Tag Archives: training

Can negative feedback be positive?

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This Blog Post by Heidi Grant Halvorson  is worth checking out, as it debunks the notion that we should only give positive feedback. There is a classic scene in the movie “Meet the Fockers.”  In the movie, the lead character’s (Greg) father-in-law is stunned to find out that they make 9th place ribbons. He makes this discovery while perusing a shrine to Greg still maintained by Greg’s parents that feature a number of the mementos to mediocrity. I think it rather brilliantly illustrates the idea we should only encourage and never criticize. Criticism though is an important and necessary component of staff development, and understanding when to use each is important.

So what purpose does positive and negative feedback serve?  Positive feedback does help to increase staff commitment by enhancing their experience and boosting their confidence. Negative feedback is more explanatory as it provides feedback on where staff needs to spend place additional effort, as well as offering insight into how they might improve.

With that understanding, you can see that positive and negative feedback each serve a purpose. For an inexperienced staff member, positive feedback may help them to stay optimistic and comfortable given the challenges they are facing.  This added encouragement is something novices tend to need more than the seasoned pro. When you are dealing with an expert, and they essentially are looking for those opportunities for incremental improvement, it’s negative feedback or criticism that will help them achieve at the next level.

Keep this lesson in mind when trying to develop staff.  This isn’t second grade soccer, so we don’t have to hand out 9th place ribbons.  Negative feedback may be exactly what certain members of your team need to be on top of their game.

Fish can’t climb trees!

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So if you’re like me, half your friends on Facebook post uplifting pics, sarcastic pics, stupid pics, people I would like to punch in the throat pics (okay I do like that one).  Most of the time I either ignore, chuckle, or shake my head as appropriate and move on to bigger and better things.  This one however resonated with me.

“Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”  This made me wonder to myself, how many tree climbing fish do I know?  Or more importantly, how many fish am I trying to get to climb a tree?

How much energy might we be wasting trying to get conformity, or trying to get people to do something they are not wired to do?  The answer to that question might be scary.  Are the right people not on the bus, or are we putting them in the wrong seats?  As leaders we need to leverage our resources to maximize our output.  That is not going to be achieved with an extensive tree climbing training program for our fish, and I certainly don’t want to be judged by my ability to teach fish to climb.

Now if there isn’t a roll for fish in our organization, that is a different problem.  But we need to let the monkeys climb and let the fish swim. In other words, let people do what they do best. Leverage their skill sets to your mutual advantage. I regularly see marketing people struggle to produce a spreadsheet, and it falls short of the mark anyway.  If they had asked anyone in the finance department it would have been done in minutes, and done better.  Conversely, I can try and make an accountant artistic, or maybe I could let them do accounting.   Different skill sets, different roles perhaps?

Justin Verlander isn’t judged by his ability to play shortstop or hit a ball.  Barry Sanders wasn’t kept out of the hall of fame because he never kicked a field goal.  Are we judging our fish on their tree climbing?  I think that Big Al might be on to something.

 

A little shameless self promotion…

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As readers of this Blog know, I put food on the table working for the Michigan Municipal League, and am very proud to be a part of the League team. As we always are this time of year, we are gearing up for our Annual Convention  on Mackinac Island this year. The theme of this years event is the Tools of Placemaking, and while place will be a big part of the convention, so too will be the nuts and bolts of running a city.

We will once again be conducting our Community Excellence Awards. This is a fantastic opportunity to hear first hand what is working from your peers around Michigan as they present their best ideas to try and garner your support. While a lot of fun, this is always a great way to hear from some true innovators in local government.

We will also be hosting a number of breakout sessions targeting a number of topics.  Some of them include: Your Infrastructure, Your Buildings — For Today and Tomorrow;
Living with Health Care Reform and a Look into the Future of Health Care Plans; and
Office 365 and the Power of the Microsoft Cloud. We have added sessions about new state and federal cell tower laws, on local operation challenges and strategies ( I hear the speaker is really, really good and writes a blog on these types of issues), there will be a session on financial reporting for local governments that targets what elected and appointed officials need to know, paperless government, and a session featuring practical tips to to manage the rising cost of benefits.

We will also be hosting an informational session about our new Natural Gas Purchasing Program which I have the pleasure of moderating.  This session will be very informative and help those who are unclear about how third party providers work or that are on the fence about joining our program.

I guess what I am saying is, don’t let the title fool you.  While placemaking may be the show pony of our convention, there is a ton of great stuff here for the operations folks too.

You really don’t want to miss this!

Can you afford to cut training from your budget?

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An all too frequent casualty of tightening budgets are the dollars spent on training.  It seems painless.  There is no immediate manifestation of a service cut, or elimination of a position so it on a relative basis it seems like a good cut to make.  But what is the cost of what you don’t know?  What is the impact of not being aware of innovations that would provide more efficient operations and lessen the budget constraints?  I would suggest that these costs far outweigh the cost of the training.

We are all being asked to do more with less, or as I have heard some folks express recently, to do something with nothing.  How does anyone expect to succeed in this environment without providing themselves the opportunity to train and network with their peers? Elected and appointed officials are tasked with running very complex, multifaceted corporations.  In the case of  elected officials, most begin office with a love for their community but little to no training or experience about the role they are accepting.  That is not a formula for efficiency and innovation, it’s a formula for disaster.

Every successful business understands the fundamental need to train their employees,   but we somehow diminish that same value when it comes to our local operations.  Training and networking are not perks , they are a necessary part of any successful business.  Don’t short change your community by taking a short term solution to a long term problem.  You have a duty to take the necessary steps to be certain you are in a position to succeed. A big part of that is sowing the seeds of innovation and efficiency with appropriate educational and networking opportunities.

Imagine if your community never learned about computers, the internet, or email.  Think about the cost it would take to deliver services without the benefit of these innovations.  Are you up to speed on grants? Economic development laws and practices?  Service delivery models?  Laws pertaining to setting rates and charges?

What’s the future cost of what you don’t know about today?  It might shock you!