Engaging Supervisory Interactions

Positive reinforcement works; it fulfills every employee’s basic need to feel valued—cared about by the organization, their supervisor and leadership. When positive reinforcement is delivered while the behavior is occurring, it acknowledges the employees contribution in real time; it captures the moment when a valued added behavior—discretionary effort—can be encouraged or discouraged.

As discussed in my last blog most positive verbal comments are usually delivered after a behavior has occurs—when the employee is no longer engaged in the behavior. The supervisor is acknowledging the performance result that was created by one or more effective employee behaviors. Positive verbal recognition is a more accurate description of the supervisor’s action.

Traditional rewards and recognition strategies do not facilitate employee behavior directly. They are most often presented for performance results and outcomes. Before the benefits of precise recognition—positively reinforcing specific behavior in real-time—were well known, management assumed that kudos received for results influenced the critical behaviors that led to those results.

There are several problems with this assumption. When an organization chooses to reward a job or department performance result, they cannot be certain that all the behavior that led to that result is in the best interest of the company. Subtle pressure associated with awards and recognition practices often encourages employees to do things—to engage in behavior that is detrimental to themselves, the team, the product and the customer.

Shortcuts, intra-team competition—even unethical behavior has been associated with employee competitive desire to “win”—to get the plaque, the jacket, or the picture in the company newsletter. Although the intentions of organizational rewards and recognition systems are to show appreciation and create employee satisfaction, many employees are competitors and they want to be on top. Things can get ugly.

The top 10% of employees usually stay in the top 10%--given a fair opportunity. So they always “win.” Rewards and recognition systems seek to compensate for this by giving awards that are not related to performance, non-contingent awards—like, “the best attitude,” or “most positive team member, or “employee of the month.” These types of awards can trivialize a rewards and recognition process and derail their key objective of —to improve human performance.

In addition, assuming that employees are doing things in the best way to achieve the best possible performance outcome is often a mistake. High performers may engage in behavior that improves quality, productivity, or customer service but they do not share these “best practice behaviors,” with the team; to do so would disadvantage their opportunity for rewards and recognition.

Subsequently, institutionalizing the effective use of positive reinforcement in an organization is ultimately a risk management objective; a company’s performance and profitability is at risk when behavior is not effectively managed. Employee injury is an obvious liability to organizational effectiveness. The costs are well documented. Leaders and managers understand the critical importance of managing job safety behavior. Proper lifting, equipment placement, correct ergonomics—the behaviors necessary to prevent injury are precise and explicit.

Similarly, the effective application of positive reinforcement to specific, key job behaviors will increase productivity, quality, service and waste reduction. That is why overcoming supervisory and management resistance to the daily use of positive reinforcement is so essential to achieving the highest levels of human performance and engagement. The key to developing supervisory and management potential—to developing their skills, their ability to effect employee performance levels—is the precise, real time application of positive reinforcement to value-added job behavior.

Developing Positive Reinforcement Skill: Step 1

Think slow transition. Whatever you management style at the moment, any abrupt change in you behavior is over-interpreted by those you manage. Sinister agendas are proposed…word spreads rapidly; what’s up? The first change you need to make in you verbal behavior is to start eliminating words, phrases, comments and questions that convey negative expectations; blame, fault finding, parenting, dictating—you may have some destructive verbal habits that create a barrier between you and those you are supervising.

Self-observation is difficult. Our verbal habits are so ingrained that we sometimes even deny that we said something when a witness points it out to us. One bad habit that seems universal to anyone who parents, coaches or manages is the use of rhetorical questions to find out why someone has made a mistake—they either failed to do something we wanted them to do, or did it wrong. “What were you thinking?” or “why didn’t you think to ask? or “how do you expect us to get good service ratings if you behave like that?”

These kinds of questions only serve to emotionalize the situation—frustrating you and angering the employee. The accusatory tone creates a wedge between employee and supervisor. Other statements that purport to correct employee behavior but are equally destructive are things like—“You’re going to have to,” or “from now on, you need to,” or “start paying more attention.” Everyone is sensitive to the tone and intentions of language pointed toward them. If you have bad interaction habits, you need to identify them and eliminate them.

Many executive have personal coaches to help them develop positive interaction habits. In some organizations, supervisors work in pairs to help each other identify counterproductive verbal habits. They provide positive feedback to each other when positive verbal comments are made. Surveys that gather information from employees and peers can surface verbal habits that need to be changed.

Whether you identify destructive verbal habits through self-observation or some other means, you need to set the stage for the next part of Step 1—which will be to gradually increase the frequency of interactions with your employees. If you think your method of interacting is positive and relationship building, then move forward to the next phase described in the next entry.

In my last blog, I provided a template for a positive employee work conversation—an engaging interaction. In this conversation between supervisor and employee, there is some positive verbal feedback, some corrective feedback, some instruction, some information gathering, and some communication. This employee was given positive verbal recognition (positive feedback).

Creating employee engagement means eliminating management by “things,” and introducing management by relationship. Relationships are the product of engaging interactions with supervision. I have repeated the example below:

“Hi Pauline; how’s it going today?”

“Fine,” Pauline says.

“I wanted to remind you that when you change out the roller today—be sure you lock and tag it out, and watch the edge of the case cover. It’s sharp and Jim almost cut himself last week. Do you need new ear plugs?”

“I picked some up just this morning; the ones I have are only two days old.” Pauline says.

“Did Jim get those stage two processors you needed to update your system?”

“I was expecting him to deliver them, but I haven’t seen him,” she replies.

“I’ll check with him and make sure you get them before noon. By the way, when Cheryl comes by and asks you how you expedite services for our tier 1 customers, would you mind telling her how you do it?”

“Sure; I don’t mind.” Pauline says.

“Today at 2:00 PM we’re having visitors from our largest customer tour the facility. You don’t have to do anything; I just wanted to let you know they are coming through.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.” Pauline says.

“Yesterday, I happened to notice that you moved the rod compressor every time you reload; what would happen if you only moved it once?”

“I never thought about it; I’ll give it a try.” Pauline says.

“The idea you had about repositioning the tools worked for everyone except Alice and that’s because she has an old machine.”

“Glad to help.” Pauline says.

“I’m going over to see if Dell needs anything. If you need me page me. I’ll ask Jim to get those processors over here.”

“The sooner the better.” Pauline says.

“See yah latter.”

Work Conversations That Lead to Employee Engagement and Discretionary Effort

There appears to be a lot of interest in positive reinforcement these days, even though what it is and how you do it are misunderstood. I wrote a book a couple of years ago that was intended as a wakeup call to corporations that were blindly, carelessly and sometimes irresponsibly overusing “things” to replace personal contact with their employees. One danger of overusing incentives and tangible rewards is that they can become addictive to management; worsening of management-employee relations is likely because these systems take the place of personal contact. When the landscape is carpeted with money and merchandise, management may depend on these inducements—these incentives, to manage human performance—while they go off to do other things they are more comfortable doing.

Many managers and supervisors abandon active supervision to the companies reward systems because they are uncomfortable delivering positive personal recognition the way it is taught in most training classes. Many trainers and consultants are confused about the definitions of positive reinforcement and recognition and subsequently they confuse supervisors about how to apply these principle with their employees.

To “attempt” to positively reinforce someone for a behavior, you have to be there when the behavior is happening—you have to see it, or in the case of verbal behavior you have to see lips move and words pronounced. Strictly speaking, the term positive reinforcement only applies to specific behaviors in real time. If you are trying to say something positive about how well someone performed a “task,” a series of associated behaviors that lead to the completion of a work objective, then you are talking about positive verbal recognition. Think of positive reinforcement as something you can only do in real time and positive recognition as something that happens after the behavior.

Here is the discrimination in a nutshell: If you make a positive comment about an employee’s behavior while he or she is doing the behavior, you are “attempting” to positively reinforce the behavior. (I say attempting because we will only know that your comment achieved its purpose if the behavior increases in frequency. If you make a positive comment about something an employee has done (behavior or result) afterward (that could be 10 minutes afterward), you are delivering positive verbal recognition—which makes the employee feel good and may increase the frequency of the behavior as well.

Leaders, managers and supervisors cannot attempt to positively reinforce work behavior unless they are in the workplace—where employees are doing their jobs. An added requirement is that your verbal comments have value to the person whose behavior you are “attempting” to positively reinforce. If the employee doesn’t like you, then the behavior you are attempting to encourage may not increase in frequency, and it may actually decrease in frequency.

The reason this is important only emerges if one is systematically attempting to use positive reinforcement to increase the frequency of specific behaviors in the workplace. For instance, if you are trying to get retail sales associates to approach customers quickly when they come into their merchandise area or you want an employee working in a manufacturing area to perform a specific safe behavior when they are working. In each case, you want to make a positive verbal comment as the behavior is occurring. The only way you can determine if your positive comment is increasing the frequency of the behavior is to track that behavior—to measure its frequency—which is difficult to do in a work setting.

Training classes make the assumption that if a supervisor makes a positive comment to an employee in a warehouse about his proper lifting technique, it will encourage that employee to lift in that manner in the future—because the lifting behavior was “positively reinforced” by the supervisor’s comment. The real world problem that emerges from this ideal scenario is that the employee may not like the supervisor because of the supervisor’s abrasive personality or his past behavior toward the employee. Or even if the employee likes the supervisor, he may see the act of presenting the verbal behavior as part of an initiative, something that the supervisor has been taught and encouraged to do. Hence, the presentation of the positive verbal comment becomes associated with a kind of “work game;” the act has no meaning—it is not associated with any real values that the supervisor has, or the organization for that matter. It is something he does to get the employee to do something.

Positive verbal recognition is, in fact, what managers and supervisors are doing when they are making positive comments about an employee’s work. Everyone in the organization may be erroneously calling it positive reinforcement, but as we have established that could only be the case in specific instances that are hard to achieve in the real world of work. What supervisors and managers are really doing is presenting a positive verbal comment that acknowledges a behavior, task completion, goal attainment, value added behavior, or safe act that has been performed by the employee in the recent past. Although it can be for one behavior, it is usually delivered for a collection of behaviors that culminated in some favorable result.

So, having threaded our way through these somewhat confusing discriminations between verbal positive reinforcement and verbal positive recognition we arrive at an uncomfortable truth: supervisors are not doing either of them. For reasons of personality, past relationship history, the doing-it-because-he-has-to syndrome, the program du jour perception, the contrived effect, the awkwardness avoidance phenomenon—supervisor and managers will default to saying “thank you,” or “thanks for,” which is repeated so many times that it no longer has a positive effect on the employee.

The key to encouraging supervisors (and all levels of management) to learn how to deliver positive verbal recognition to their direct reports is to prompt them to talk about the work—not to try to make them go out and deliver positive verbal comments. The success factor hidden within this approach is that as supervisors talk to employees about the work, they are provided with numerous opportunities to identify things the employee has done that are valuable. Positive feedback is a form of positive verbal recognition that functions to improve the supervisor-employee relationship and also increases the probability the employee will work to please that supervisor in the future.

If you prompt managers and supervisors to provide their reports with positive feedback about what the employee did that moved things along or about things they need to change that will help, you are in effect prompting an interaction that will lead to employee positive recognition. Many behaviorists define feedback as “information about performance,” and positive reinforcement as, “a behavior (that) is followed immediately by the presentation of a stimulus and, as a result, occurs more often in the future.” This leads confused managers and supervisors to think that the two function differently.

I think the social dynamics of human interaction make the preceding discrimination useless for practical purposes. When an employee walks up to performance feedback graph in the breakroom, they are receiving “information about performance.” When they see that their department’s performance has increased, they may or may not have a positive emotional response. When a supervisor or manager presents the graph and says something about it, it is no longer abstract information—it is emotionalized by the human factor—by the relationship history of the supervisor and the employee.

Many managers and supervisors believe that the presentation of feedback about something that needs to be done differently (often referred to as negative feedback) is punishing to employees. If properly delivered, performance feedback about changes that need to be made does not make the employee angry at the supervisor; they may experience a transient negative feeling about themselves because we like to perceive ourselves as competent—as good at what we do. If you say, “Jim, yesterday when you repositioned the parts for assembly, I’m not sure we saved any time. What do you think?” Ninety-five % of the time, the employee will say, “I think you’re right. I think we need to put them back the way they were until I can come up with a better idea.”

My major point is that most organizations resort to tangible reinforcement programs because supervisors are not providing positive verbal recognition—positive comments about the things employees are doing that adds value. They do not deliver positive performance comments because the traditional methods that they have been taught are objectionable to themselves and the employees they manage. Specific, sincere, immediate and personal is a great little recipe for the delivery of a positive comment that is intended to be positive reinforcement. Unfortunately, employees do not like to be the target of orchestrated tactics their supervisor learned out of a book or from a workshop.

If we can encourage supervisors to have regular conversations with their employees, with give and take exchanges about the work—positive verbal recognition emerges in the form of positive feedback which functions to improve the relationship between employee and supervisor and encourages the discretionary effort and employee engagement we know are essential to optimal organizational performance. I have included an example of a supervisor-employee work conversation below:

“Hi Pauline; how’s it going today?”

“Fine,” Pauline says.

“I wanted to remind you that when you change out the roller today—be sure you lock and tag it out, and watch the edge of the case cover. It’s sharp and Jim almost cut himself last week. Do you need new ear plugs?”

“I picked some up just this morning; the ones I have are only two days old.” Pauline says.

“Did Jim get those stage two processors you needed to update your system?”

“I was expecting him to deliver them, but I haven’t seen him,” she replies.

“I’ll check with him and make sure you get them before noon. By the way, when Cheryl comes by and asks you how you expedite services for our tier 1 customers, would you mind telling her how you do it?”

“Sure; I don’t mind.” Pauline says.

“Today at 2:00 PM we’re having visitors from our largest customer tour the facility. You don’t have to do anything; I just wanted to let you know they are coming through.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.” Pauline says.

“Yesterday, I happened to notice that you moved the rod compressor every time you reload; what would happen if you only moved it once?”

“I never thought about it; I’ll give it a try.” Pauline says.

“The idea you had about repositioning the tools worked for everyone except Alice and that’s because she has an old machine.”

“Glad to help.” Pauline says.

“I’m going over to see if Dell needs anything. If you need me page me. I’ll ask Jim to get those processors over here.”

“The sooner the better.” Pauline says.

“See yah latter.”

In this conversation between supervisor and employee, there is some positive verbal feedback, some corrective feedback, some instruction, some information gathering, and some communication. This employee was given positive verbal recognition (positive feedback); see if you can identify when it happened.

Positive Reinforcement is a Real-Time Phenomenon

There are some critical misunderstandings that cause a great deal of confusion when discussing different ways of acknowledging employee performance. The first is the reciprocal use of the term “positive reinforcement” and the word “recognition.” Positive reinforcement describes the outcome of an interaction between manager and employee that occurs while the employee is doing or saying something (behaving) of value. It describes a real time relationship between something an employee is saying or doing and an immediate positive experience or effect created by a management verbal behavior.

You lift the fork with filet mignon to your mouth and the lifting of the fork is positively reinforced by two immediate consequences: 1) the food gets to your mouth; 2) It taste delicious. So the behavior of “lifting the fork toward my mouth” has been positively reinforced. That’s what’s called a natural positive reinforcer; it was just you and the environment. No one else participated in your experience.

Now if you had a coach, parent, or supervisor and their objective was to get you to eat more, then when they observed you lifting the fork to your mouth and chewing the steak, they would say something like, “Excellent Jerry. You lifted the fork very smoothly to your mouth without spilling any of the food. You will regain all the weight you lost during chemotherapy very quickly.” This is known as social positive reinforcement and this is what leaders, managers, supervisors, coaches, and parents are supposed to be doing to elicit high levels of productive behavior from others.

You can see that to positively reinforce someone for a behavior, you have to be there when the behavior is happening—you have to see it, or in the case of verbal behavior you have to see lips move and words pronounced. Leaders, managers and supervisors cannot positively reinforce work behavior unless they are in the workplace—where employees are doing their jobs. An added requirement is that your verbal comments have value to the person whose behavior you are “attempting” to positively reinforce. If the employee doesn’t like you then the behavior you are attempting to encourage may not increase in frequency, and it may even decrease in frequency.

Recognition (in the context of appreciation for performance) is the presentation of a comment or a symbolic award or something that commemorates and acknowledges someone’s contribution. It cannot be for one behavior; it is usually delivered for a collection of behaviors that culminated in some favorable result. You don’t give someone a plaque for lifting a fork to their mouth.

Recognition can be verbal, but it still refers to a performance result—not just one solitary behavior. Someone might say, “The boss finally recognized Jerry’s hard work; yesterday he told him his quick change orders were really making our customers happy.” Then a comment about that might be “Jerry was recognized for his hard work.”

An incentive is not a positive reinforcer. Incentive is “something” that has been presented to an employee because they achieved some outcome (result) for the company. The purpose of using incentives is to provide the employee with something they want or need in exchange for increased effort—better performance. The incentive (an IPod), like recognition products, is based on employee results. Incentives are not delivered in real time—as a specific behavior is occurring. Incentive products are rewards for good performance. The word reward is most appropriately used when referring to money or tangible items presented to employees based upon some performance achievement.

The sloppy, undifferentiated use of these words seems harmless, but it really is a deterrent to effective employee engagement. To say, “We positively reinforced Jerry with a trip to Bermuda for reaching his sales target,” is incorrect. You can say, “We rewarded Jerry…”, or “We recognized Jerry’s sales performance…”, but you cannot say that you positively reinforced Jerry.

You could say, “While Jerry was on the phone with a customer, I heard him ask the customer if she was interested in the sweaters we had on special this week. I gave him a big smile and a thumbs-up immediately.” In this instance you positively reinforced “a” sales behavior—assuming that your smile and thumbs-up are positive things for Jerry. If he hates your guts and his behavior is not strengthened, we would say that—in spite of the fact that you attempted to positively reinforce Jerry—your smile and thumbs-up was a big turn-off to him. Matter of fact, he is telling all the other sales agents to be sure to avoid up-selling because it gets your attention and you may smile at them.

Management’s attempt to positively reinforce valuable performance behavior often fails for personal reasons. The employee doesn’t like the manager or think his or her positive verbal comment is scripted—it is being used in a calculating manner to manipulate the employee into doing more. Positive comments that are obviously insincere decrease employee engagement and create relationship problems.

So how do we ensure that employees receive positive reinforcement for the specific behaviors that are aligned with business success—the critical behaviors that increase profitability or safe behaviors that keep employees from being injured? The best vehicle for the successful delivery of positive reinforcement can be referred to as “monitoring”—checking with employees to see how thing are going, asking about needed resources, eliminating barriers and discussing priorities.

Active interest—stopping to talk with employees about work, give feedback and collect information—provides opportunities to make positive comments about the employee’s performance—natural comments that arise in the context of the conversation. Given that you have created a relationship of mutual respect, your positive verbal comments about the behavior you see can positively reinforce that behavior.

Research results tell us that leaders who show active interest in employee job behaviors seem to get results irrespective of other factors. That is, supervisors and managers who check on their employees, look at their work and discuss their performance—making positive comments when appropriate and corrective comments in a balanced, give-and-take dialogue—have the highest performing departments.

Stop Trying to Motivate and Start Trying to Help

Leadership, leadership, leadership—that’s all you hear about today. It is fashionable to call executives, managers and supervisors “leaders.” Most of us know that people are promoted to management because they are either smart or good or both. They are not leaders—men and women with visionary foresight, integrity, character, and moral authority.

Most managers are average Joes—fallible, overstressed, and trying their best. Yep, trying their best even though they are impatient with those who report to them—particularly the ones who just can’t seem to follow instructions or the ones who seem to botch up every thing that comes their way. You don’t feel like you are actually managing people, you feel like you are in charge of them—held responsible for whatever they decide to do—good or bad.

There are systems in place that are supposed to help you; you’ve been taught to use different kinds of strategies to influence your reports—to encourage them to do their best. But, secretly you know that all of them are working according to the kind of work ethic and personality they had when they were hired. You try to stay on top of the situation, but the company has so many other things for you to do that you barely get a chance to get out in the workplace—which, even if you could, you would not know what to do to “lead” anybody.

One thing you’ve heard a thousand times—recognize your employees for doing good work; use positive reinforcement—they will be happy and motivated and, most of all, they will like you. The company brochures talk about it, the company trainer teaches and promotes it, and your manager asks you if you are doing it…it’s a nightmare. You feel like a bad guy, because the idea of going out to tell people good things does not seem natural.

All you know is that it just does not feel comfortable—it just doesn’t seem genuine—it seems dishonest, to go out and say positive things to people when they have done something you used to do without expecting or wanting any recognition. They know it is company policy—that all the supervisors are required to do it. It’s like some kind of weird game where everybody falls in line; don’t make waves, just do what you’re told. Say thank you to everybody.

