Giving Feedback: The Power of Positive

Posted on | October 20, 2009 | No Comments

In some recent posts I have talked about the power of positive feedback and how hard it is to hear it. Recently I had a client talk to me about improving team morale. Her team was struggling with reductions in staff and budgets—a common experience in today’s economy. The team has been feeling overwhelmed and was struggling to keep services at the same level with fewer resources. They also felt that the “administration” didn’t value them. My client was noticing that morale was suffering and her staff meetings, when the team discussed current problems or crises, felt unproductive.

She asked me, as a facilitator and meeting designer, how to make her team meetings more productive. Typically I would talk about designing good conversations and structuring thorough dialogue—but in this case, my client’s description of the low morale made me think about the situation differently. This group was focusing on all the negative aspects of work and on the gap between what was needed and their limited resources. So I made a suggestion to my client: She was to begin each meeting by asking each person to share something they were proud of accomplishing in the previous week. She agreed reluctantly to try the technique for one month, though the suggestion certainly hadn’t been what she had hoped I would offer!

A month later she called to say that opening her meetings with that question had dramatic effects on the staff and the meetings. She reported that at first people were a bit reluctant to answer and had a hard time even finding answers. But she held firm and waited for each person to respond. She said they got better at answering each week. And as the month went on, she and her staff were shocked to realize how much they were accomplishing and how good it felt to recognize it. They noticed that, having acknowledged successes, they could take on the other meeting topics in a more positive fashion. They started seeing them as opportunities and challenges instead of weighty, unsolvable problems. Overall, my client reported that people were feeling more successful and energized.

This story is another example of how we forget to acknowledge the good things and how programmed we are to solve problems. Problem solving is great and, in fact, essential—but dealing with problems can be demoralizing if we never look at our accomplishments.

Acknowledging good work, progress and successes builds energy and enthusiasm. Why keep plugging away if the only reward is feeling bad? Find ways to regularly acknowledge positive contributions and progress. Starting your meetings this way is only one solution. Try it and see what happens.

Stay tuned, and I will give some other suggestions in my next blog. If you have any suggestions for acknowledging positive accomplishments, I’d love to hear them—and I am sure other readers would, too. Please leave your comments.

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