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Feedback Loops for Excellent Interpersonal Communication

Good performance is good for the organization; it promises quality results in the future. It’s about more than only the outcome: how the result was attained in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and collaboration is equally important. Performance feedback entails it all: information on how and how well a task has been executed. In this post I deal with how to let coworkers know their effort is meaningful, good, or excellent. Continue reading “Feedback Loops for Excellent Interpersonal Communication”

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Never, ever sandwich your feedback!

When you order a sandwich, is it about the two slices of bread or what’s on the sandwich? The sandwich technique for feedback is a way to package something unpleasant: First start with something positive, then the criticism and round off with something positive. The negative stuff is sandwiched between the good stuff. Sounds good, so why do I say: Never, ever use this technique. Continue reading “Never, ever sandwich your feedback!”

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Achieving Excellent Interpersonal Communication

Without communication, no organization. An organization’s achievements are directly and indirectly influenced by interpersonal communication. This is true in all three directions: top-down, horizontally, and bottom-up. If you want an excellent organization, you will need excellent communication and, by extension, excellent interpersonal communication. But why? And what do you need to do to implement it? Continue reading “Achieving Excellent Interpersonal Communication”

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Once You Understand Emotion, Motivation Is Easy

One of the most powerful theories on how to motivate people on the work-floor is Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory. In my post ‘Effective Communication Is About Understanding Emotion’ I dealt with the idea of Observational Listening and how that way of listening focuses on emotions people are currently experiencing. These two concepts together make a powerful combination in which motivation takes current emotions into account. Continue reading “Once You Understand Emotion, Motivation Is Easy”

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Effective Communication Is About Understanding Emotion

Imagine a world in which you wouldn’t experience any emotion whatsoever. What would your life look like? Drab? No, it wouldn’t be drab, as that’s an emotion. Nor boring, peaceful or any other state of mind which implies an emotion is being experienced. This means, therefore, that emotions are necessary for you to be able to experience anything at all. It goes a step further: Emotions are adaptive, they increase your chances for survival. Take fear, for example. If you didn’t ever get scared, you wouldn’t be aware of danger and would do silly things, like not jumping out the way when a car comes barreling down the road towards you. Emotions tell you what is important, what needs your attention and what action is required. Only when something is important enough does it capture your attention, this all thanks to the emotion that brings it to the forefront for you. And you only learn something when it is important enough to be able to react appropriately to such a given situation. In other words, emotion not only tells you what is important, it also is the motor for your learning. Emotions are primary. Emotions motivate. Continue reading “Effective Communication Is About Understanding Emotion”

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Positive Language Is Good For Your Self-Image

People usually know very well what they don’t want, and are also easily able to verbalize that. The reverse is less true. Knowing what you don’t want is one thing; knowing what you do want is a little trickier, leave alone being consistent in verbalizing that in what is known as positive language. Yet doing just that is also good for your self-image. Continue reading “Positive Language Is Good For Your Self-Image”

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Why Leaders Give Feedback

An important task you have as a leader is giving feedback. Not only in terms of task performance (so that the other knows how he or she is doing), but also in terms of social behavior. This article is about just that: giving feedback on someone’s behavior with the intention that the other actually does something with that feedback. In other words, you give feedback because you would like to see different behavior. In a previous post, we looked at the difference between compliments, criticism and feedback. We now deal with the rules you should follow in order to increase the chance that your feedback will lead to desired results. Continue reading “Why Leaders Give Feedback”