One of the more interesting concepts used on the NLP course that I did last year was the idea of only giving positive feedback to people.

The thinking behind the theory (which I think comes from Robert Dilts, one of the early thinkers behind NLP) is that people know what they are doing wrong and already beat themselves up about it; therefore there is no point you mentioning it as well.

I was initially sceptical about this approach as it seemed a bit too idealistic for my cynical mind. I found it extremely difficult to start with and didn’t give any feedback to anyone for quite a few sessions. Eventually though something clicked for me and by the end of the 18 day course I feel I did gain a greater respect for and recognition of the talents that other people on the course had. The need to focus only on the positive actually seems to drive the mind to see more in this area than it otherwise would.

Although noone likes it when they are criticised, I think there are some occasions when someone criticising you can prove to be extremely motivational. This basically involves them completely writing you off and you then being determined to prove them wrong. For example at school I was told that I would definitely fail the Pure Maths modules of my A Level Maths course. Completely unimpressed with this verdict I persevered with it for months eventually scoring 85%. Job done.

I think sometimes when giving critical feedback it can say more about you than it does about the person you are giving it to, and this is where it’s vital to step back and think why you are giving the feedback.

I find at least for myself the tendency is to want to point out things people do that annoy me, which in effect is me trying to make the person more like myself. Steve Pavlina suggests that the things we hate the most in other people are the things we actually hate in ourselves. Therefore his suggestion was if you find something someone else does annoying, first look at yourself and try and improve yourself in this area.

I’m not sure if I totally subscribe to why this approach would work but I definitely agree that it is way easier to change yourself than it is to change someone else.

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