We live in society and we need social connections with our relatives and with others to feel good. The opposite of that is loneliness. Loneliness must be one of the hardest pain feelings in the world. Sometimes, we suffer with our connection with others when something happen to a person that we love or when someone says something about us that we don’t like but this emotional pain we can with time more or less surpass. Therefore, I would say that the pros are much higher then the cons and that connection with others is naturally part of our nature as human beings.
We spend a lot of time of our day in connection with others. If you have read my book “Project your life”, for people that don’t have the “happy hour” routine installed, the time spent is 18 hours a day or we can say 2/3 of our time. We only don’t connect with others when we are sleeping. It is then important to connect efficiently. What does it means to connect efficiently? For me it means to create joy, happiness, comfort and appreciation to the other person so that they “pay back” to you immediately with a smile and gratitude note and later when the roles are reversed and you are in the need to receive from others. I would dare to summarize that efficient connection is empathy.
The connection with family is given at the beginning of our birth. In our youngest ages, the challenges started with connection with our neighbors or classmates to make them our friends. Then, I would say that the challenges intensifies when we are in our adult age and we want to connect with university and work colleagues to be able to collaborate in a group work or in a project and we have to “sell” our ideas and thoughts. At that time, we have not only to connect efficiently but also to influence efficiently. How can we then create a long-lasting connection with new others and how can we influence them? As Dale Carnegie says in the book “How to in friends and influence people”, “The fundamentals of people management rely on genuineness and authenticity”. What we say needs to be related with what we believe is good for both sides. Trying to influence someone faking the real intention could be immediately perceived by your body language or would not last long. Even the predatory seller, to be successful, needs a genuine connection. After having a genuine and authentic connection, what comes next, is the importance of appreciation and avoidance of criticizing others.
Appreciation, when sincere, increase motivation and, in the other direction, criticism alone is ineffective because it decrease motivation and increase doubt in the connection. When you criticize someone, the other person receives it like if their pride is attacked and so they tend to defend themselves and justify their behavior. If you have to criticize someone, it is important first that you show appreciation of the qualities that you value more from that person to show that you have confidence in him before you deliver the “punch in the nose”. Make sure that “Appreciation”, “criticism” are not connected by a “but”, instead by a “and”. The conjunction “but” would make the other person doubt about the genuineness of your message. The conjunction “and” would show the potential, for the other person, to become a better version of himself. Therefore, criticism alone is ineffective; instead if we join genuine appreciation before criticism in such a way that we show that both don’t exist in opposition to each other, the acceptance and motivation for change will increase.
“Criticism alone is ineffective; instead if we join genuine appreciation before criticism in such a way that we show that both don’t exist in opposition to each other, the acceptance and motivation for change will increase.”
— ProjectYourLife
Great would be if you can place the other person in position that he or she ask for your feedback. It is much more effective that the other person would internalize and seek for measures to increase the opportunity for improvement if he or she is willing to receive a feedback.
Take aways:
- Be genuine and authentic
- Appreciate the qualities and effort from the other person
- Don’t criticize others
- If you are in a position that you need to deliver a bad feedback, first give a sincere appreciation and then provide the message that would support a continuous improvement of the person. For that, don’t use the conjunction “but”.
21-days challenge:
- The next times that you will receive a compliment, put the “success” and “proud” aside and appreciate the positive feedback and hand-over the appreciation to the persons that support you.
- Find the meetings in which you will have an opportunity to sincerely appreciate the support given by the colleague(s). Give the praise and after the meeting ask a colleague how it was received and if it increased motivation.
- Every time that you need to criticize use first appreciation without the conjunction “but”
