Tag: behaviour

Categories
Communication Leadership skills People skills

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”
Categories
Communication Counselling skills Leadership skills People skills

Do Difficult People Actually Exist?

© 2016 P.L. Houtekamer

Image: © 2016 P.L. Houtekamer

Try the following: Write down one of your good qualities and call that A. This can be any sort of quality, such as proactive, friendly or empathic. Now think about how another person would experience your behaviour if you were to exaggerate this good quality, and call this B. If you exaggerate ‘proactive’, for example, that could be experienced as meddling or pushy. There isn’t one correct answer; think about how you would experience an exaggerated behaviour in another. Now, think about what could be an opposite of B, but in a positive sense. For meddling that could be being patient, for example. This positive opposite, you call C. The last step is to exaggerate C: Someone who is too patient never gets going, or is passive, for example. This is called D. Now for the million-dollar question: Do people who demonstrate the behaviour D tend to irritate you?

Continue reading “Do Difficult People Actually Exist?”
Categories
Psychology

A Biopsychosocial Model Of Behaviour

Predicting behaviour is an interesting enterprise and is one of the kingpins of the study of psychology. In this article we will use a model proposed by Alan Watkins (2013), adapted and slightly adjusted to fit the terminology generally used in the field of psychology. In his model, behaviour is like the roof of a building, and the building represents the person’s behavioural skills. People generally think that possessing the necessary skills is enough to demonstrate appropriate behaviour. However, merely having a skill does not guarantee that it will be used.

Continue reading “A Biopsychosocial Model Of Behaviour”