Identifying Behaviors

Matt,

When you characterize people's behaviors into "attitudes," you are barking up the wrong tree when it comes to feedback.

Saying, "be less annoying or continue being nice" isn't feedback. It's advice. Advice is not only less helpful to them, but is also more likely to illicit a defensive response. Listen to the feedback cast again, and check out the cast, "There is no Why in Feedback"

The best feedback draws a clear, irrefutable link between behavior and outcome. Instead of telling a direct that he/she was being confrontational try giving them feedback more like this.

When the customer proposed that new idea, and you interrupted him by saying "no, that won't work," the customer looked at his colleague, shrugged his shoulders, sat back in his chair and disengaged from the conversation. How could you handle that disagreement about approach differently next time?

Hope that helps,

-Adam

Imagine turning the sound off on the TV, so you can only see what's happening.  Those are behaviors.  Tone of voice and choice of words are behaviors too, but the body language is a good start on how to separate behaviors from our interpretation of those behaviors.  Some examples may help:

"Confrontational" might be the interpretation that comes from observing behaviors like:  raising your voice, using larger hand gestures than normal, crossing your arms, furrowing your brow, invading someone's personal space, or giving ultimatums.

"Helpful" might be the interpretation that comes from:  smiling and nodding, offering constructive suggestions (even when, or maybe ESPECIALLY when, you see a place of disagreement or a part of a plan that just won't work), using a softer or calmer tone of voice, putting aside whatever else you are working on to pay full attention to the customer.

Another way to look at the difference between behaviors and interpretation of behaviors is:  Can the person easily deny it?  The person can deny feeling confrontational or angry, but they can't easily deny that they raised their voice, invaded someone's personal space, and gave an ultimatum before crossing their arms and storming out.  Behaviors are objective, interpretations are subjective. 

Great question.  Here's how I approach it - If you think about how MT defines behavior (the words you say, how you say them, body language, facial expression, work product), then judgments around attitude are essentially drawing conclusions based on one or more of those observable behaviors.  Maura's response provided some great examples.  

When I find that I start to form an opinion around someone's attitude, I like to ask myself, "OK, what did that person say or do that led me to draw that conclusion about them?"  I've found that asking this question helps to interrupt an immediate (and often not especially effective) reaction and helps to begin identifying behaviors.  This didn't come naturally to me and required a lot of listening to podcasts and consciously thinking about behavior in order to become comfortable with it.  

I will also put a plug in for the Effective Relationship Series.  If you order even one of the casts, which are great by the way, you get access to a 48-minute podcast called "Behavior is What Matters", which goes into great depth on each of the behaviors.  I found it to be extremely valuable.  

Regards,

Mike

 I can definitely see where describing the behavior is the best way to approach this rather than characterizing the behavior with an aggregate attitude opinion.

Yet, there is still a small opening for arguing.

Saying - "When you invade a co-worker's personal space he feels intimated and perceives you as bullying - that's not an effective way to communicate with him. How can you do that differently next time ? "

The comeback can always be something like

- His feelings and perceptions are his problem.

- or - What is his personal space ? How many inches away do you think is personal space ? That's your subjective idea of personal space, I disagree.

- or - I think what I did was very effective, that's your opinion that my methods are not as effective. You just want me to do things your way.

I don't see the need to do anything differently.

To wit - don't we have to go back to rely on "Role Power" and then give specific instructions ... ?

"Yes, I do define effective for our team.  Please, stay no closer than 5.75 inches from you co-workers and keep your voice below 3.6 decibels when speaking with Roger."

I'm just thinking about conversations I've had with my Directs who like to argue with my interpretations of things.  No matter how objective I try to be, they perceive it as my subjective opinion and feel free to disagree with me.  Then I have to make my original recommendation into a specific instruction.

They can't seem to take-a-hint or connect-the-dots - and I come out looking like a tyrant making petty little rules about specific interactions.

Has anyone else had this problem ?

TJPuccio

 TJPuccio, I think the "Shot across the bows" cast addresses this issue.