Listening truly is the only skill you need.
And if you are in a position of power, you need it twice as much.
Category: leadership
Promote mistakes
Speak about your mistakes often, particularly if you are in a position of power. Tell about what went wrong and what you did learn. Anticipate how the next time will be.
It’s also a great way to assess people around you and the environment you are in. If you recently joined a company, and nobody talks about mistakes ever, particularly when everyone is listening, that is not a company that knows how to learn and promote innovation.
Mistakes are essential. Promote them to become better.
Not getting it your way
Being around others means that most of the times you will not get it your way.
You can fight that. Most bad managers do. Parents and kids alike often do. Partners sometimes do. And that rarely changes the fact that you will not get it your way.
Better to embrace it then. Allocate space in your plan – both mental and physical – for others to be. Be ready to accept and flex boundaries. Clarify where the limit is and stick to that in all circumstances.
We are all in it for our own betterment.
Resentment
What good does your resentment do?
Perhaps you have been treated unfairly. Perhaps you did truly deserve that promotion. Perhaps that person in your team is really after you. Perhaps everyone should really buy into your idea. Perhaps you do deserve more.
And what good does it do to act up because of that? How closer does that take you to your objectives?
Resentment is bad not because others might not deserve it – they usually don’t. Resentment is bad because it is not efficient.
The moment you feel it, do acknowledge it, do talk about it, and then do move on.
Own your meetings
When you send an invite for a meeting, you make two promises to those invited.
- You promise that you will be respecting the timing of the meeting – the time the meeting will start, the time allocated to the different items in the agenda, the time the meeting is supposed to end.
- You promise that you will be prepared to deliver on the agenda, or that those presenting/discussing will have the information they need to prepare to deliver on the agenda.
Many meetings fail because they are considered a way to come together and express opinions, thoughts, ideas. Some might be, but even in that case it is a responsibility of the organizer to manage a right pace to the conversation, to send out information that can help drive the conversation, and in general to be the owner of the conversation.
If there is one gift you feel like giving to your colleagues in 2022, let it be this one.
Own your own meetings.
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