and true to my subject matter.

But I never know for sure how any of my articles will be received. To date, these five posts have been visited far more than any others...

1.  19,675 pageviews - August 12, 2010 - The Value of a Work Ethic - 10 Great Quotes

2. 5,030 pageviews - July 5, 2011 - Five Things People Who Strive for Success Don't Know That Can Hold Them Back

3. 3,364 pageviews - March 17, 2010 - Muscle Memory - The Truth Revealed

4. 2,215 pageviews - March 27, 2011 - Girls Gone Wild - What REALLY Happens to Daddy's Girl

5. 2,005 pageviews - December 22, 2011 - Teen Boys and Sex - How Girls Can Set Boundaries

Have you read these? If not, maybe you'd like to click on a few of them and find out what all the fuss is about!

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

Tip Clip #3 - Feedforward - Get Coaching from the People Around You!

It's one thing to decide to a change a behavior pattern.

It's another thing altogether to follow through, working on the new pattern until it's an ingrained habit. This takes time and effort. As you move forward, it helps to have coaching and encouragement along the way. You can easily ask for this kind of support with a new technique called "feedforward."



The next time you're working on changing the way you do something, try feedforward.

Click here for more "Tip Clips"...

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

The Art of Giving Feedback, Part Two

In my last post, I described a simple approach for giving effective positive feedback.

But more often we're motivated to give constructive feedback, because people do things that annoy us or cause problems for us, and we want them to stop. The problem is, that instead of feedback, we may react by expressing our negative feelings. While this is a natural instinct, it doesn't have the desired effect. It just makes matters worse.

During the past several decades, experts in human relations have developed a well-tested approach to giving constructive feedback. It gets the job done without creating offense.

Here are the five elements:

1. Begin by describing the behaviors you liked.

2. Describe specifically the problem behavior.

3. Explain how it affected you.

4. Describe the behavior you need and why.

5. Express your confidence, encouragement and support.

An illustration…

Ms. Brown - “T.J. , I’d like to talk to you about equipment storage. Is now a good time?”

T.J. - “Sure. Now is fine.”

Ms. Brown - “T.J., up front, I want you to know I appreciate the way you make sure our gear is put away. You do a great job of keeping things in order. Otherwise, we’d waste time looking for stuff.”

T.J. - “Thanks. It helps when you know where things are.”

Ms. Brown - “Yes, I wish everyone felt that way. Also, I’d like to suggest a way to improve our system. Would you like to hear it?”

T.J. - “Absolutely.”

Ms. Brown - “This morning I went to get the first-aid kit and I noticed that quite a few of the tools had been put away dirty.”

T.J. - “Hmm. I guess that happens sometimes.”

Ms. Brown - “You see, T.J., this bothers me because we couldn’t run this business without our tools and other equipment. And if we don’t take care of them, before long we’ll have to replace them. And they’re expensive.”

T.J. - “Right.”

Ms. Brown - “I think some of the guys just got out of the habit of cleaning their stuff before they put it away. You’re the lead guy out there. I’d like you to talk to them and get them back on track. Will you do that?”

T.J. - “You bet.”

Ms. Brown - “Thanks. Just check around and you’ll see what I’m talking about. You’re my go-to guy over there, and I’m sure they'll understand once you point it out to them.”

Some tips to remember…

· Calm down first. Avoid saying anything emotional, aggressive, or sarcastic. Your goal is to get the person to behave differently, not to create defensiveness or resentment. If you say something hurtful, the person won’t believe you mean well.

· Be sure of your facts. Otherwise, your attempt to give feedback will backfire in embarrassment. The best approach is to stick to behavior you've observed personally. Otherwise, focus on observable consequences.

· Focus on only one issue. Feedback is successful if the other person later makes an effort to change behavior. Addressing more than issue at a time is more than most people can handle.

· Think about what you’ll say. Before you speak, take a moment to remember the five elements. Mentally rehearse, so you say the most effective things in the most effective sequence.

· Give feedback while the incident still fresh (within 24 hours). If you don’t address the issue in a timely way, the person may not remember exactly what happened and may wonder why you waited so long to bring it up.

