Remember Ethan, whose authoritative feedback was not well received? His follow-up conversation with Brenda went like this:
Ethan was committed to breaking the stalemate with Brenda and salvaging her relationship with the staff at the health center. He planned a different approach for their follow-up conversation the next week. He started the meeting by asking Brenda if she had any thoughts or reactions to their previous conversation, now that she’d had a week to think about it. Ethan was hoping to create a more collaborative atmosphere. “I still don’t get why you are confronting me,” Brenda started. “If the providers would just follow procedures, there would be no problem!”
“You are right about that, Brenda,” Ethan responded. “You have told them that, and still the problem is not solved. What if it is not about the content of your message, but more about the way the message is sent and how they interpret it? The providers say they end up feeling put down and ridiculed by the way you speak to them. Do you want them to feel that way?”
Brenda shifted in her seat and looked irritated. “Of course not, but that’s their problem. I’m just giving them the facts.”
“True,” Ethan replied, “but is that the impact you want to have on them?”
“Well, no. I said that.”
“What kind of impact would you like to have on them?” Ethan asked.
“I’d just as soon they had no reaction except to follow procedures.”
“So perhaps wording things a little differently would create that impact and make your life easier,” Ethan continued.
“I suppose you are right, but I’m not sure how to word it better,” Brenda replied, looking a little less irritated.
Key: Items 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9 are behaviors. Items 1, 4, and 7 are not.
Ethan recognized that the conversation finally had taken a turn for the better. Brenda seemed to understand that she had a choice of behaviors that would lead to different impacts. Better yet, there was an implied request for assistance in her last statement. But Ethan knew not to get ahead of Brenda. He had to take it slow and keep pace with her. “I think that’s pretty natural. We all have our ways of doing things that are second nature to us. Doing things differently is always a learning curve, and it can help people to get coaching on new approaches, just as you probably had teachers and coaches that helped you master different aspects of information technology.” Ethan wanted Brenda to see that reaching out for help is as appropriate in behavioral matters as it is with technical skills.
Brenda’s shift to a more collaborative posture was quick. “What would you suggest?” she asked. Now she was receptive to the kind of authoritative feedback Ethan had given a week earlier. He could make suggestions (directive), make predictions (contingency), and use qualitative statements and labels (attribution). The difference was that Brenda now understood why the authoritative feedback was valuable to her. Once she understood that her behavior had an undesirable impact on others, which then became an obstacle to the results she wanted (their following procedures), she was empowered to seek options and therefore more receptive.