Tag: feedback

You stay

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When you are in a bad mood, your productivity goes down. The quality of your work is not as good as usual, even getting started feels painful. You are cranky, you put negative narratives first, you fail to appreciate what good there is.

Being in a bad mood also poisons everything around you. And most importantly, it makes people in your life be in a bad mood to.

There is no remedy to being in a bad mood. It just happens.

The only sensible thing to do is put all the residual resources into breaking the direct link between the mood and yourself. Indeed, often when you are in a bad mood, you look at yourself as a bad person too. That’s dangerous.

Moods come and go. You stay, often improved. If you can appreciate this difference more, nothing will stop you.

To meet an emotion is first to acknowledge it and then to feel it enough to get the message it carries. The feeling carries the message but it isn’t the message, and we won’t get the message without feeling at least some of the emotion. The message, of course, is very likely to be a form of emerging self-knowledge.

Dan Oestreich, How To Meet A Strong Emotion

Recognition

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You can’t heal if you do not recognize you are hurt.

And of course, this is valid for teams, groups, and communities as well. The more people involved, the more challenging and long the process of recognition is going to be.

Have you told everyone how you feel? Have you shared with them what has happened? Have you signaled you are committed to a different future? Have you shown your own vulnerability and accepted the vulnerability of others?

Even a deep crisis can be an opportunity to build something better and stronger.

But if you approach it hoping that things will turn around because of luck, because of a new year, because what is not working will suddenly start to work. That is just wishful thinking.

The third reason

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What is the third reason why someone does something?

The first reason is almost instinctive. It is generally about us.

The second reason is a mirror. We often make it about them.

The third reason might open up some empathy, as it has the power to be about the context.

This is how it goes.

A colleague does not answer your email requesting help.

The first reason: they do not want to help me.

The second reason: they are selfish and only care about their work.

The third reason: it is the end of the quarter, they might be busy.

Another example.

A company is not coming back to you regarding your application.

The first reason: they have rejected me.

The second reason: their HR is lazy and unprofessional.

The third reason: they have a recruitment policy in place and they are simply following it.

Thinking through the third reason makes two things possible: it moves us from a natural tendency to look at the world as if we were at the centre of it, and it builds some rules that are actually applicable to everyone. It allows more compassion for others and for ourselves. It unloads us of a burden.

Make an effort to get to the third reason. After a while, that will become your new nature.

Managing up

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We take for granted that people in charge have it under control. And that makes it difficult for us to empathize with somebody who has a better pay, a better job, more power, more status, a bigger house, and the tacit or explicit appreciation of those around them.

Yet, it is so important.

The last person you want to be alone is the one you are reporting to. They need support, they need help, they need ideas, they need clarity, they need feedback, they need sharing, they need to know, they need solutions. They need you.

As part of the infinite wisdom First Round delivers to its readers, they came up with a great article full of practical tips for managing up.

You play a part in every bad boss situation you encounter in your own career.

Not particularly good

FabrizioLeave a comment

How is it that when we feel out of place we go on a crusade to show the world we actually belong?

When someone points at one of our flaws, we insist in denying it. When someone shows us a mistake we have made, we immediately think they are wrong. When facing the fallacy of our argument, we go to great lengths to distort reality and adapt it to what we are saying. When in a role that has never suited us, we try to play the part up until the damage is just too big.

We spend a great deal of energy trying to be what we are not, to protect things we normally do not care about, to convince ourselves and others of something.

We should rather just accept that we are not particularly good at most things.

And move on.