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Expressing Anger, Annoyance or Displeasure
In terms of technique, there is little difference between giving constructive negative feedback, and expressing criticism, anger, annoyance or displeasure.
What is different about anger is its close links with fear and with the times in our lives when we experienced extreme and damaging expressions of it. Recollections of terror, panic, tyranny, oppression and violence can be brought quickly to the surface very easily and associated with our current impressions of someone's behaviour. Without care, we may find ourselves apparently dealing with a current issue but in reality, well and truly locked into replaying our past.
Before you criticise or give negative feedback to anyone else, become very clear about your motives. Ask What is the purpose of this? What is this for? What am I really aiming at?
Although personal motivation is sometimes difficult to pin-point and often is revealed only after considerable time has passed, giving thought to the goal of the exchange you are planning often discloses a hidden agenda - to attack or demean the other in the belief that we will then feel better. (It doesn't work. Any feelings of pleasure are likely to be soon overcome by doubts and guilt.)
Too often I've found to my embarrassment that my real aim was to inflict hurt, pain or punishment, to extract revenge or nurse and nourish a grudge: intentions well outside of my personal integrity and my espoused value system. Oops! Time to get back on track.
Those insights have forced me to find other approaches to my challenges and spared me the (re-) discovery that kicking people in the shins or giving them an emotional thrashing only serves to make them more wayward and obstinate.
If you find the real goal of the feedback or criticism you want to give is to attack the other, or is not entirely clear, leave things be for a while. Chill out. Get some other, uninvolved person to help you first clarify the goals and the purpose. Avoid choosing someone likely to agree and reinforce that the other is party is awful and deserving attack. Find someone with good listening skills for this: someone uninvolved, not un-evolved!
It's likely you have stronger feelings than the situation calls for. Try to express those extra feeling safely and constructively before you approach the other, to skim off those that need not be expressed. (Most of them will fit into this category.) Shout, scream or yell in the privacy of your own room, squash court, beach or therapy appointment.
Tactfully choose the time and place for the exchange. Be sure to allow time and prepare for a two-way exchange, rather than a one-way hit-and-run. Avoid the dramatic walkout and door-slam. Concentrate on the most recent behaviour that seems to have caused your anger or concern. Be prepared to express that and that only, rather than evidence of an archaeological dig of historical complaints.
Keep it brief. Once the other person has received the message, don't make it unnecessarily difficult for them to take it on board or run the risk of escalating the exchange by labouring the point, reiterating, repeating or saying it more than once in different, more creative ways (if you get my drift). Brief and simple reports of complaints are easier to hear.
(Excerpted from a 14-point guideline in a chapter dealing with this topic in our Hear and Be Heard guidebook)Talk to us for further information or support with these ideas.
Tom Watkins
© Copyright 2002 - 2007 Tom Watkins Group. All rights reserved.Select and contact a Mentor if you'd like to discuss these ideas or want support to make progress with your own issues.
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