Do You Forget To Give Positive Responses?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on May 7, 2012
I have an interesting cadre of friends, and I like that because it makes life interesting. For the most part I feel like I'm on the same wavelength with them, but I do have a couple of friends who seem to differ with me on a great many things.
I have one friend where, almost everything I ever say to him, in some fashion he has to disagree. It pretty much doesn't matter what it is; if I say it then it has to be wrong. What eventually happens, though, is someone else says the same thing to him and suddenly it's totally correct. Every once in awhile he'll own up to it; other times, he acts like it was his idea all the time.
This doesn't tend to be my general MO, if you will. Whereas I won't agree with anything someone says "just because", I will often go to great lengths to build people up, possibly offering suggestions I think will help them to get where they want to go.
I do that because I don't believe anyone is ever helped if all they ever get is rebuff in some fashion. Everyone likes validation, whether they need it or not. We like being told that our dreams, goals, fantasies, whatever, are legitimate. If you're 5'1" tall and say you want to play center for your favorite basketball team I'm not going to urge you to keep on that road to ultimate failure. If you said you wanted to learn what it takes to become a professional basketball coach, no matter your age, I'd encourage you to figure out how you can get the information and the experience needed to get there. Even if it seems like a pipe dream to many others there's nothing saying it's not a possibility.
If you're going to be a leader, you need to know when to give positive responses and how to do it to get the maximum benefit out of your employees. You also have to be genuine; telling someone how great they were because they knew the right keys to push to enter information into the computer when that's what their job is supposed to be comes out sounding false and patronizing. Giving someone kudos for the way they handled a difficult customer on the telephone is something else; who hasn't had to deal with an unhappy customer at least once in their professional lives?
Today I give you permission to dream about the things you want in your life, and while you're doing it dream about ways in which you're going to make someone else's life positive today.
Haha, to some extends I always argue with my friends almost at any topic until we get to the point. About positive response, I often forget to do it, even I forgot to write a positive review for a friend of mine for nearly 3 weeks due to some personal problems.
I’m pretty good with compliments Carl, as I figure I’m also pretty good at giving my opinion at other times that might not be as complimentary.
About compliments, I think I was overdoing this in the past, right now rarely and often just to show good manner.
Hi Mitch, I think everyone needs a little reinforcement. Giving those “Kudo’s” to people is not only an act of kindness, but validating their accomplishments.
Your first paragraph really pulled me into this post. I always think to myself that if I put all my friends in one place, they would all be different. But the one thing they would have in common would be that they are interesting. If they agree with me or not, it doesn’t matter. What matters is they are open enough to think out of the box.
That’s who I like to surround myself with.
I enjoyed your post,
Donna
Thanks for your comment Donna, and isn’t that one of the best things about having friends? Something that was strange for the longest time is that my friends didn’t really get along. Each friend has his or her purpose, and separately they were great. But I’d bring them together and they didn’t interact all that well with each other. It took getting to a certain age for everyone to learn how to play well together; stunning but true. And every one of them is great; that’s what I love as well.
Leaders build people up, to a great length this involves positive feedback. But then realistically, sometimes people need to be told the brutal truth even if at that moment it might seem like talking them down. I would say the whole balance lies in effectively communicating what the issues are when we are talking people down rather than focusing on the individual. Address the issue not the person.
Like the example of your friend you sited above, I would say he just wants to disagree for the sake of it. He is disagreeing with you [person] and not really with the issue [idea]. As leaders, this should be avoided!
Thanks for your position Tito, and you’re right, being disagreeable for no reason doesn’t help get anything positive done. True, a leader does have to let people know when they’ve messed up, but at the same time a leader need to let them know when they’ve done good. And if they never or rarely do good then a leader needs to be strong enough to let that person go and bring in someone else. Balance; you got it right.