I am the Chief Energizing Officer for the Matchbox Group. We ignite. involve. inspire.
I am a keynote speaker, author and positive change agent.
I energize people to improve their cultures.
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Posts By Bob Faw
The Amazing Kreskin: Positive Thinking … Makes You Resourceful
The Amazing Kreskin clarifies on Big Think that positive thinking isn’t magical. However, by staying focused on the goal and positively looking for ways to get there, you become more resourceful.
Influencing Jerks, Debbie Downers, Toddlers, and Other Difficult People (AKA Priming for Negative Employees)
In our last post we talked about priming for learning. Many of those suggestions can also be used with negative employees (so read through our last post to review), but here are a few more ideas to help navigate the obstacles created by employees with negative attitudes.
Remember: you must energize yourself before you can energize others.
If you have the expectation that a person is negative, it shows in your face, in your tone and even in the words that you choose. Your bias will be evident and the person will react negatively to everything that you are communicating, verbally or not. This is a concept that we have referenced before called the Chameleon Effect. As this principle demonstrates, people tend to respond to an experience in ways that create exactly what they are afraid of happening. Some people would call this the self-fulfilling prophecy, but the Chameleon Effect is more scientific, and as you probably know, I’m a real geek for science!
Negative employees fall into three categories:
- People with chronic negative attitudes. (You can’t help but feel sad for people who are in this situation.)
- People who are just going through a negative time, but who have high potential if they are energized.
- People who you believe are negative, but in reality it’s only your perspective. (For example, if a person disagrees with you in a meeting, you can see them as negative.)
The great news is that there are ways to turn around a negative employee situation, by using a few simple tools. (The more you use them, the easier they become.)
Create Positive Balance
Start by creating a positive list that will help rebalance your negativity bias. To do this, prime yourself with what is good about the negative employee, such as focusing on their skills or past accomplishments. Take some time and come up with a solid list, if you can. This will help you mentally overcome your negative feelings toward their behavior or attitude. These must be sincere; fake positivity backfires.
Initiate a Win-Win
Next, think about the behavior or attitude that you want to see this employee exhibit. Then consider the incentive for the employee to shift their behavior. If you can communicate the effect that this good behavior will have on their relationships and their job satisfaction, you will have a better chance of getting what you want out of them. It’s easy to forget that we need to appeal to the employee’s better interest, not just our own or that of the company.
For example: I have a colleague who kills ideas in meetings a lot, which shuts down creativity. I wanted to run our review meetings more positively and productively. I knew it would help people to share best practices and build creativity-energizing morale. I figured that the incentive for my idea-killing colleague is to please our clients. So before a momentous meeting I told her, “In order to dazzle our client I’d like to start by seeing what has dazzled them in the past—to make sure we keep doing it. Then I want to stay focused on how to really impress the client by brainstorming how to do it even better next time.” My colleague agreed to give it a try. It worked so well that now it’s our agreed upon way to review. She’s also more open to my ideas in general.
Power Up
When you’re working with negative employees, it can be very helpful to use power reframes. Especially if employees are in the second or third category, approaching them with a power reframe gives them an opportunity to live into the change you would like to see. To create a power reframe, start by giving two benefits that will appeal to them before you tell them the behavior that you want from them. For example, if you’ve got an intelligent employee who doesn’t work well with others, but still wants advancement and praise as a high contributor, you can create a power reframe such as, “This project has the opportunity for exposure that can make a difference in future promotions, as well as kudos from the boss. In order to pull this off we need to be sure that people see us communicating really well with our team mates.”
(This is better than saying, “You’re a terrible team player. Stop being a prima donna and get your act together.” You know you’re tempted to say this sometimes. I know I am.)
This power reframe allows the employee an opportunity to envision a better future for themselves, as well as the team goal. People are more likely to go along with you after seeing that it will help them get what they want. The key to an effective power reframe is that it must be authentic and contain incentives that are important to that person. Otherwise you’ll sound like a used car salesman trying to sell a car with three wheels.
Power reframes can be much harder than they sound, so it helps to rehearse your power reframe before you walk into the situation. I’ve been using power reframes for years, but I can still be at a loss for reframing words when I’m in the middle of a frustrating situation.
Get Excited
Another technique that can really help is to get to know negative employees better. If you can discover something about them that you can genuinely get excited about and care about, this will help you in working with them. I’ve had personal experience with people who started out with a negative attitude, but once I developed a connection with them, they turned around and we had a great relationship.
The Golden Rule works in many situations, but with many employees The Platinum Rule works even better: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.
(FYI, these tips also work with children! You can inspire your children just like you would employees.)
If you think your team members would benefit from learning how to prime themselves and one another, give me a call. I would love to help. And if you have any great tips for priming negative employees, please share them. I love to hear your ideas! Simply comment below or connect with us on social media. (Connect with us on social media anyway; we share lots of cool stuff!)
