Centered Leaders Preserve Dignity

How important would something need to be for you to surrender your dignity in order to achieve it?

That question reminds me of an activity that required heavy loss of personal dignity. Maybe you're aware of it. Pledging a fraternity or sorority demands that the pledges surrender all sorts of personal inhibitions in the service of obtaining membership. They may be asked to recite weird incantations in public. They may be asked to procure obscure objects (like the driver's side door of a police car). They may be harassed until tears seem like the only release.

Yet, at the end of it, they may even call the experience valuable. They may especially treasure their friendships with their new brothers or sisters.

That kind of surrender is likely rare, though.

If an action you are contemplating requires you to surrender your dignity to the extent that you compromise your values, maybe it's one best avoided.

There are very few answers worth paying for with your dignity.

Oh, and yes -- I did pledge a fraternity and don't regret it. But I hope I never experience that level of embarrassment again...

Digging Deeper

Are you ever tempted to ask someone to do something they may not be comfortable with? Would you be comfortable doing it?

Think about the most embarrassing moment in your life. What could you have done to avoid that? Was it worth experiencing in order to get the desired outcome?

What social organizations have you been a member with? What were their strong points? What keeps people from joining those organizations today?

How do you build a sense of community?

Does your work team think of itself as a closely knit team? What more could you do to increase that feeling?

-- Douglas Brent Smith

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A Promise or A Plan?

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The Benefits of Supervisory Training

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Helping People Change

Resistance to change is our most natural and unproductive impulse. Helping people thru that change changes their lives positively. It's s something that high performance leaders do. -- doug smith

Listen to Their Story

"An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard." -- Gene Knudsen Hoffman Without contrary evidence it always seems like we're right. Even WITH contrary evidence we get stuck often defending our story, our view. The story may not be wrong, but it is surely incomplete. Listen. Ask questions. Understand. Learn. High performance leaders look for common ground. -- doug smith

Dump Anonymous Feedback

What's the problem with anonymous feedback? The list is long. When people can say anything they want, without any accountability, they are sometimes rude. The feedback becomes exaggerated. Not knowing what to do with it (who do you try to please?) it frustrates the person receiving the feedback. Anonymous feedback encourages anti-social comments. It opens up a level of venting that is not healthy for either party. And, rather than building relationships, it tears them down. The best place for anonymous feedback is the garbage. It's too easy to be negative when no one knows who you are. Hold people accountable. Teach them that two-way communication is responsible, respectable, and useful. Let's keep the trash talking on the basketball court and build relationships of worth at work. -- Doug Smith

Perception Frames Your Problem

How do you know for sure if something is a problem? If you see it as a problem, then it is a problem. Your perception will tell you -- not reality, but what you consider important about your reality. If you see it as a problem, shouldn't you do something about it? Centered problem solving sorts through our perceptions and checks in with the perceptions of other people who are effected by the situation. Emotions can trigger misconceptions, so centering ourselves and testing our assumptions is key. Then, if it's still a problem, it's time to do something about it. -- Douglas Brent Smith Bring our Centered Problem Solving workshop to your location and dramatically increase the problem solving skills of the people who attend.

Know Why You Do What You Do

Remember that advertising slogan for a very questionable publication that kept saying "Inquiring minds want to know"? We all have inquiring minds. We all need to know. And what we need to know the most is why. Why do we do what we do. What makes what we do cool, important, necessary? It's never just a job. It's never just an interaction. There is always a reason why. Know why. Figure out your why. Identify your mission. Then roll with it. -- Doug Smith P.S. My good friend David Spiegel has pointed out that Simon Sinek is a great source on WHY. Here's the video where I first was drawn to his thinking on this:

Change Quickly

How are you at keeping up? Change is so rapid that adjusting, and evolving, has become a full time job. We roll with the changes, we drive new changes, we let go of the old. It's not getting easier, and it's getting faster. I work at it. I keep learning. I keep adjusting, and still... By the time I have it figured out it's time to try something else. Instead of getting frustrated, here's how I like to look at it: change is growth. Faster change is faster growth. Getting better is growth, so the more change the better. Are you with me on that? Because the alternative is slow-motion decay, and we don't want that, do we? -- Douglas Brent Smith

Tough and Tender

It's better to be considered tough and show up tender than to be thought tender and show up tough. -- doug smith

How to Embrace Criticism

Taking a very long walk. Do you ever feel like simply avoiding some feedback that's headed your way? Sometimes I'd rather have someone keep their opinion to themselves. If they're not happy, if they are sounding judgmental, if they have a frowny face. Wouldn't be easier if they just kept quiet? Easier in that moment. And, sometimes maybe it's even the best thing possible if a harsh critic keeps a damaging opinion private. But I've also learned that sometimes the toughest message is what I truly need to hear in order to learn. Just because I don't like criticism doesn't mean it isn't good for me. I just might need to take a good long afterwards. How about you? Here's how to embrace criticism: Remember, they could be wrong. As my friend Dr. Jay Desko has said, "feedback says more about the person providing the feedback than it does about you." Stay curious. There is probably something useful to learn. Remember that a

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