doug smith training

  It's easier to make a problem worse than it is to solve it, so evaluate your solution carefully. -- doug smith

You don't need to keep score, but remember: someone is. Someone is paying attention to the way you handle feedback. Someone is monitoring your voice tones when you talk with team members. Someone is watching to see how you react when you are challenged. People, and especially leaders, are constantly evaluated. Will you be a perfect 10? Will you be a mixed up combination of varying opinions? Will you consistently treat people with the kind of respect and attentiveness that makes scoring irrelevant? High performance leaders relax on the scoring and focus on centering. Your self, your team, and some part of the world - all more centered, focused, balanced, and alive. (Oh, and don't worry -- it takes a lifetime to get there...) -- doug smith

What's wrong with performance evaluations? Evaluation. We are all constantly evaluated. Judged. Scored. There are surveys after nearly every transaction. On the phone, online, even in person -- people ask for your feedback but hope against hope it's all good -- 5's on a scale of 5 or 10's on a scale of 10. Why? Because none of us enjoy being judged. Yet, we all make mistakes. None of us are perfect. We all carry around our broken pieces. We might even have moved on from those broken pieces and changed enough to avoid repeating mistakes. We do learn how to make customers pleased. We do learn how to provide our boss with what she most wants. The broken pieces remain. Judging us for them does not fix them. Judgement does not fix the broken pieces. Time, growth, compassion, and learning fix the broken pieces. Healing takes time and care. Judgment gets in the way. Send your inner judge out of the room for an hour. You'll be finally free. Yes, you do nee...