You Can Lead a Horse to Water… and Then Prime It to Drink—Positive Priming for Teaching Others
Early in my career, I was leading a training in my usual extrovert style—talking loudly, getting people interacting and laughing—when I noticed one attendee who was barely participating. He was sitting in the corner, staring at me intently with his arms folded. Because of my negativity bias I assumed that he must be judging me as a poor trainer. After all, I reasoned, if he thought it was a good training he would be interacting with the rest of us, right? Thankfully I caught myself before I started acting coldly toward him and ignoring him. Instead I decided instead to prime myself by assuming (playing an inner movie) that he was getting a lot out of the workshop. That helped me make sure I was making eye contact with him and giving him the same attention as the rest of the group. After the workshop he came up to me. I was steeling myself for negative feedback, but he said, “Thank you. That was one of the most interesting workshops I’ve ever been to, and I learned a lot.” This was before I knew about introverts and extroverts, and that his staring at me quietly and intently was his version of high engagement. And to think, I came this close to blowing it!
This situation taught me so many lessons! When you’re teaching people, it can be very easy to focus on how you want them to react, what they’re not able to do, the difficult aspects of getting them to understand the concept, or the deficits in their capabilities. This tendency comes from the caveman part of our brain, which is irrational and reactive. I now see that negativity in a learning situation often starts with the instructor.
There has been some fascinating research that shows when people are first learning a new skill, they learn better if negative influences are minimized and the atmosphere is highly positive. The idea behind this is that positive interactions surrounding a new activity will increase positive feelings toward that experience and open you up to enhanced learning abilities. It also keeps us focused on what to do, and less distracted worrying about what not to do.
The same research shows that when people have mastered a skill, they will improve more if they actually receive a higher degree of negative feedback. How interesting!
It makes sense: When you have aptitude in a subject, you possess a higher degree of confidence because of it, so constructive criticism isn’t such a blow to your ego; instead it’s an opportunity to fine-tune your abilities. Yet when you’re just starting a new activity, it can be tempting to give up if the process is steeped in negativity.
Here are a few tips to make learning positive and prime yourself to teach others more effectively.
Watch What You Say
As the one teaching a skill, you can help create a positive learning environment by giving people feedforward—giving them ideas for future success, instead of just telling them how they did in the past. Utilizing the power of feedforward instead of simply telling people what not to do can be extremely effective.
You can even facilitate the process with the words you choose. A lot of times we may say something like, “I want to help you get better.” But when you say that, the caveman part of the person’s brain takes over and starts an inner dialogue that says, “You think I’m not good.”
Instead, try saying, “I want to help you get even better.” This reframe plays a different inner movie for the listener. It implies that they are already good, and adding that one word goes a long way to build on their confidence.
Build on Strengths Instead of Eliminating Gaps
You’ll find that people are a lot less defensive when you build on their strengths versus assuming that they have gaps in skill. In fact, once I started using this approach, I learned that much of the time I had been wrong about the gaps I’d assumed.
Use the Chameleon Effect
When you’re teaching with the expectation that your audience is going to be able to understand the topic and excel, this belief comes across in your body language and facial expressions, as well as the tools and opportunities you give people.
Teaching others well starts with priming yourself. Setting high expectations for their capabilities will cause you to treat them in a way that builds confidence and is more likely to build upon their strengths. This phenomenon is called the chameleon effect because people often adapt to our expectations.
Use Positive Emotion as Learning Glue
Another interesting fact is that emotion helps our memories work better. The more emotional we are when we experience something, the more likely we are to remember it. If you reflect back on many of your most vivid memories, you will probably find that there is an emotion—positive or negative—tied to it.
When you’re teaching, if you can help your students associate the topic with a success story in their lives, it will tie to their strong emotions and help them remember the topic. No matter how good your content is, people only learn it if they’re engaged, so how you present it to them is as important as the quality of the content itself.
Hopefully these tips will be helpful the next time you need to teach someone. I would love to hear about your experiences with teaching and how you positively prime yourself to help others learn. Simply comment below or connect with me on social media and share.
And if you’re looking for inspiration, or just a chuckle, check out our shareable memes.
Bowl a Strike – The secrets to learning a new skill quickly and confidently
A number of motivational psychologists have asked the same question: “Which gives better results: focusing on positives or negatives?” (Another questions they ask is “Why do people enjoy bowling?” – just kidding.)
Four researchers at the University of Wisconsin decided to find out (about focus that is). They used one of America’s most popular adult sports, bowling, to do the research. The experiment involved monitoring the scores of low-skilled bowlers in four leagues over a few months, and two leagues showed something startling. One league had been asked to track only what they did right and focus on doing those things more; another league had been asked to track only the mistakes and focus on avoiding those errors in the future. While both teams improved, the team tracking what they did right had 100 percent greater improvement than the team that was tracking its mistakes!
The researchers go on to say that when people are new at skills lots of positive feedback and ideas are the most helpful. Once someone has mastered a skill set a higher ratio of negative feedback is more helpful for improvement. In other words, keep newbies focused on how to do the skill. Distracting with too much negative takes them off course and can diminish important confidence-building.
The bottom-line is that focusing on both positives and negative are important. Both prime people. But prime well, so that they are clear about what how to do the skill well, and they motivated to keep improving. This calms the caveman and energizes the artist.
Whoop it up! Celebrate the positives. At first, only point out negatives that will make a big deal if not fixed. Then quickly get back to what is working, and what is best to do next.
Go bowl nonstop strikes!
Research Note: Kirschenbaum, D. S., A. M. Ordman, A. J. Tomarken, and R. Holtzbauer.
“Effects of Differential Self-monitoring and Level of Mastery on Sports Performance: Brain Power Bowling.” Cognitive Therapy and Research 6, no. 3 (1982): 335–42.
