{"id":3551,"date":"2020-02-26T02:12:50","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T02:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.impactcoachingsolutions.com\/en\/?p=3551"},"modified":"2022-05-30T21:42:43","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T21:42:43","slug":"its-not-personal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.impactcoachingsolutions.com\/en\/not-personal\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Not Personal"},"content":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s not personal\u201d, is a commonly used phrase when we are either giving feedback or sharing bad news with someone about something at work.\u00a0<\/strong>We know that when we take things personally our brain reacts with our animal defense mechanism immediately protecting us from any form of aggression.\u00a0 Even if what we perceive as aggression is words, our system generates adrenaline, sends blood to our limbs and starts up our fight or flight response.<\/p>\n
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All of that sounds like it could be a good thing since our animal brain is protecting us, protecting our image, status, knowledge, credibility, etc.\u00a0 However, the problem is that one of the key elements that our brain needs in order to think and perform better is blood irrigation, and when we have that reaction, we immediately create a blood deficit in the brain since the blood is sent to our limbs to run or fight.<\/p>\n

For this reason, as part of our leadership acceleration and coaching programs, we teach managers and leaders to work with non-threatening conversations.\u00a0 Considering that in our managerial work, sometimes we don\u2019t realize how our language can generate that animal response in our collaborators or peers.<\/p>\n

If you have heard the phrase from someone: \u201cit is not personal\u201d, tell me something, does that make you feel better?\u00a0 Or did you feel that it was just a phrase justifying the pain a person\u2019s words were inflicting on you?<\/p>\n

In my opinion, the phrase doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 If anything, it actually feels like even more aggression.\u00a0 \u00a0What truly functions in our leadership work is to focus our feedback on the facts and things that happened or are currently happening, not on the person\u2019s qualities or areas of opportunity.\u00a0 Even better, we can focus on the things that can happen differently in the future to avoid the problem and find success.<\/p>\n

I really like the concept that Marshall Goldsmith proposed of feedforward. Stop using feedback (which means \u201clet\u2019s talk about everything that you did wrong\u201d) and start using feedforward (which means \u201clet\u2019s talk about how you can make it better in the future\u201d).\u00a0 By working with feedforward, you are really moving away from the aggression of judging the past and giving a person plain critique.\u00a0 Thus, moving towards the space of possibilities and the things that can be done differently in the future to improve.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an example of the beauty of this system:<\/p>\n