ARE YOU GETTING TO THE NEGATIVE?

Why Your Questions Aren't Getting You What You Want

Knowing the audience, I can guarantee you’ve asked, or been asked one of the following questions, with a response that falls within this range.

1) Someone in the family asks: “So how is school going?” / “How are your teachers?” / How was your week in school?”
Met with a “fine”

2) To a client: “How are we doing and what can we do better?”
Met with some form of “You’re doing fine, I wouldn’t change much. Everyone can do better in certain things right? but just keep doing what you’re doing”

3) To someone you lead “How do you think you’re doing/ how your season went /how do you think your quarter went?
Met with a slightly constructive (but not too negative) picture, probably sharing your standard 1 or 2 things they highlight they’ve done well, coupled with an area they know they can improve on that has most likely already been discussed between the two of you. Is this the absolute most common outcome of any review you’ve been a part of??

In any of these cases:

• Have you learned anything?

• Did you get deeper?

• Did you grow more connected?

No, but it’s it also not their fault.

You didn’t deliver a prompt that will deliver what YOU want in return.

But you can.

Are you prompting your people the way you think you are?

Follow this pretty simple tweak and you won’t walk away from conversations thinking "I never get anything back when I ask them anything”

It’s a 5X benefit of changing your approach.

Together UP! Is based on things that come up regularly in my work with leaders and their teams and the things I tend to notice in the real world. If you want to dig deeper into the work I do as a Leadership & Performance Coach visit my site at www.unlockperformance.co 

I’d love your feedback!

Here’s What You’re Going To Change ||
Flip Your Approach To Negative 

In psychology, the negativity bias is our tendency not only to register negative stimuli more readily but also to dwell on these events. In fact studies have shown (and I’m guessing you’d feel this in yourself) that negative events elicit more rapid and more prominent responses than non-negative events (Carretie, Mercado, Tapia, & Hinojosa, 2001 // c/o Catherine Moore - Positivepsychology.com)

As humans, we tend to:

• Remember traumatic experiences better than positive ones.

• Recall insults better than praise.

• React more strongly to negative stimuli.

• Think about negative things more frequently than positive ones.

• Respond more strongly to negative events than to equally positive ones.

If you flip this around and prompt their impulse to respond to a negative, they will ALWAYS share more. And they will ALWAYS give you something that comes from a deeper, more authentic place.

1) Ask instead What’s the worst part about school this week?
What is your least favorite teacher?

2) To a client: “What’s the worst thing we do?”
or - “What’s the biggest thing holding you back from calling us?

3) To someone you lead “What is the one thing you wish you had the opportunity to more of?” - or “what was your worst day with the team this season?

The crucial thing that you may not have picked up on, is i’m not asking IF there is something, I’m suggesting that there is something and asking what it is.

Why is this crucial? Because there’s always one thing. But by asking if there is, you still leave it in their hands to decide whether it’s safe enough to “go there” with you.

Perhaps it has never come up before, and they don’t want to sound like they’re complaining. Perhaps they prefer to keep it polite - even though you’re ready and EAGER for a real answer so you can both improve and perform better TOGETHER.

Why Does This Matter?

When you can trigger a more authentic impulse to respond, you’ll learn something more about what the person cares about, what triggers them, and what motivates them. Importantly, you’ll find out what impacts their behavior in a way that you can start to understand the person on a different level.

It’s a human need to connect.

And for success in whatever you do - whether that be develop a deeper relationship with your child; improve a new relationship; repair an old one; or just simply dominate, connection is often the elixer that makes that happen.

• Connection builds trust

• It builds teamwork

• It builds collaboration.

• It builds resilience.

• It builds “buy-in”

• It pretty much solves for a whole array of things.

• And in the absence of real connection, even a small divide allows for significant problems to seep in.

And this tactic delivers for you two vital contributions to building connection:

1) Learning what makes people tick - by learning what drives them nuts is a powerful way to learn what intrinsically motivates people.

Remember they will ALWAYS share more than just what they don’t like.

2) You’ve opened them up to their own authenticity, which builds connection. Them sharing, (and you listening) is a meaningful deposit into the relationship.

What’s A Low-Risk Place For You To Begin?
It’s 4th of July Weekend - Start With Ice Cream

Ask your kid or your boyfriend or your wife or whoever what their favorite flavor of ice cream is.

Observe their response. They’ll think for a sec, and pick one.

THEN — Ask them which one they would NEVER GET.

Observe their response. Was it different? Is it visceral? More emotional? More CONVICTED?

(BTW my go-to is mint-chocolate chip, but I wouldn’t feel like i’d be giving up too much to say Cookies & Cream, or perhaps a little Moose Tracks!)

Every day, I work with people who are so eager to get better buy-in or find out what’s holding their people back.

The solution is always either reframing the questions they’re asking their people, - OR - to proactively go out and make them feel seen and heard to change their behavior.

It’s simply those two things.

Start here today with the questions and we’ll keep talking about how to keep building connection, and keep changing the motivation and performance of the people around you.

We do it TOGETHER!

TOGETHER UP!

I’d love to hear your feedback on other ideas or on what you think about what I’m talking about.
Tell me. [email protected]

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