in
Forums
I remember discussing the difference between behaviors and the intentions of a direct report in one of Dani's conferences. I believe she showed us a list of what falls into a behavior versus what is a motive or intention. For example "Susan is mean" versus "Susan, when you squint your eyebrows and give a one word reply to someone...."
Do you have a good list of observable behaviors to look for? I'm looking for this as a way to coach our supervisors.
The ECC "observation" sheet is a good guide
The sheets that we used in the ECC to help count behaviours is a good starting point if you want to provide examples. The important thing isn't to memorise a big list of all possible behaviours. You just need to remember the categories of behaviour:
Personally, I like to use the following filter to decide if something is a behaviour or not: if I asked someone I met on the street to act in the way I'm thinking of, would what that person did look recognisably similar to what I observed? If yes, then I'm describing a behaviour. If not, then I'm almost certainly describing a characterisation.
For example, if I ask someone to "act mean", they're just as likely to tell me I'm ugly as they are to squint their eyebrows and give me a one word reply. On the other hand, if I ask them to squint their eyebrows and give me a one word reply, well...
there's a cast for that
There's no "why" in feedback. It will help:
http://www.manager-tools.com/2011/06/there-no-why-feedback-part-1
http://www.manager-tools.com/2011/07/there-no-why-feedback-part-2