doug smith training

What happens with unsolicited advice?  Probably nothing. If you didn't ask for a piece of advice, why would you take it? Well, then what happens to advice that you do ask for? Isn't that a whole different matter? Different, yes, and yet often the outcome is the same: advice given and then ignored. It's easy to give advice because we all have opinions on everything, even stuff we don't know anything about. Taking advice is harder because A) the advice we get is often wrong, B) the advice we get is usually hard, and C) the advice we get often doesn't work. As someone who is sometimes paid to give advice I've had to learn the primary consultant's rule of advice giving: first ask the questions and then let the client determine the best advice. It takes longer. It can take much longer. It's not immediately satisfying, but it works much better. I'm working on slowing down my approach to giving advice and yet I still go too fast sometimes. How about you? He...

You can tell much about someone by what they plan to do. You might learn all you need to know about someone by their plan, their strategy, their approach to communicating (or not communicating). Agenda is revealing. Agenda reveals character. Read the signals. No amount of accommodation will change a person's character.  Maybe start with the agenda, and if you can't get that to an acceptable plan, read the signals. -- doug smith  

Ever work on a problem so long that you've got a half of a dozen solutions buzzing around like bees near a flower? What if those bees are really wasps? What if the value of your solutions is less than the lessons of the problem? Yikes! We can't solve a problem until we let go of the solutions that don't work. To get started, let go. -- doug smith  

Small acts of courage lead to big acts of courage. It starts out tough and stays tough yet one courageous act leads to an even more courageous act, just like building a muscle. What courageous thing will you do this week? -- doug smith

You can send an email and maybe it will get read. Or maybe a text message will get read faster. You could even leave a sticky note on someone's desk in an attempt to reach them... Face it. There is no equivalent substitute for human interaction. If it's really important, talk about it. -- doug smith  

Judge less, listen more. It's not complicated but it's not easy, either. If you work as a judge then go ahead and judge. As for the rest of us, listening works better and longer. -- doug smith

Customers are human. They may have needs that they don't understand. When we provide unselfish service we just might uncover those customer needs. -- doug smith  

Some days you feel lucky. Some days you don't. I can still hear Albert King singing "if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all..."  As a kid I thought, that's too bad, that really is the blues, but that's how it is... Or is it? The thing about luck is that it doesn't seem to consult you. When we rely on luck, good or bad, we relinquish all control. Why do that? On average, luck just doesn't care, so don't let it determine your destiny. To quote the great voice teacher Dorinda Dercar,  "Luck is for people who think the answer is outside themselves..." You're better than that. Your answer is inside you. -- doug smith

  Do you ever have to talk yourself into doing what you need to do? We might even need to talk ourselves into doing some things we WANT to do...we just get busy and stuck. Working on your goals can feel like work sometimes. Do it anyway. Do the work. Achieve your goals. -- doug smith

  When you were a child what did you want to be when you grew up? Now that you're grown, what did you bring from that dream into your current self? Try this: revisit your former dreams -- from childhood or later -- and without attaching to the exact role you imagined, look for the gems inside that sparked your imagination in the first place.  Revisit your former dreams -- there could be a current goal there waiting for your discovery. -- doug smith

How many you's are in you? You'll go thru many iterations on the way to the next you. New habits, new skills, new dreams, new goals. Like it or not, we live in constant change. We might as well take ownership of as much of that change as we can. Re-invent yourself when the old skin no longer suits you. It may be time for a new you. -- doug smith