Hi, I'm Joe Crosby and this video is about the four behavioral skills identified by dr. john Wallen, which go with his interpersonal gap model. Hopefully you have already cut that video. So, the first skill is behavior description. To do behavior description, you must describe behavior only in terms of words tone of voice, facial expression and body language, and undebatable data such as whether or not I made a deadline, whether I stood up and walked out of a meeting, that's all body language action in this model. Whether or not I made the deadline is important data. If you want to reinforce let's say Made it and you want to let this person know that you're pleased with their behavior.

You have to be able to name the behavior. What is not behavior is what a lot of people settle for judgments, interpretations, perceptions, they will say things like, you're a good team player, or you're not a good team player, you're professional, you're unprofessional. Those are not the actual behaviors that lead to the belief, the judgment about the behavior, it's going to be useful reinforcement. And especially if it's a reprimand, if it's some kind of confrontation, if you can get to just the behavior. When I was talking, you got up, you walked out of the room, I was troubled by that. Then the person will know what you're talking about.

And even if there's some tension, it's likely the too You can close the gap communicate and understand what happened. There's a good chance they got up and walked out of the room for reasons that had nothing to do with whatever you or I were doing in that moment. So if you just take the judgment Wow, that was rude and then hold on to it, you're creating a needless gap. Behavior description is the most important of all of these four walls and skills for decreasing conflict and closing gaps.