I am re-reading Dale Carnegie’s great book in which he points out that rule #1 in dealing with people is–never condemn, complain, or criticize.  Why? Because humans, no matter who they are or what they have done, believe that they are good and with equal confidence are convinced that whatever the issue is it isn’t their fault.

I also just finished Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. He points out that it is not our responsibility to change anybody (and as Carnegie has pointed out, you can’t so stop trying!).  We can, however, try and see them as God does (as a beloved son or daughter) and love them as God does (unconditionally).  By putting away our ‘judgmentalism and pride and loathing of other people’ and instead treat everybody ‘as though they were [your] best friend’, they will change for the better.

When organizations discover that they are having a problem, they get a team together to look at the problems and try to find a solution better known as problem solving.  About 10 years ago, a team of expert problem solvers were hired by a large corporation to come in to ‘fix’ their problems in hopes of increasing their production rates.  They found that after their problem solving their production rates actually went down instead of up.  Puzzled, they tried a different method.  Instead of looking at the problem and filling everyone with negative thoughts about each other and the organization, they looked at the positive.  They looked at all the things that worked well, and they focused on making them work even better.  The production rate soared.  This method is known as Appreciative Inquiry.

It has been thought that allowing and encouraging people to air their grievances about other people in the organization and list their complaints about others and the organization is the path to improvement.  This has been shown time and time again to have the opposite effects. It produces negativity, discourages others from working harder to make things better (why bother if you are only going to hear the negative from a select few?!), and it creates a work environment that is defeatist, negative, counter productive, and filled with cattiness and  pettiness.  So next time your organization decides to send out questionnaires to critique, or wants to create a work group to problem solve, I would hope we all can consider Appreciative Inquiry and the wisdom of Carnegie, Miller, and Christ.