It may seem like behavioral change is sure to happen if we can make the other person feel anguish, guilt or responsibility for whatever it is that they’ve done. After all, no one likes to feel bad, so it must be a great motivator. But browbeating someone until he or she feels bad or offers an apology will only jeopardize your chances of creating the change you seek. You can go into a tough feedback conversation with the goal of hearing an apology from the other person, and you might succeed. If you hold authority over that person, you might be able to force the words “I’m sorry” through fear or intimidation. But there’s no guarantee that he or she will give you a sincere apology that inspires permanent behavioral change.
If we truly want our feedback conversations to effect behavioral change, it’s important to set aside our emotions and to evaluate our goals before we open our mouths. We need to stop for a moment and say to ourselves, “Before I go in to this meeting and deliver this feedback, let me make sure that I have a good goal set firmly in my head by which to steer this conversation toward positive change.”
A simple technique to test your goal is to ask yourself where you want the relationship to be six months from now. If you go in and uncork, letting the other person know he or she messed up and needs to feel bad about it, the relationship will likely be in rough shape six months from now. But if you stop and say to yourself, “Six months from now, I want us to be in a really good space. I want us to still have a collaborative, productive relationship where we can talk to each other and share ideas back and forth,” that’s a lot different. With this goal in place, you’re going to deliver your feedback calmly and coolly. You’re not looking to fix blame or demand an apology. You want to see change happen, but you’re invested in protecting the relationship.
The reason this technique works is because of temporal distancing, or looking at a situation from a future perspective. Research shows that when we think about a situation from a temporally distant perspective (further in the future), we feel less stressed and negative. We stay strategically minded and in the moment instead of acting emotionally.
When we think about how the situation will be in the future, it reminds us that even though we may be irritated or angry, our feelings aren’t permanent. By forcing ourselves to think about the future state of affairs, we’re, in effect, telling our brain, “Hey, look at how much better things are here in the future; all those bad feelings went away.”
The future perspective also detaches us emotionally from the stress of the current situation. If we ruminate about how irritated we are in the present moment, we’re not going to enter a conversation calmly and rationally. When we take a step out of our current irritation and imagine a world far removed from the present, it offers greater objectivity.
A wealth of research shows that people tend to view the future with rose-colored glasses. We believe things will be better; we’ll have more time, more good days and less stress. Therefore, putting ourselves into the future puts us in a more positive frame of mind where we’re far more likely to set a goal that’s directed at creating positive change. Temporal distancing helps us keep tough feedback conversations free from emotional distraction so people hear our words, take accountability and make the desired behavioral changes.
