As long as people work, there will be behavioral errors, and situations that need correcting.
There is a lot of room for improvement in the way bosses, coworkers, and friends handle these situations.
One of the most popular responses to correcting behavior is to ignore it and hope that it goes away. This doesn’t work very often. In my experience, the times that I used that approach, the unaddressed behavior came back twice as severe, and caused more trouble.
The only way we can hope for continued improvement is to provide feedback. And the most effective feedback is feedback that is actually heard and understood.
One method of providing feedback is to lose your cool, and angrily threaten, “don’t ever do that again!” While it is heard, the rationale for it is most likely passed over. That is a classic case of motivation by fear. An abuse of power. Not only is the messenger “shot,” but the recipient most likely goes into a defensive mode and hears little of what you say. Doesn’t work well…
When you hope to bring about a change in behavior, the more the person
understands and agrees with the change, the more likely the change of behavior will stick. And even though the error or behavior may have been annoying or create anger, your best hope is to take a proactive approach to promoting the right behavior.
That is why a “focus forward” approach is necessary. It doesn’t help to make the person feel bad about the error. All you ‘ll achieve is defensiveness and blocking.
Instead, help them learn from it, so that it is not repeated. Keep them listening and engaged in the future. Believe it or not, feedback is a sales job. Sell them on the right behavior, don’t punish them for the wrong behavior. It works.
For more tips, check out our ebook and package of resources to help you with this.
