SPIN
What you will get:Reflections on how to clean your negative emotions
Is it time to clean up your emotions?
And how do you clean something?
Well one way is to put it in a washing machine and put on a SPIN cycle.
You see…
Far too often, feedback in organisations does more harm than good. And that’s a missed opportunity.
Feedback when delivered well and effectively should increase openness, understanding and engagement.
So, back to the SPIN cycle.
The SPIN Model is a simple and effective way of delivering feedback to someone. And it works especially well when you want to express negative emotions in a constructive, respectful way without attacking the other person.
Here’s the 4 steps…
Specific Behaviour?
Pain?
Impact?
Next time?
So what do they mean?
Firstly, you should never criticize the person. So the Specific Behaviour part of the model means you should only ever give specific, factual information when giving feedback on something you don’t like.
The Pain part is where you express clearly your feelings when the person did what they did. Focusing on how you felt.
Then the Impact part is where you share the impact that the Specific Behaviour and the Pain emotions had on you and your thoughts and actions.
And finally, you share what would be helpful for you Next Time you are in a similar situation.
So here’s an example to clarify this further. Let’s imagine you just came out of a meeting with your colleague, Peter, who did some things that annoyed you.
Here’s what you could say using SPIN…
“Peter, I just wanted to share with you some reflections on what just happened in the meeting. And before I start, I want it to be clear that my intention is to help us understand each other better and form an even stringer working relationship.
When were in that meeting with the client, you interrupted me several times. For example, do you remember when I started to talk about the new contract terms you jumped in when I was mid-sentence (Specific Behaviour)
When you did this I felt irritated and got an uncomfortable sensation in my stomach. And I could even feel myself getting angry at one point as I didn’t feel respected. (the Pain you felt).
The Impact this had on me was that I went quiet. I am not sure if you noticed, but I didn’t say anything for the last 20 minutes of the meeting. I kind of gave up and thought, “What’s the point?”.
(Impact)
What would really help me is that if next time you could give me a little more space to finish explaining my ideas to the customer.
(Next time)
I just wanted to share that with you Peter.”
And there it is…SPIN in action!
Now let’s be clear…
I am not saying it is easy to use SPIN. It takes courage to be able to openly express feelings with someone. But it is important.
Why?
Because emotions don’t go away. So if you don’t find a way to respectfully and clearly express your emotions, they will find a more destructive way to come out.
And notice that at no point during the SPIN model do you say what the other person did was wrong.
There is no criticism is SPIN. You are merely pointing out some factual behaviour, expressing how that behaviour left you feeling, sharing the impact that feeling had on you and politely telling the other person what would help you in a future situation.
And that’s it!
And of course, you don’t know how the other person will respond. But that’s up to them. As long as you have used SPIN with the right intention and managed your emotions well while you were sharing the feedback, you can congratulate yourself on a job well done☺.
So I’m off to give some respectful, open and honest feedback to someone to clean my emotions.
How about you?
To your success
Steve Neale
“Europe’s Leading Expert on Personal and Professional Growth”
Psychologist, Executive Coach, EI Practitioner, Award Winning Trainer, International Author, Psychodynamic Therapist, Hypnotherapist, Mindfulness Instructor, International Speaker, Creator of the LPS, Creator of the Accredited Masters in High-Performance Leadership
