Two Thoughts about Feedback
Feedback is most effective when…
1. It relates to the intention and goals of the receiver, not the giver.
2. It leads to dialogue about what was intended in contrast to what was heard.
For more about feedback check-out Understanding Feedback
Trust and Influence
The strongest relationships, which allow the most influence simply for the asking, are built over time and have been tempered through hard times. These relationships have become worthy of trust. Therefore, trust is an outcome of high quality relationships. It is also critical aspect of relationships where ready influence is needed. We’re talking about broad-scale trust. I might trust you for specific things like getting to work on time or even getting a project done well. However, to trust you to the point of readily using my energy on your behalf I must trust you in a larger way. This level of trust is a sense of confidence that someone will consistently behave in ways that will support our well-being—good intentions by themselves are insufficient.
There are five primary aspects of trust. They are…
1. Honesty
2. Openness
3. Keeping agreements
4. Understanding
5. Loyalty
Honesty is fairly straightforward. It means that I can be confident that you tell me the truth as best you know it—you won’t knowingly lie to me.
Openness that leads toward greater trust means you will share—on your own initiative and on request—with me any information or thoughts you have that will allow me to make better informed decisions and to know you better—intellectually and emotionally. If you are open with me you will not allow me to mislead myself about your intentions or expectations.
Keeping agreements is doing what you’ve said you would do when you said you would do it.
Understanding as an aspect of trust requires more exploration. To trust you with my well–being—personal or organizational—I need know that you understand me. I need know that you understand my goals, my values, my motivations, and what well-being is to me. I might believe in your good intentions regarding my well-being, however, if I sense that you do not understand me I will not be able trust that you will behave in accord with my well-being.
Loyalty has to do with support in the face of adversity. It is critical if I’m to trust you during difficult times. Hanging together during tough times—when budgets are being cut, when strategies are failing, when a promotion is at stake that only one of you can have—pays dividends. Honesty, openness, keeping agreements, understanding, and loyalty are the keys to building and maintaining the type of trust that signifies the quality relationship that allows for significant amounts of ready influence.
Excerpted from The Infinite Organization by me
Critical Interventions : A New Take on The Stages of Planned Change
This cutting edge article has been moved to http://www.chumans.com/human-systems-resources/critical-interventions.html.
Please read it and send me your feedback.
Michael
To be Passionate or be Safe?
We were passionate. We couldn’t see it then because we needed to eat and sleep. Then we were big enough to get around: somewhere around 18 to 24 months old. The world was our oyster! Life was joyful!
Then it began to wear away: “Behave yourself!” in some form or another. We became obedient or paid the price.
How do get back to that passion? That excitement for life? How we decide that to live with passion is more important than living safely. Before we are too infirm to do so. Do we choose to live from fear or from passion? Certainly, to live and love from passion requires us to experience pain that harbinger of death the we wish to avoid at all cost. Maybe, the cost is too high. Maybe, to live from avoiding pain, we hardly ever get to experience the deeper experiences of joy and love that are possible. What your choice? What would be the doingness of such a choice?
I know that I have too often chosen to be safe, to survive, to live but not to thrive.
I have lived from the idea that before I share myself I have to have gotten it right. That would be safe. Not much passion there, though.
More later?
Courage and Principles
Doing the work of organization development takes courage as we attempt to shift a culture that does not want to shift. In particular, the diversity work (as an aspect of OD) takes particular courage as there are sharp emotions in play which give rise to fear. When we act forthrightly in the presence of fear, we are called courageous. What, then, helps create courage? Principle! “Principles are the main ingredient of courage. A (person) with principles can get the better of fear.” This is from a Scott Turow character in his novel Ordinary Heroes.
Why else would we act in a direction other than where our fear would point us?