On a quick up and back trip to North Dakota for a funeral, I was able to listen to several chapters of this book. I'm not through with it, but it is fascinating read (or in my case, listen!). Don't let the title fool ya- more of us are in 'sales' then we think and there's applications for programmers, teachers, ministers, parents, coaches, administrators, and sales people too.
One of the things that struck me was what the author called the 3:1 ratio. Pink draws on extensive social science research demonstrating the proper ratio between positive and negative feedback is 3:1. So if you're a parent or a coach or a manager or a leader, for every piece of negative feedback you give, you should strive to give three pieces of positive feedback.
Simple enough, right?!
Unfortunately, I think sometimes we err on the extremes by either giving all negative feedback with no positive feedback or giving all positive feedback with no negative feedback. Pink writes on the latter, saying that if we go too extreme with the ratio (say 10 or 11 pieces of positive feedback for every negative feedback), then you come off as well, cheesy or syrupy (and we all know someone like that, right?!).
Don't be surprised if there's more from this book in future posts . . .
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