· Check that the recipient is ready and willing to receive feedback. For a variety of reasons, the person may not be ready to consider what you have to say.

· Keep it private and confidential. Respect the needs and feelings of the individual. If you embarrass the person in front of others, you'll create resentment, which will diminish their motivation to change.

· Mention specific actions and behaviors. If you talk about actions you’ve observed, it’s hard for the person to deny or challenge you. So don’t mention values, attitudes, personality or other factors which you can’t observe directly.

· Be sincere. Don’t just say the words as if they were part of a formula. Talk about what you actually saw and how you really felt about it.

· Don’t hold it inside. When someone’s behavior causes problems, don’t put off bringing it up. If you let your discontent stew, eventually you’ll need to address so many instances which happened so long ago that the person won’t be able to deal with all of it. And chances are you’ll feel the need to express feelings that have built up.

· Over time, try to give five times as much positive feedback as constructive feedback. People need both kinds of feedback—positive and negative. Both are powerful ways to encourage improved behavior. But people often tend to take the good for granted, focusing mostly on problems. They rarely “catch people doing things right.” The bottom line is that if people only hear criticism, they’ll feel underappreciated for the good things they do, and they won’t respond enthusiastically when you point out things you’d like them to change.

Once you have the five elements well in mind, try focusing on just one tip.  You can see why I call feedback an art. To get good at it takes a fair amount of practice. But you'll find it's worth the effort.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, PhD, Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

The Art of Giving Positive Feedback

Everything people do has an impact. But much of the time, they may not be aware of what that impact is. They may not realize that you genuinely appreciate something they’ve done. Or, they may not know when something they’re doing is making it hard for you and others.

Two enduring truths about feedback:

1. We should give five times as much positive feedback as we do constructive feedback. But this almost never happens in real life.

2. It’s much harder to give constructive feedback.

If you’re unhappy about something that someone has done, how will he know, if you don’t tell him? The problem is, you may be nervous about doing that. You may not be sure how to talk about it, or you may be concerned that he’ll get defensive or upset with you.

Some ways of giving feedback work better than others. The more confident you are that your feedback will be well-received, the more comfortable you’ll be when talking about it.

So what’s the most effective way to tell someone about his behavior?

I’ll describe positive feedback first, since it’s more pleasant and so much easier, and there’s a "best practice" way to do it. It involves three elements:

1. Describe what the person did - the positive action.

2. Express your delight (feelings).

3. Explain why you liked what they did (reasons).

You can communicate these elements in any way that feels natural and sincere.

Here’s an example…

Chris – “Dale, I saw the changes you made to our home page.”


Dale – “Yeah?”

Chris – “I really like them! It’s a huge improvement.”

Dale – “Thank you.”

Chris – “It’s so clean now. Our message pops and it's easy to navigate. And I love that rotating graphic. It’s eye-catching and sends our main messages in an engaging way.”

Dale – “Emma helped with those.”

Chris – “Thanks, I’ll mention it to her. They’re fantastic. And I really like it that now there’s only one call to action. That’s really important.”

Dale – “What did you think about the changes in the logo?”

Chris – “I like it. The blends make it stand out. I think the Home page is on a whole new level now. I love it.”

Dale – “Thank you!”

It’s always nice when people achieve things. It’s always nice when somebody's a hero. People love to be recognized for their best work. These are pleasant encounters.

Not so easy and not so pleasant are the times when things aren’t going well - when you need to tell somebody that what he’s doing is causing problems. It’s more difficult to give constructive feedback.

That’s a different skill, and I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, PhD, Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

Open-mindedness - Let the New Knowledge In

In many high-rise buildings, certain floors have a single tenant or facility, and the elevators that serve these floors have special security keys that limit access. No one can visit that part of the building without the special elevator key that opens the doors.

People who are unwilling to keep an open mind are like that. They control the intellectual key that lets nonresident information in, and they don't let strangers in.

