Compassion's Double Benefit

Have you ever noticed that compassion is a limitless resource? Or, that when you feel compassion for another it somehow makes you feel better.

Not that feeling better is your goal, or that it is ever enough. Eventually (sooner is better) compassion should prod us into action: doing something to make things better. It's a meaningful and powerful start.

Compassion for others inevitably becomes compassion for you.

It helps you develop understanding, patience, tolerance, helpfulness, curiosity, and motivation. It helps you see that just as others are not perfect and find themselves in need, so is there also something imperfect and needful about yourself. Not a victim kind of need, but a human type of incompleteness.

Centered leaders pay attention to compassion and develop it into an active verb.

The next time you feel those pangs of compassion, I encourage you to take a moment to truly experience it. Feel it in the moment and ask, where is it leading you?

-- Douglas Brent Smith

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A Promise or A Plan?

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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

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

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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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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

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