How often do you catch people doing it right? It’s easy to see when people miss things but how often are you catching them doing it right, not only in the workplace, at home, or even with your partner and as a parent, are you reinforcing the behaviours you want to see. The secret being that you need to be extremely specific. Not just saying “you did that really well” it’s about stating exactly what they did really well.
For example, with my children when they were younger, I used to come home and often find their bags sitting in the doorway. I’d just about trip over them coming through the front door. So, I’d bring them to the entrance and show them, I’d then get them to tell me where they need to go – up on the hooks and most importantly I would make sure that when I came back and saw them on the hooks I would thank them by saying, “I really appreciate you putting your bags on the hooks” therefore reinforcing the behaviour I want to see not mentioning the behaviour I don’t, like thanks for not putting them on the floor!!!.
Because I teach people how to give feedback in my Leaders as Coaches (LAC) course I often hear people saying something like “you did a good job because you didn’t muck it up this time”. I call that a back handed compliment, using a negative to praise.
The old way to teach giving feedback was to give a positive, give a negative and then give a positive. And that is what we call The Poo Sandwich.
What I learnt about this method was that if you give feedback this way all the time, you are reminding them of the negative – what they didn’t do and secondly, when I work with leaders onsite, actually standing next to them listening and observing them giving feedback if they are using The Poo Sandwich when they are giving staff the positive, the staff would say “yeah, yeah but what do you really want to tell me?” They were just waiting for the negative.
That’s where I realised it was not a great technique and I developed my own. This was based on using non-blaming language starting with an improvement if needed, getting them to identify what they can do to improve then finishing with the positives. This leaves them still feeling like they are doing good things and in my experience they repeat them as well as improving the area identified.
Communicate the improvement, finish on the positive
Be careful of “you did a really good job, BUT because you didn’t do this…. Be careful of that type of feedback where you are reminding them of the behaviour you don’t want them to do. For example, if you want your child to walk on the footpath say – I love the way you walk on the footpath, it’s a lovely safe thing to do. Rather than, it’s very good that you are not running on the road. As soon as you say this, you put the idea of running on the road in their mind and it’s the same with adults.
As I have mentioned in other articles, one of the things I have learnt about adults is that adults are children in big bodies. We are not actually vastly different.
As I said earlier, my belief is that if you have things you want people to work on start with the improvement and then finish on the things they are doing really well. Leave them in that positive state.
Not everything is wrong. Not everything needs to be improved. We often don’t acknowledge and in my experience of teaching customer service standards for over 30 years most people are demonstrating good behaviours, it’s just fine tuning and identifying behaviours they can improve.
Even Ned Stark in Game of Thrones – Game of Thrones!!!! so we know its historically factual. Right! Said
“Everything said before a BUT is bullshit!”
I reckon, if Ned Stark said it, it must be true.
How often do you catch people doing it right – your family, your partner, your team?
When you do, do you communicate the improvement and finish on the positives, or do you give feedback on the positive and then throw in a backhander “you did a good job because you didn’t muck it up?
Or are you using The Poo Sandwich – “you did a really good job, BUT because you didn’t do this….?
Need more information? Have a look through my previous Blogs, located on The Loyalty Zone website or contact me, I look forward to hearing from you.
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Warm Regards
Craig Cherry