Focus on Positives

A group of social scientists recently completed some interesting research. They videotaped a match between two bowling teams.

After the match, they showed Team One a videotape in which all the team's mistakes had been removed. During the review, the researchers focused only on the strengths of the players and the things they had done right. They did not show them their mistakes.

Team Two, however, was shown an edited video which contained only the mistakes they had made. During the review with Team Two, the researchers offered helpful suggestions on how to improve their performance.

After receiving the feedback, there was a rematch between the two teams. Guess which team made the greatest improvement? Team One, the group receiving only positive feed-back, improved 100percent more than Team Two.

The next time you give feedback to someone - as a manager, a parent, a friend - remember to focus on positives rather than negatives.