Maximizing Performance Through Applied Common Sense*

If you think about your relationship with your mate, you might notice that you and/or your mate is really good at criticizing. And, if you are good at criticizing the prognosis for your relationship really stinks.  You are going to kill the relationship because criticism is continually toxic; it actually robs the relationship of its foundation. If you want to pretend that you are helping instead of actually criticizing you might want to adjust your perspective on things.  A relationship with continual criticism in it will actually die.  So replace the criticism with all that reinforcement that you did during courtship.  When you do that, you are building a foundation and you can repair things. 

People are often uncomfortable getting criticism and it makes them feel bad.  Sometimes we set them up and it makes it worse.  We say, “Well, gee, Bob, you are doing a good job… but… this isn’t very good and that’s pretty bad too.”  If you set them up that way, it makes the situation worse because even if Bob is doing a good job he is unlikely to hear that.  My recommendation is when you tell people what they are doing right; make sure you tell them the good news after the bad news.  Say something like this, “Bob, I really want you to work on your customer service skills, and I am telling you this because your technical skills are absolutely brilliant and you add so much value around here.”  If you tell them the bad news first and then the good news after that, you’ll get by far better sign-up and changed behavior.