What’s the goal of your feedback and communication?

The team-building activity and on-going conversations described in the video below.  Although the activity is simple, it can be used in two ways.  On one hand, it could be used as an activity to build trust.  On the other hand, it can be seen as an activity to be completed once trust has been established.  A savy leader can accomplish both!

Teams characterized by low trust levels have to go from focusing on their present issues to focusing on preferred future behaviors AND to discouraging retaliation.  The challenge lies in managing the gap.  By “gap”, I am referring employees’ ability to hear the feedback without holding a grudge if the feedback isn’t something they want to hear.  In those instances, I challenge you to promote the philosophy of THE FOUR AGREEMENTS.  Second, accept that people will have feelings.  Don’t shame them into silence about that.  Instead encourage them to really listen to the feedback and to strongly consider it. Finally, the way the activity is designed, each person will be given several behaviors to consider and will choose where to focus.  From that point, each person will have opportunities to develop even greater rapport and levels of trust because this activity builds in follow-up.  Without follow up, the majority of training, approximately 90%, is a failure.

Lastly, this activity can be adapted for one-on-one relationships.  The beauty of this tool is that it identifies several areas of opportunity for improvement while leaving each participant in the drivers seat.  When the participants sees a path forward, s/he is feels less threatened which better positions him or her to become more effective.