How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

particular topic, and she was worried that their concerns would end up derailing
the whole thing.” Ndidi reminded herself to sit back in her chair, and started her
coaching with this goal-focused question: “What’s your vision of the ideal
outcome for this meeting?” “At first, my colleague was floored by it,” she says.
“I realized, sadly, this was probably the first genuine question I’d ever really
asked her. But then she relaxed, started thinking, and came up with solutions I
would never have come up with myself, like creating an open-space session at
the beginning of the meeting, where attendees could raise all their questions.
And it was hands down the best conversation I’d ever had with her. She glided
out of the room on air.”
Ndidi says this coaching approach has shifted the performance of her team.
“Now my staff behave like leaders. They’re not afraid to speak up, with me or
each other.” It’s also created more breathing room in her own schedule. “If you
coach someone rather than telling them the answer, you usually don’t have them

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coming to you with the same issue ever again, because they know how to solve it
next time around. Plus you don’t have to come up with all the answers yourself.
So I’m less tired. This is part of my time management arsenal now.”
BRAIN-FRIENDLY FEEDBACK
However effective your coaching, getting the best out of people sometimes
means that we have to give constructive feedback to improve their performance
or get a situation back on track.
Yet personal criticism, however well intended, naturally puts most people’s
brains on high alert. In fact, it’s a perfect example of a nonphysical threat: it can
undermine the recipient’s pride and social standing, and possibly their job
security, so it’s hard to stop their brain from going into defensive mode when
they’re told that something they’ve done is wrong. Even if they know it’s not the
grown-up thing to do, their brain is contemplating a snappish comment (fight), a
cowed withdrawal (flight), or a hope that the problem might just go away
(freeze).
So how can you encourage someone to accept your suggestions without
triggering that kind of defensive response? The trick is to express your views
without making the other person 
wrong
, by finding ways in which they could be
(partly) right and building your suggestions around that. This helps them to stay
in discovery mode, allowing you to have a more intelligent, open-minded
conversation about the issues you’d like them to consider. None of this means
you sidestep any shortcomings; it just means calling them out in a way that’s
going to make things better, rather than worse. Here are three ways to give this
kind of brain-friendly feedback: