Priming - Beginning meetings with Positives rather than Negatives

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In most meetings and discussions people expend all their energies focusing on Negatives rather than the positives which may be a minor problem in the overall context of things.

 In this McKinsey article, the author talks about an example used by a manager where 95% of the project is going well with problems in 3% of the areas. She would insist all meetings start off by talking of all the positives of the project which would be result in relaxing and calming everyone before starting off on the 3%. This helped people think more clearly and calmly on the problems resulting in improved productivity.

 This technique is also called Priming which is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences the response to another stimulus.

  src Wiki.

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