| Being masterful at giving feedback requires that | | | | the individuals that we encounter. The pitfall is that |
| managers are able to separate fact from fiction and | | | | while we consider the circumstances when explaining |
| reality from perception. There is a powerful principal | | | | our own behavior when it comes to the behavior of |
| discovered by social psychologist which often blurs the | | | | others we gravitate toward an explanation that |
| boundaries when people seek to answer the question | | | | attributes their behavior to their basic nature without |
| of why someone engages in a particular behavior. The | | | | considering the context and situation in which the |
| principle is called the fundamental attribution error and it | | | | behavior occurs. |
| relates to how motive is assigned to the actions of | | | | For the manager who is responsible to assess |
| others. It the simplest turns the principle states that we | | | | performance and provide feedback, the message is a |
| assume people behave as they do because that is | | | | cautionary one. It is important to realize that committing |
| the way they are. If someone reacts in a short | | | | the fundamental attribution error by assuming |
| tempered fashion it is because they are a rude and | | | | someone's behavior is always a result of who they |
| intolerant individual. Conversely we do not apply the | | | | are and ignoring the context and situation in which the |
| same standard when explaining our own actions. Our | | | | behavior occurred is too simplistic. It is important to |
| own short temper is explained as resulting from having | | | | consider both the context and the situation in which the |
| a bad day, or being tired, or having a headache. | | | | performance occurred. A normally polite individual can |
| In his book Intuition, David Myers relates the results of | | | | become rude and short tempered when trying to meet |
| an experiment conducted by David Napolitan and | | | | a tight deadline. This behavior can be disruptive and |
| George Goethals in which subjects were asked to | | | | have a negative impact on the work team, the |
| interact with another individual who was a collaborator | | | | organization and even the customer. While this is |
| in the experiment. The collaborator was instructed to | | | | clearly not acceptable performance and should not be |
| act in either a warm and friendly or a cool and aloof | | | | excused, to focus solely on the issue of rude behavior |
| manner. As might be expected the subjects perceived | | | | is to miss the mark. The stress of the deadline that |
| the collaborator as being either warm and friendly or | | | | contributed to the behavior is the root cause of the |
| cool and aloof depending on how they acted. What is | | | | unacceptable performance. Effective performance |
| surprising is that even when subjects were told before | | | | feedback from the manager will address the impact of |
| hand that the collaborator was going to be acting a | | | | rude behavior because that is the performance issue |
| role, the subjects still believed that the collaborator's | | | | but also will focus the discussion of performance |
| real personality was consistent with the role they were | | | | improvement around strategies for managing or |
| playing. This illustrates how powerful the tendency is to | | | | eliminating stress. Management's responsibility is to |
| take the behavior of others out of context. | | | | produce results and focusing on root cause by |
| Inferring the character and motives of others from | | | | avoiding the pitfall of the fundamental attribution error is |
| their actions is not a bad thing to do. It is part of how | | | | one of the tools used by masterful managers. |
| we make sense of the world and learn to deal with | | | | |