You and me baby, we ain't nothin' but mammals

One of the things that gets my goat is the assumption that people get things wrong deliberately.

In a previous incarnation, I was a child shrink. My caseload was bad kids - the sort who could get themselves kicked out of nursery for really not fitting in. Whilst some of this was just schools being a bit prissy and not liking the non-conformist kid (who I'd always champion) , some of them were truly disturbed. The one who cut his pet hamster in half with a pair of scissors is a case in point. Needless to say, the prognosis for these kids is not good.

Anyway, a large part of my job was to train parents how to look after their kids in a positive way. So, rather than barking at their kids when they did things wrong/inappropriately/irritatingly etc and then getting more mad when they didn't stop, my job was to teach them to say what they wanted to happen and then reward the kids when they got it right.

Simple principle. Damned hard in practice.

Fast forward 10 years and I'm again in the business of helping people change, only this time the kids are senior execs and so on, the parents are bosses and co-workers, the therapists are consultants and the wages are better. Same problem. Same frustration. Same basic issue that it seems to be easier to criticise than praise, correct rather than pre-empt and knock down rather than build up.

Try it sometime. Rather than "Stop....." try "I want you to......" After all, we're all still just big kids on the inside :-)