Get curious before you…

Last week I was delivering a workshop on giving and receiving feedback.

One of the participants shared a great saying he’d learned from a previous boss:

Get curious before you get furious

Maybe you’ve heard it before. It’s perfect. When someone does something we don’t like, it’s so easy – even human nature – to get annoyed and feel like they are being sloppy, or deliberately annoying. And maybe they are. Most likely though, there’s more to it.

By catching that emotion before it takes hold, and instead thinking “I wonder what might be going on here that I don’t know about yet?” you open yourself up to a much more constructive result.

Going into a feedback conversation all fired up, ready to make someone feel bad and small for that terrible thing they did may make you feel better in the very short term, but it will naturally produce defensiveness and probably hostility/resentment in the other person. Solutions to the actual problem become less and less likely to be found.

Conversely, go into that conversation with an open mind and a willingness to learn and you will find that you will end up with a much better outcome.

Until next week,

Take care of yourself and others

Madeleine

PS In this article I share a more detailed framework for deciding whether to take on some feedback you’ve received, and in this one I talk more about our tendency to assume the worst of others as it relates to my “revolting dogs”

PPS. Want to work with me as you work on giving and receiving feedback? Let me know. Send me a message to enquire, and please share with anyone you think may benefit.

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