When starting a new performance, whether a difficult and serious one (a new job or a new course\/degree or major project) or one that\u2019s relatively inconsequential (a new hobby or pastime), what most of us need to hear, more than anything else, is that we belong there and that our effort matters. Not how we\u2019re not as effective as we could be or how we can improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As our confidence and familiarity with the performance increases, we will no longer need (or want) the affirmation we did at first. Our focus will shift to improving our performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It can be tempting, especially when new to a mentoring, teaching, or managing situation, to jump right in and immediately begin trying to help newbie performers improve their performance. Most often, this is because we see their amazing potential and we know that providing them with assessment-based feedback is the best way to help them begin to realize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s true; assessment, including identifying Areas for Improvement, is <\/strong>the key to improving performance. But if we can pause in our pursuit of improvement and start by affirming <\/strong>a newbie performer\u2019s presence <\/em>and engagement<\/em>, we increase the likelihood that they will stick with the performance long enough to gain the confidence needed to benefit from the assessment-based help we can give.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By starting with affirmation, we\u2019re not patting a performer on the head or making any other kind of empty gesture. Rather, we\u2019re communicating that we see and appreciate what they\u2019re doing and saying very clearly that it matters<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it doesn\u2019t, what\u2019s the point of our help?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When starting a new performance, whether a difficult and serious one (a new job or a new course\/degree or major project) or one that\u2019s relatively inconsequential (a new hobby or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"fifu_image_url":"http:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/images\/affirm.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40,21,41],"tags":[24,18],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-affirmation","category-assessment","category-mentoring","tag-improvement","tag-responding","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pcrest.com\/images\/affirm.jpg?fit=900%2C600","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}