Pay a colleague a compliment - and watch performance improve!

A joke made me smile this morning. Here's how it went: I was getting into my car this morning and a neighbour said to me "Can you give me a lift?" I said "Sure .......you look great today, you can achieve whatever you want, Go for it!" I know, I have a silly sense of humour!

It made me think afterwards about how often we genuinely give other people, whether they're a neighbour or a work colleague, a true lift by telling them what they're good at or simply be complimenting them. In the UK in particular it doesn't tend to happen very often. It's just not the done thing. At work we usually have quite superficial conversations with all but a few of those we work with, those we'd class as 'friends'. We think of the rest as 'colleagues' and we talk with them about the weather, about what was on TV last night, and of course about our work. Probably most about what work we have to do, particularly if we're part of a team who have shared objectives. But it's rare to find colleagues telling each other about 'how' they do it unless they do it badly - but this blog isn't about negative feedback.

Even bosses usually seem more comfortable giving people 'feedback' suggesting how they could / should improve their performance. Appraisals tend to place at least as much emphasis on the individuals PDP (personal development plan) as on what they have achieved and done well.

And that's why one exercise that I experienced a few years ago sticks in my mind. The team I was leading decided that we should deepen relationships between team members. We felt we wanted to be more courageous in the conversations we had - with the aim of improving team performance. So each team member was asked to prepare to give every other team member feedback based on the following areas:

1. What I respect and admire about you is....
2. I noticed you did a great job when you....
3. Something I've learned from you is....
4. Something that would make you even more successful is....
   (I know this one is reverting back a little to 'feedback')

N.B. The feedback didn't necessarily have to be about work. It could be about things you knew about them beyond their job.

and then everyone had a chat individually with every other team member and gave them the feedback. The conclusions were:

1. Generally people found it easier to talk to others about number 4 rather than the first three. (Interesting that we're so much less comfortable telling people good things. Perhaps we feel more vulnerable?)
2. When on the receiving end, people really appreciated the information they got from numbers 1,2 and 3. It made them feel good about themselves. It really did give them a lift.
3. A number of people said that some of the things they'd been told in 1,2 and 3 were a surprise to them. They didn't realise they had respect and admiration from them or that they were really good at some things.

It was a powerful exercise which broke through the 'superficiality' barrier I referred to above. It encouraged people to be courageous and talk to colleagues at a deeper level, and the team became closer as a result. The exercise produced the phrase 'Courageous Conversations' and having a 'tag' like that to use meant that afterwards people could introduce a deeper level conversation by using the phrase. Actually the exercise was so good that we did it formally like this again on future occassions to make sure it continued to happen.

I'd recommend it to every team. The most important thing to come out of it was how everyone was given a lift after learning that they were respected and admired by their colleagues. Their day, and the following days and weeks afterward were because of it. Oh, and performance improved afterwards because people were more motivated and talked more deeply about 'how' the work got done.

Footnote: I think some teams might find it just too difficult to go from having no conversations to having deep conversations like this so if you think that's a risk for your team there's an interim step on the way. Get each team member to write down the things they appreciate / value / respect / admire about each other team member anonymously. The leaders role is to create an envelope containing the comments for each team member. It's a bit less risky when you can write it down rather than tell them in person. If you do this, WATCH THE PLEASURE ON PEOPLES FACES WHEN THEY'RE READING THE COMMENTS PEOPLE HAVE MADE ABOUT THEM. IT'S PRICELESS!

More on COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS and on CUSTOMER COMPLIMENTS on future blogs over the next few days....