"Doing" can be hard.
We were teaching a high impact communications class for IT project managers and during the workshop there was an activity where the participants were in groups of three, one acts as the role of coach, one as the employee and one as an observer. It’s the ideal opportunity to put into practice the theory and concepts discussed during the class.

We had spent time discussing the importance of listening to the other person’s perspective, asking questions to seek more information, to better understand their point of view and then looking for solutions and a way forward.  (You may have been through a similar exercise, maybe it was about coaching skills, giving feedback, setting goals.  The focus doesn’t matter, it is the steps you go through that are the learning point.)

The exercise went well.  The coaches remembered, and were able to apply the techniques in their ‘role play’, you could see the confidence of the participants grow.  We then switched to the observers.  They were now to ‘coach the coach’ and provide feedback on what had been observed, what went well, what could the person have done differently.

And that’s where everything changed.  The observers started out with something along the lines of

Quotation

“Well you did this well, but I would have done this different” or
“You didn’t do…”

Do you see what was missing?

Starting from the other persons perspective isn’t difficult.  They all knew that was what was where they were supposed to start, but when they weren’t aware of being in a ‘role play’ or classroom activity, the knowing was forgotten and the doing didn’t happen.

As with most things we learn the concepts aren’t that difficult, we quickly get to ‘knowing’ the challenge is in making these new ideas into habits, ‘doing’ can be hard.


The advice? remember that life is a ‘role play’ – there is no predefined script (as much as we may wish that others would follow one!).  If you want to improve then you need to practice. 

How could the observers have approached this exercise?  By starting with

Quotation

“how do you think that went?” or
“what would you do differently if had the opportunity”.

If you can start from the other persons perspective you will find providing ongoing feedback and support so much easier and likely to be less confrontational – for you or them.