Twenty years ago, 360-degree feedback surveys - which make it easy for you to get feedback from the people who work around you - were different than they are today. They were called “assessment instruments” and were designed exclusively for higher levels of management. They were called instruments because the early 360-degree feedback tools were modeled after psychological tests. They had a rigid set of items that the publishers claimed had been researched to correlate to several “constructs,” or factors of leadership. The value of the feedback was based on the quality of the research. Processing the feedback was done off-site. You had to scan paper forms, check them and send them to a central processing facility. The service was very expensive.

At Performance Support Systems, we took an outside-the-box approach to this technology. We felt that 360-degree feedback was so useful that everyone in the organization should be able to benefit from it. Why restrict 360-degree feedback to leaders? All employees need feedback.

This meant that the process had to be much less expensive to administer. We also felt that a rigid set of survey questions didn’t make sense. Battalion commanders don’t lead the same way that sales managers do. Ministers lead their congregations differently than project managers lead their teams. In other words, an assessment needs to be validated locally and customized to fit the culture.

So we developed a radically new approach. We created a user-friendly system called 20/20 Insight that an organization could purchase and administer locally. This meant that scanners were no longer needed, which made administration ten times faster and cheaper. The software came with a huge library of generic straw-man assessment sets and allowed easy do-it-yourself customization so organizations could align surveys with their local competency models. The concept of researched constructs in a rigid instrument became an outmoded, wrong-headed approach. The purpose of 360-degree feedback was to tell someone what coworkers thought about their work behavior, so the recipient could decide whether to work on improving a given area—not to measure “traits,” as in psychological testing.

This was an entirely new approach to 360-degree feedback. We believed it made more sense and would lead to a much wider use of performance feedback, which would be a boon to human resource development (HRD). And in the end, our vision proved to be the way of the future. While a few of these expensive old-style “instruments” still exist, they aren’t used much anymore. Today there are nearly 100 different feedback survey services on the market, all designed after the 20/20 Insight model.

But back in 1994, it was amazingly difficult to talk about 20/20 Insight to HRD professionals. Their mindset about feedback was conditioned by the old paradigm. They would say, “Show me your research.” And we would answer, “This isn’t a psychological test. The question of validity is different. No survey can be valid for every organization. The questions are used to give feedback about individual behaviors, not to create constructs. The questions are based on decades of experience training leaders and on our thorough search of the literature. To make them valid, we make it easy for users to customize them based on how their unique organizations operate.”

Our approach to feedback was so new that it conflicted with how HR professionals thought about it. To understand the value of 20/20 Insight, they would have to open their minds to a new way of thinking. A few were able to do this right away. They became customers. For others, it took longer. Many were never able to grasp the new concept. They continued to pay ten times as much for feedback that was limited in its usefulness.

But that was a long time ago. The new paradigm of the mid-90s is now the old paradigm. It no longer takes an open mind to comprehend 20/20 Insight.

The wiser you are, the more you'll seek the wisdom of others.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

Dr. Thomas Gordon - A Credo for Relationships

The first book I ever read about people skills was Dr. Thomas Gordon's 1970 book P.E.T., which stands for Parent Effectiveness Training. In 1978, he published L.E.T. (Leader Effectiveness Training).

Everything he said over 30 years ago remains valid and useful today, even though dozens of books have been written about people skills since. At the core of all his courses and books is what he called his "Credo" for relationships. It brilliantly summarizes the assumptions that underlie effective human relations. Taken from the book, L.E.T., it's worth repeating here.

You and I are in a relationship which I value and want to keep. Yet each of us is a separate person with unique needs and the right to meet those needs.

When you are having problems meeting your needs, I will try to listen with genuine acceptance. In order to facilitate your finding your own solutions instead of depending on mine, I also will try to respect your right to choose your own beliefs and develop your own values, different though they may be from mine.

However, when your behavior interferes with what I must do to get my own needs met, I will tell you openly and honestly how your behavior affects me, trusting that you respect my needs and feelings enough to try to change the behavior that is unacceptable to me. Also, whenever some behavior of mine is unacceptable to you, I hope you will tell me openly and honestly so I can try to change my behavior.

At those times when we find that either of us cannot change to meet the other's needs, let us acknowledge that we have a conflict and commit ourselves to resolve each conflict without either of us resorting to the use of power or authority to win at the expense of the other's losing. I respect your needs, but I also must respect my own. So let us always strive to search for a solution that will be acceptable to both of us. Your needs will be met, and so will mine - neither will lose, both will win.

