The Power of Positive Connection

Whether you’re coaching your kid’s soccer team or a top executive, there’s one dynamic principle that’s the same: skew to the positive.

Focusing on what they do wrong – your kid on the field or the executive in the corner office – just does not work as well as a pitch to what’s right.

The reason why comes down to how the brain operates. The prefrontal cortex, the brain’s executive center right behind the forehead, has circuits that can makes us happy, engaged, and positive about our best self – or other circuits that bog us down in negative thinking, low energy, and feeling bummed.

The positive circuitry activates, for example, when we think about some goal we have, and how good we will feel when we achieve it. This circuitry motivates us, and helps us sustain momentum toward our goals even in the face of obstacles and setbacks.

The negative circuitry does just the opposite: closes us down, makes us defensive, and gets us ready to give up. The kid on the soccer field, as well as an executive who gets only negative feedback on performance, will be far more likely to choke when the next challenge comes.

It’s not that you can’t deliver bad news about how someone has been doing – it’s the way you deliver that news that counts. Consider research where people were given positive performance feedback in a cold, distant, and negative tone of voice. Despite the good news, they came away feeling bad. And in the same study, others were given negative performance feedback in a warm, supportive tone of voice – and left feeling a bit upbeat despite the bad news.

Emotions are contagious, and how you communicate your message – whether bad news or good – determines the other person’s emotional takeaway, independent of the obvious message you give them.

The best coaching relationships – or parenting, or leading, for that matter – foster this sense of psychological safety, where the other person feels you care about them, support them, and will guide them. (You can learn more about this type of coaching here.)

And if you want to get a better sense of this positive linkage, come to the workshop “The Chemistry of Connection” May 31-June 2 at Omega Institute. I’ll be going into the social neuroscience of healthy connections in more depth, and my wife Tara Bennett-Goleman will delve into emotional habits that foster – or sabotage – psychological safety. We’ll also look at lessons from heated negotiations, as well as how to bring this closeness even to other species.