Actually, it makes you mad to think that you have to positively reinforce people for doing what they are paid to do; you think, maybe I have the wrong attitude to be a supervisor; maybe I’m not cut out to coach others. I didn't need any coaching myself. I’m doing well in every other aspect of this job. But, the people side of this thing is making me feel like a failure.

Since I have taught thousands of supervisors and managers how to use positive reinforcement, I think I can say without fear of contradiction that if you have similar feelings, you are the rule, not the exception. Most supervisors are somewhat uncomfortable with the people-side of their jobs. You know you are not supposed to be negative, but what do you do when your employees don’t do what they are trained, instructed, and paid to do? How do you positively reinforce an employee for something good they did, when most of the time they do what they are paid to do, but you don’t see anything that can be singled out as worthy of a special comment.

Sometimes, you wind up doing nothing when people are not performing--when you know you should be disciplining or correcting them. Your manager has repeatedly reminded you not to be negative--be positive. It seems like the whole program is to ignore poor performers and intermittently give out some conspicuous public awards. The public recognition game is another practice that seems awkward and insincere much of the time. Like, everybody is trying too hard to find something good to say or something worthy of a plaque or certificate. Keep everybody happy. Don't make waves.

Stop Trying to Do Something to “Motivate” Your Reports

Often, supervisors only talk to an employee when there is some type of work related problem. For this reason, the supervisor is constantly paired with bad news. Seeing your supervisor headed your way is like opening the mailbox and seeing a letter from the IRS; you just feel that what is about to follow is not good news.

You cannot really positively reinforce anyone, unless your comments mean something to them, unless you have a productive relationship with them. If you have a history of only discussing problems, critiquing, pointing out errors and shortcomings—then you cannot come around intermittently and say something good about what someone did or achieved and expect them to melt with happiness. They think you are up to something—they are suspicious. And, you are not too happy either because you feel their distrust; the tension is mutually perceived. It just doesn’t work.

I have some good news. Recent research has disclosed that supervisors do not have to fit into the old “people skills” stereotype to have the highest performing, happiest employees. When researchers observed managers over several months and recorded their behavior, they found that there are very specific things that the highest performing supervisors (those supervisors who consistently had the most profitable departments) did—things that were more important than their personality profiles, traits, or other attributes. These behaviors were consistent across industries, geography—even the best coaches did them.

The Best Supervisors Simply Talk to Their People

1. The supervisors with the best records of motivating others to excel and perform make it a point to be where the work is happening; they walk among their employees. They amble and peruse and observe. Amongst the activities, they look and ask questions. They are casual; they don’t carry a clipboard or take notes. They monitor the work and find out how things are going. And, they make it a point not to look for just problems. They do not ask questions meant to trap employees in order to correct them for an infraction. They just talk to people.

Stop trying to motivate your reports (if you were trying, that is). Start trying to have a conversation with your employees while they are working; it’s what you might call real-time supervision. It is a form of work-sampling—being there to watch the employee do their jobs—interact with the equipment, the product, and the customer. The best supervisors find a way to be there when their employees are doing the job.

2. During daily visits, the highest performing supervisors have natural, casual conversations about the work, the equipment, resources, tools, schedules—anything that might influence the employee’s performance. And, most importantly, the supervisors make comments about what the employee has done—some positive, some neutral, and some corrective.

A positive comment might sound like, “That will work,” or “It’s a good start,” or “We got to try to do it that way every time,” or “OK,” or “That’s going to save us a bunch of time.” The point is, positive reinforcement does not have to be staged or artificial sounding; in fact, high-sounding praise may come across as less than sincere. To build a relationship with an employee to the point where he trusts your comments requires a history of interactions—interactions that have natural mix of positives, neutrals and corrective statements.

1. Get out of the office and into the work area

2. Stop and talk with everyone you can

3. Ask if they need anything—find out what’s going on.

4. Give them any instructions that will help

5. Let them know their work is important

6. If something looks good, say—“looks good.”

7. Don’t preach, insincerely compliment, or try any tactics.

8. Give them feedback on their performance when appropriate—what they did that helped; what needs to be changed.

9. Talk to them like a human, not like an authority figure.

Remember, you’re job is to help them succeed. They don’t like being reminded that they are “subordinates,” so don’t talk to them using words, gestures, or body language that makes them feel that way.

The model to keep ever-present in your mind is something like this—if someone were talking to me about this, how would I want them to say it?