In this way, you can continue to develop as a person through satisfying your needs, and so can I. Thus, ours can be a healthy relationship in which both of us can strive to become what we are capable of being. And we can continue to relate to each other with mutual respect, love, and peace.

Imagine how wonderful it would be for this credo to become the foundation for a marriage, a parent-child relationship, a friendship, a co-worker relationship...

Dr. Gordon passed away in 2002. If you're interested in being more effective in relationships, his books are still in print, and I enthusiastically encourage you to check them out. (Disclaimer - I have no affiliate connection with Dr. Gordon's organization or the publisher and receive no compensation for endorsing his books.)

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

Are You Strong Enough to Accept the Truth?

“You can’t handle the truth!” shouts Marine colonel Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) in the 1992 movie, “A Few Good Men.” The outburst comes when Navy lieutenant Dan Kaffe (Tom Cruise) presses the colonel to reveal sordid facts that are crucial to a case.

Whenever I think about acceptance, that scene comes back to me. Because some truths are hard to accept. And yet we must accept them if we are to deal with them.

“God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

The well-known “Serenity Prayer” was adapted by Alcoholics Anonymous in 1942 from a sermon by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Acceptance is a crucial step to dealing with alcoholism. Only after people accept that they have an addiction can they overcome it. And yet, it’s a terrible thing to admit. Alcoholics deny their addiction and its effect on others so they don’t have to make the hard changes.

A good friend of mine once had a serious drinking problem. When drunk, he abused his wife and family. He started drinking early in the day and was no longer effective in his business. His wife was about to divorce him, and his partners were on the verge of leaving his company when as a group they decided to confront him. They told him that if he didn’t get help they wouldn’t stay with him.

It was a huge wake-up call. They presented him with reality, and he accepted it.

He went through several weeks of treatment, and he hasn’t had a drink for more than fifteen years. He’s a great friend, a loving husband and father, and a hardworking professional in his community. He still goes to AA meetings twice a week and recites the prayer. His life is a wonderful success story. He turned tragedy into triumph, and it began with acceptance.

Accept the awful truth, and it will stop haunting you.

The opposite of acceptance is denial.

In her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross describes grief as a five-stage process. Her premise is that acceptance is necessary for a healthy, life-affirming approach to dying. According to her, the journey begins with denial and ends in acceptance. The intermediate stages are anger, bargaining and depression. Some people take longer than others to achieve acceptance, and some never make it.

Of course dying and death are probably the toughest aspects of life to accept. But any unwanted situation can be hard to accept. The more unpleasant it is, the bigger the loss, the harder it can be to accept. Our reaction might be some variation of, “This can’t be happening to me.” We may have to work through denial, anger, bargaining and depression, but the sooner we can accept the facts, the sooner we can do something about them.

In 1994 my company introduced an innovative multi-source feedback system called 20/20 Insight. It was used by over a million people in virtually every kind of organization around the world, and it’s still in use today. In the spirit of “walking our talk,” we decided to use it in our own company to give each other feedback.

It was an enlightening process. We learned some new things about our product, and we learned some important things about ourselves. According to the feedback I received from my partners and employees, my lowest-rated performance area was “listening.” In a meeting, they affirmed this result.

To be honest, I was shocked. I was a trained listener. I had studied the best books about listening. I had trained countless managers myself and had written all our content on listening. I had been consciously practicing active listening for 20 years. My first thought was, “What they’re saying can’t be valid.” I was in denial.

However, I’m a realistic person, and I prefer to accept the way things are as quickly as possible. But I must say, I felt a little bit of anger, bargaining and depression before I finally acknowledged that I needed to work on being a better listener. I took their feedback seriously and made a dedicated effort to practice in my behavior what I knew in my head. After months of effort and a couple more rounds of feedback, I ultimately succeeded.

I’m a much better listener now.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

The Goal Was Success, So We Accepted the Awful Truth

In 1994 my company introduced an innovative multi-source feedback system called 20/20 Insight. It was used by over a million people in virtually every kind of organization around the world, and it’s still in use today. In the spirit of “walking our talk,” we decided to use it in our own company to give each other feedback.

