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Drawing the line at criticism

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Responding to criticism with composure and curiosity rather than reacting reflexively is a skill greatly eased by learning to recognise our feelings and the mindsets that activate them, in real time. When we can do that, we are better able to listen confidently to critical comments, hold clear limits or prevent more when we’ve heard enough. Identifying if and when any line should be drawn, calls for situational awareness, mindfulness and emotional agility.  Announcing and holding the … [Read more...]

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Don’t take it personally

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It’s a common human tendency when criticised to think we’re under attack. Although all that we know, at first, is that someone has a problem they want heard and understood, we readily take offence if it seems we’ve been chastised, insulted, demeaned, derided, disrespected, harmed or in some other way mistreated. Once we've taken it personally like that, our emotional chain reactions and reflexive (knee-jerk) fight or flight urges are primed for release. Unless quickly altered, those ideas … [Read more...]

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Do you respond or react to criticism?

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Many people with perfectly adequate hearing develop seriously impaired listening when they are criticised. Rather than respond constructively by clarifying, acknowledging and replying thoughtfully to others’ concerns, they react with various forms of resistance or avoidance. Whenever we do this, we add unnecessary complication to interpersonal communication. Listening is the communication skill first learned and most often used. Yet it is the least taught and least … [Read more...]

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Our own part in conversational problems

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Having a ringside seat at other people’s quarrels can be unpleasant. But they're valuable events for me when I realise some of the ineffectual behaviours in use resemble my own. When conducted in public, especially with as much acrimony as the occasion discussed here, they offer similar mirroring to a much wider audience. To intentionally change a behaviour we must first become aware of it. Golden rules Understanding our own part in creating a problem is the beginning of wisdom. Kong Qiu … [Read more...]

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Good Listening, a Virtue of Character

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Just before I posted this I found that The Book of Life at The School of Life website had been viewed over 26 million times but its How to be a Good Listener chapter had just 51,655 views.  No surprise there. The soft stuff is always more challenging than the hard stuff. Despite the ever-present need, "improving my listening practices" rarely appears among people’s common interests or priorities. It is impossible to overemphasize the immense need humans have to be really listened to, to be … [Read more...]

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Aim to heal, not hurt

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We can heal or hurt people simply by the judgements we make about them. When we extend healing to others, we also heal ourselves. The ability to choose between the discomfort of becoming aware of our judgemental habits of mind and the discomfort of being ruled by them, is a vitally important self-management practice. The small, tight-knit specialist peer group I belong to learned that one of us, (I'll call him Andrew - not his real name), appears to have committed and confessed to a repugnant … [Read more...]

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Choose how you respond to pressure, disruption and uncertainty | Tom Watkins

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Struggling to accept what we are sometimes faced with is a normal part of being alive, like a tax on being human works-in-progress. Our battles with reality are usually won, in the end, by reality. But have you noticed that for very many people, reality increasingly involves relentless pressure and frenzy? Three inescapable societal trends are behind this. Being overwhelmed by them is optional. I was with a friend for one of our regular discussions we have, over coffee or during a 30-minute … [Read more...]

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The best and simplest goal: get better

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Can most of us, with enough persistent effort, get pretty good at anything? Probably. Effort, as psychologist Angela Duckworth has shown, counts twice:  talent x effort = skill, and skill x effort = achievement.  And though both talent and our willingness to exert persistent effort may be at least partially genetic, only a minority of our personality is inherited. High performers  don’t rely on either nature or nurture, but on a combination of the two — and they are really good at nurturing … [Read more...]

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Sharpen-up priority management

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The foundation of effective priority management is the ability to clarify purpose and hold our focus on it. Both steps can be challenging. The first, because purpose is easily confused with current activities, dealing with agenda or completing to-do lists. The second, because we get caught up in our attitudinal compulsions (to be constantly busy or needing to be liked by others, for example), and effortless distraction is almost always a nanosecond away. There's no perfect approach to getting … [Read more...]

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First, step off the treadmill

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If we paused regularly and often enough to reflect on how we approach what we do, we'd soon improve our efforts and their results. That's a self-management no-brainer. But how and when can we get off the workplace treadmill for this?  For many people, that's a serious dilemma. Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. [Margaret J. Wheatley] When I first ask coaching clients to add periodic self-reflection … [Read more...]