It is always interesting to learn something new that you can use in your field or management position from an unlikely place.

That is what happened to me during a serendipitous encounter.  And I couldn’t help but to relate it to my work with management teams in general and sales managers in particular.

A couple of weekends ago I accompanied the University of Minnesota Basketball Team on a trip to Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.  My favorite team lost a close game, but the trip was fun and interesting.  On the chartered plane I met a gentleman named Ron Backes.  Ron was a former University of Minnesota and Olympic shot putter.  Now he runs seminars to teach coaches to be more positive and productive.  Ron was sharing some of the things that he teaches in the coaching seminars he presents with a few of us during the flight.

He shared a statistic that most managers have heard over the years.  That is, if you constructively criticize a person once and praise the person six times, the person on the receiving end sees the number of times praised and criticized as being equal.  Some have put the ratio of compliments to criticism’s even higher.

According to Ron, there is a way to reduce the number of criticisms, while still getting your point across when there are performance issues which need addressing.  It is a technique that is so devastatingly and elegantly simple, but infrequently used.

When working with coaches, they teach them to substitute the word “Now” for the word “But.”  In his example, he used a coach talking to a basketball player.  Instead of saying “You are a great rebounder, BUT you have to get back to the defensive end quicker,”  a coach could say, “You are a great rebounder, NOW, if you get back to the defensive end a little quicker you will be a great all around player.”

Even though it was a simple change in words, the impact of the change was palpable. I thought it was worth sharing.

Whether you are a sales manager, a consultant, a coach, a teacher, a parent or a spouse, this simple change of how you approach a difficult performance discussion can have a significant impact.

Here are a few more examples:

• To a salesperson: “You are great at making presentations, BUT you don’t close enough deals,” vs. “you are great at making presentations, NOW if you could close a few more deals you would be our number one sales rep.”
• To an assistant: “You are great preparing documents for the meeting, BUT you don’t use enough graphics in the presentation,” vs. “you are great at preparing the documents, NOW if you could add a few graphics these would be perfect!”
• To a child or student: “You are doing great in science and math, BUT you need to do better in English” vs.  “you are doing great in science and math, NOW if you can improve your English grades you will be a great all around student.”
• To a manager:  “You are great at managing your senior staff, BUT you need to communicate better with the rest of your employees,” vs. “you are great at managing your senior staff, NOW if you can extend the message to the rest of the employees, you will be on your way to creating a great company.”
• To a consulting client:  “You have developed a great strategy, BUT you need to implement better” vs. “you have developed a great strategy, NOW if you can expand implementation, you will be creating a great company.

Even though this is so simple, but I know I didn’t use it enough when I was managing and I don’t use it enough now that I am consulting...oops, so simple, and NOW I am going to use it more!

by Tim Horan. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it