It was an enlightening process. We learned some new things about our product, and we learned some important things about ourselves. According to the feedback I received from my partners and employees, my lowest-rated performance area was “listening.” In a meeting, they affirmed this result.

To be honest, I was shocked. I was a trained listener. I had studied the best books about listening. I had trained countless managers myself and had written all our content on listening. I had been consciously practicing active listening for 20 years. My first thought was, “What they’re saying can’t be valid.” I was in denial.

However, I’m a realistic person, and I prefer to accept the way things are as quickly as possible. But I must say, I felt a little bit of anger, bargaining and depression before I finally acknowledged that I needed to work on being a better listener. I took their feedback seriously and made a dedicated effort to practice in my behavior what I knew in my head. After months of effort and a couple more rounds of feedback, I ultimately succeeded. I’m a much better listener now.

Today, our company’s new product is called ProStar Coach. It’s like an online virtual gym for developing people skills and personal strengths. When we circulated it to selected companies for testing, one of the initial reports took us by surprise. Some of the testers said they disliked the graphics, which used variations of an upbeat cartoon rabbit. We had invested over $10,000 to create a positive and playful tone to balance the seriousness of the content. We wanted users to find the product welcoming, not intimidating.

I didn’t want to accept what these people were telling us. “We can’t please everybody,” I said. “Some people like the rabbits. Not everyone has the same sense of humor. The rabbits are cool. Most people will like them.”

But the feedback kept coming back negative. I got past my anger, bargaining and depression and accepted the fact that the rabbits were not a good fit for the business world. Too many managers were put off, complaining that the visuals seemed juvenile. In the end I said, “It is what it is. Our designer did a great job on the rabbits, they’re exactly what we asked for, but they’ve got to go.”

Once we acknowledged the truth, we quickly obtained the kind of upbeat images that we knew managers would favor. It only took a few days to replace the rabbits, and it vastly improved the look and feel of our new product.

A Fortune Cookie...

Accept the awful truth, and it will stop haunting you.

More Fortune Cookies...

The story behind the Fortune Cookies...

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

Skills vs. Strengths - You Gotta Do the Work

On this blog, I write a lot about people skills and personal strengths. My work is about helping people improve their skills and strengths, to more effectively deal with the challenges of life and work. But are "skills" and "strengths" two words that signify the same thing?

Along the way to an answer, two important thoughts.

First, people skills and personal strengths are not the same thing. They're different types of behavior patterns.

A skill is a set way of doing something. Ideally, it's the best way to do it, a "best practice" as we call it in the learning and development business. Often, this model has steps for doing it properly. For example, there's a best way for a swimmer to do the breast stroke. If a superior technique is discovered some day, every swimmer in the world will learn to do it that way.

Another example. When giving constructive feedback, it's easy to screw it up royally if you don't know what you're doing. You could end up being critical. So there are things you should do and shouldn't do, and the result is a model for a person to follow when giving feedback effectively. You might vary your application of the model, depending on the situation, but the idea is to understand the model and be faithful to it.

Personal strengths, on the other hand, are based on a general guideline rather than a procedure. For example, one important personal strength is honesty. the guideline is to tell the truth. There's no set way to do that. It depends on the situation. The important thing is to be open and accurate, to reveal things as they are, not a false representation of reality, no matter how embarrassing or painful the admission may be.

The other key fact is that the brain doesn't know the difference between a skill and a strength. To the brain, both are behavior patterns. Both require practice, practice, and more practice to ingrain the pattern. In both cases, consistent repetition stimulates the growth of dendrites to connect the enabling brain cells into an efficient pathway to trigger the behaviors efficiently and habitually.

So regardless of whether you're mastering a skill or ingraining a personal strength, there's no magic bullet. Knowing is not doing. You can learn a concept in a minute. But learning a skill might take a year. You have to do the work of consistent repetition before you can depend on the skill or strength to be there for you when you need it.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

Giving Feedback -The No. 2 People Skill

I recently posted an article about what I believe is the number one people skill:  listening. Possibly the No. 2 people skill is giving feedback. You might say it's the art of pointing out problems in a person's behavior without being critical. Very few people have mastered it.

