I have noticed this approach at my son’s charter school, where they adhere to what they call a “Positive Discipline” approach (from their student manual at http://is.gd/w0xU – p. 3):

“Littleton Prep staff use a positive discipline approach to student behavior. It is an approach that teaches and encourages students to enjoy doing the right thing. At Littleton Prep, the positive discipline program is designed to teach and encourage students to acquire social skills and to cooperate with peers, staff, and others in the community. The program emphasizes teaching students
what is expected and recognizing them for effort and achievement.”

I have seen this in action in the classroom and it is tremendously effective. They do really focus most of their attention on recognizing and rewarding the positive behavior, and it works. It’s not Skinner’s behaviourism, but rather a recognition that behavior is a tangible manifestation of beliefs and values and rewarding good behavior can work inward to affect change to one’s beliefs and values. Plus, healing words – as you say – can be a tremendous motivator and encourager for people. We can all use positive recognition of a job well done.

Also, I like the emphasis on thinking about the behavioral goal, and then working backwards from there to the strategy to accomplish that goal. I was discussing this with a coworker yesterday in the context of getting a team to adopt TDD, since TDD is typically a huge change in the approach one takes to writing code (a major change in coding behavior) and getting a dev to make the change can be a tremendous challenge.

Anyway, I know I need to take all this more to heart in my coaching and interaction with my team (and life in general). Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the book.

Paul.

Oh – and everyone should read your book, too, Jean.

I really value the “Crucial Conversations” book. I have read it once but realized I was skimming more than absorbing. So now I am going back through it with more intent. Indeed, in these situations, I notice that the authors emphasize “just start with some new behaviors”, try them on, find out which ones are harder than other ones, then work on those. They are the crux of your fear of or failure in crucial conversations. Or at least this is how I am reading the book.

I suspect we do the same thing when coaching teams in the Agile adoption world. “Try these new behaviors. In fact do them for a while, and I promise you that we will keep checking in on what is challenging or puzzling and adapt from there.” The emotions then seem to evidence themselves in an effective fashion, such as in high-trust retrospectives.

Thanks for sharing.
Jean