In any job, it is important to know how to make people happy and how to manage opposition. This is especially true in the healthcare field. Often, you have to get patients to do things that they don't want to do, that may be uncomfortable or embarrassing to them in order to help treat their problem.
I ran across a great article at PsychologyToday that presents a novel way to make people happier, just by acknowledging the fact that they are unhappy. It seems simple, right? Well, it is, and the funny thing is that it actually works.
The idea is to acknowledge the reality of other people's feeling instead of reacting to them with denial, anger and irritation. By restating their concerns, you can validate them and move on to getting the job done. When you think about it, oftentimes people will say that they don't feel like doing something and the reactions they receive are all designed to negate the persons feelings and even contradict them.
For example, if I said “I don't think that I want to go to this party. It just seems like a lot of trouble.” My friends would probably say, “Oh, come on, don't be a spoil sport. Besides, you like parties.” This only serves to contradict my feelings and make me feel bad about not wanting to go. If instead they said, “I know you don't feel like going. But, we really want to spend time with you and you make parties a lot of fun.” I would feel better about going because I felt that my concerns had been heard. The end result is the same; I end up going to the party. The only thing that changed is that a whole lot of arguing was prevented.
The experts all seem to agree that denying someone's bad feelings only serves to intensify them. As adults, when our feelings aren't validated, we often resort to childish behaviors like whining and complaining in order to get the attention and validation we crave. Sometimes, all it takes is acknowledgment and a little bit of encouragement or a pat on the back, to change an attitude of resistance into one of compliance.
This technique can be used to manage your child's behavior and can even help in the workplace. When a patient expresses reluctance to prepare for a procedure or states that they don't want you to do the things that you know are best for their treatment, you can use this tactic to make them feel validated and to get them to do what you need.
Give it a try the next time you are faced with reluctance and see if it works for you.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for HealthCareJobSiteBlog, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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