Not long ago my wife Kathleen and I were in town shopping. We returned to the parking lot and I unlocked my door. On our car, unlocking the driver’s side doesn’t automatically unlock all four doors, so 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, Kathleen 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 nice way to put it. In fact, it was classic textbook 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 for others, especially for Kathleen. 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 feedback technology has kept me focused on the issue of communicating feedback for over 30 years. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about. 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. You can see how this can cause seriously relationship problems if not handled properly. No one likes criticism, and most people don’t know how to give feedback without being critical. Because it’s so difficult to bring up these issues, most people don’t bother. They just stew. Or blow up.

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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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."
 
In  the worst-case, you'd just forget about the incident, rationalizing that it probably won’t happen again. But if someone doesn’t know his actions cause problems, 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.

My favorite quote about feedback comes from management author Ken Blanchard: "Feedback is the breakfast of champions."

I didn't say giving effective feedback is easy. But then, doing the right thing often means doing the hard thing. Just remember that it gets easier every time you do it.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., , Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

Billons of Dollars Wasted, Part Two - What Happened Next...

As I said in my post on December 9th, I never did write the article exposing the "Dark Secret" of the training and development industry - that organizations world-wide were investing billions of dollars annually in instruction that fails to produce lasting changes in behavior and improved workplace performance.

During the 15 years that followed, four things happened...

First, billions of dollars continued to be wasted every year on training that doesn't have the desired impact. This shocking circumstance continues to this day.
Second, I got out of the training and development business. My company was good at it, but the work took a lot out of us and, as I explained in my previous post, it didn't give us the kind of satisfaction we were looking for. Instead, we evolved our company into a human resource development product business. Our flagship product since 1994 has been a breakthrough highly customizable multi-purpose web-based feedback survey system called 20/20 Insight GOLD. 

Third, a number of experts in the field noticed the same problem and did decide to write the articles--and books. Their common theme: organizations pay big bucks for training but by and large they refuse to pay for follow-through. Most of these books explain what the necessary follow-through should look like. The most vocal of the bunch is Mary L. Broad:

Transfer of Training (Addison-Wesley, 1992 - with John W. Newstrom)

Transferring Learning to the Workplace (ASTD, 1997)

Beyond Transfer of Training (Pfeiffer, 2005)

Two other good books on the topic:

Robert O. Brinkerhoff and Anne M. Apking, High-Impact Learning (Perseus, 2001)

Calhoun Wick, et al, The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning (Pfeiffer, 2006)

Fourth, my enduring interest in the cognitive neuroscience of learning led me to understand why the post-training follow-through is absolutely essential. It's because what's acquired in the classroom is mainly knowledge, not skill. Skill comes from many, many repetitions of the desired behavior in the workplace, so that the skill becomes ingrained as a work habit.

People won't continue using a new skill in the workplace unless it becomes second nature. Instead, they fall back on old, comfortable patterns. And skills become second nature only when the brain cells involved in the skill grow together to form a neural pathway. Repetitions of the skill excite the chemistry that initiates the growth of dendrites, which eventually connect the brain cells. And more repetition continues the growth until the pathway is complete. Only then will the new, improved approach to behavior, which was introduced in training, feel comfortable enough to use it in place of the old behavior pattern.

And this usually takes months of consistent application. This is why a few days of training can never produce the desired result. This is why follow-up is needed. And why, to this day, billions of dollars are still being wasted. Because it's still unusual for an organization to invest in an effective follow-up program.

My belief is that organizations may have heard the alarm, but none of the books I cited above included this essentially physiological cause-and-effect explanation. So executives don't appreciate why so much follow-up is necessary. Hence, I wrote an ASTD Infoline monograph entitled Enhance the Transfer of Training (2007), in which I outline the core problem and clarify the solution. It's all there, but in retrospect I think my paper was like a tree falling in the woods.

To address the problem with a technology solution, my company began development of ProStar Coach, a web-based learner support system to serve as a "virtual coach" during the period of follow-up.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .