doug smith training

Do you like it if someone criticizes your emotions? Or, how about those times when people minimize the emotions going on as unimportant? Judging emotions does not help whatever situation is provoking that emotion. Blaming the person in the middle of an emotion for their emotions is not helpful. It doesn't do any good to criticize anyone's emotions. You can stop that now. It doesn't help you, or the person feeling the emotion. Instead, stay curious. Stay helpful. And mostly, just listen. -- doug smith

Centered, high performance leaders carefully consider what their feedback feels like to others before delivering it. -- Doug Smith

Every leader needs feedback from someone who will tell the truth no matter what. Who is that someone for you? -- Doug Smith

Are you a strong boss? Are you totally sure of yourself? Is your team a wild success? Get feedback. Pay attention. Assume nothing. The stronger the boss, the more compelling is the need for honest feedback. Promote honest feedback, listen, and continually improve. -- Doug Smith

"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker." -- Zig Zigler You know that we can learn from our mistakes. You might also know that failure carries many valuable lessons. I like the expression that comes from NLP (Neurolistic Programing) "there is no failure, only feedback." There's always something to learn. Any effort that results in learning is not a complete failure. So it's up to us. While we would never choose to fail at anything (oh horrors!) sometimes we will. Whether we learn or not is completely up to us. Find the learning. Find the success. What have you learned today? -- Doug Smith

Are you getting all the feedback that you need - or do you sometimes avoid it because you won't like what it says? I've been known to avoid some critical feedback. It doesn't make me feel good. Sometimes, there's nothing that I can do about it anyway. But, by avoiding the feedback altogether I could miss the piece of positive feedback inside, or the advice that truly matters, or an opportunity to communicate more clearly and reach better understandings and agreements. Feedback can feel like hard work, but it's worth it. If we want to achieve our biggest goals it helps to know how we're doing along the way. Goal achievers learn from feedback every day. We don't have to apply every piece of feedback. And for heaven's sake, we don't have to take it personally. As my much respected graduate school professor Dr. Jay Desko has said, "feedback says more about the person providing the feedback than it does about the person receiving the feedba