My oldest son plays high school basketball, so I spend a lot of time at basketball games listening to coaches yell at players. I witness kids stand in a circle during timeouts while their coaches tell them how bad they are playing, how many mistakes they have made and, generally, how stupid they are. So many of these coaches consistently scream at kids and shame them for bad decisions on the court. Ironically It doesn’t seem to matter how much these coaches berate their players, it doesn’t seem to change much about the way that they play the game.
The varsity coach in our High School program, however, employs a very different coaching strategy. He stays calm (for the most part), teaches during time outs (rather than yelling), and encourages kids rather than shaming them. He also consistently wins games over teams that have more talented players.
This past week, as I was coaching my younger son’s 5th-grade basketball team, I made a decision to work hard to coach positively. I decided that rather than giving corrective feedback that I would focus on giving positive feedback and encouragement. Throughout the practice, I stayed positive, teaching the game, offering much more encouragement than correction. It was almost shocking how well my team responded to this effort. We made great progress in the practice. The kids worked together more effectively than usual, and the whole tone of the practice was positive and fun. (And we won our game yesterday as well)
Lately, In light of experiences like these, I have given much thought to how I interact with those who I lead – both at home in my work environment. Research studies show that positive feedback is much more effective than criticism in producing results. Several of these studies suggest that it takes between 3 and 6 positive interactions, comments, or experiences to counteract the effects of one negative interaction. In leading, we so often default to negative, corrective tones. There is certainly a time for correction. But we often correct more than teach because it is easier to tell someone what they are doing than wrong than to take the time to teach them. It takes little effort to criticize. But it takes effort and commitment to teach, encourage, and reinforce.
Have you ever given thought to how much positive vs. corrective feedback you give to your family or team? Perhaps if we focused more on teaching and encouragement rather than criticism we would see completely different results than we are used to seeing.