Page 186 - The extraordinary leader

Fatal Flaws Must Be Fixed • 163

complete a project met with success. Positive feedback is the reward for doing
that. In the parlance of investing, this group sees success as achieving big
gains. Yes, there might be periodic losses, but so long as the gains are there in
the long run, the short-term losses are quite acceptable.
These people are devastated by negative feedback. It wounds their self-
esteem. Their intention to do something worthwhile has not been recognized
or their efforts were a failure. Negative feedback is exactly what they did not
want to hear, and thus it becomes highly demotivating to them. They pull
back and become deflated by criticism.

Prevention Orientation. The second group of people has a “prevention
orientation.” Their objective in life is to avoid negative outcomes. Averting
failure is what life is about. The way to avoid failure is constantly to monitor
what you do, and instantly head off any impending mistake or omission. Thus,
someone mentioning to you that there is an error in your draft of a report to
upper management is greatly appreciated. That enables you to avoid looking
bad to those receiving the report.
As investors, this group is in the camp of “Don’t lose anything.” Success
means never having a stock go down. It is perfectly all right not to have spec-
tacular gains, or even gains that mirror the performance of the overall mar-
ket, so long as nothing is lost.
Feedback for people with a prevention orientation. Any information that alerts
this person to an impending problem or difficulty would be sought after and
greatly appreciated. Individuals in this group welcome what others might see
as “negative feedback.”
In contrast, this group is not enthralled with positive feedback. For these
individuals, it comes across at worst as phony and hollow praise; or at best as
fairly useless. Positive feedback does not help the individual steer clear of fail-
ures, so it has little value.
The takeaway here is that one kind of feedback may be extremely helpful
to some people, whereas it may be irritating to others. Much of that has to do
with their orientation to life. Be aware that two people may respond very dif-
ferently to exactly the same feedback based on their life-orientation.

Fatal flaws in the prevention camp. Those people we described earlier with
fatal flaws may be in either the prevention or promotion camp. For those in
the prevention camp, their behavior is almost always characterized by a lack
of openness to new ideas, because new ideas are risky. There is a much
greater possibility of mistakes happening when you try something new, so