Posted by gardenergirl on November 6, 2004, at 19:49:17
In reply to Re: Dr. Bob, could you explain me this, posted by Sad Sara on November 6, 2004, at 18:18:28
I'm not sure if this relates to what you are asking or not, but one thing I learned from a supervisor last year about dealing with conflict, is that it is often more effective for feedback to come from the "injured party" rather than from others. This way, the "offender" hears first hand how their behavior or statements affected someone else.
So, Sara, in your teaching example, if you wanted to confront the student, it might be best to express to him that you felt hurt by his lack of sympathy. And then maybe leave it at that. If he has any empathy at all, he will get the message and perhaps modify his behavior. If he doesn't, I'm not sure you could teach him to behave better via any method.
I used this approach when I was working as a kind of middle person between two teams. Instead of me confronting others when there was a problem between two people, I instead helped them to state their feelings to the other as the "injured party". This really did seem to help.
I know I would feel bad if someone said to me "I felt hurt when you said XXXXX" versus somebody else saying "you saying XXX was not nice." I guess it puts a human face on the behavior's consequences that is harder to ignore.
Okay, enough rambling.
gg
poster:gardenergirl
thread:412635
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20041027/msgs/412704.html