The Manager's Guide to Employee Feedback

Only positive language

Believe it or not, I first came across this principle as a new parent reading a book about how to bring up happy and confident children. The book suggested that the majority of human behavior is driven from the unconscious mind; this means you don't always have to think about something consciously in order to perform an action. For example, things like tying your shoelaces or brushing your teeth are unconscious actions; you don't need to consciously think about each discrete step to perform the whole sequence. These are what we refer to as habits or learned behaviors. Interestingly, the unconscious mind doesn't seem to respond too well to the concept of negatives; do this quick exercise now in order to illustrate the point: ...