Creative Streak

How To Take Critique Positively

I’m preparing a presentation for next Monday in Scotland, and a colleague at lunch today asked me an interesting question. “What’s the worst thing you can do to your audience?”

My immediate answers. Be irrelevant. Be dull or boring. Make the environment uncomfortable, either literally or figuratively. Insult them. Perhaps worst of all? Criticise them.

I’m not sure those were the answers my friend wanted to hear, but it sparked a conversation in my own head about the power of feedback and performance evaluation.  Later I came across a great article on the same topic, so I knew something Aquarian was going on.

There's an art to listening to criticism. I can’t speak for all of you, but when I knew performance evaluation time was coming, I’d try – esp during the meeting itself – to be professional and gracious. But it’s as easy to forget how when you feel like you don’t have the upper hand. In fact, you do have the upper hand – it’s always your choice to decide what to do with that information. Although given the economic times, you may not feel like you have as many choices as you may have in the past. It’s also possible to mis-understand what you hear, especially when the evaluation feels more like you’re being attacked than it feels like something productive.

29 Ways To Stay Creative

 

A good use of 1.51 minutes: 29 simple ways to keep the creativity flowing, thanks to MrNotFamous and YouTube. (Thanks for the discovery too, from Denny McCorkle (aka @TweetRightBrain), a good source of daily tweets on creativity.)

How to Retrieve Self-Confidence

There isn't a single person I've coached over the years - and I'd include myself in this group - who've lost their confidence at one point or another. It might be a momentary slip, or something that lasts longer than a few weeks. But it happens. The important thing is to call it for what it is, realize it's natural and probably inevitable, and take appropriate action.

Here's another excellent post from Dawn Lennon's blog Business Fitness, entitled "Self-Confidence Lost? Five Steps to Getting It Back." Her steps are wise and practical.

If I may add a personal point to this, I'd offer a favourite retort from my Grandma Eklund - the doyenne of common sense. Other people's opinions of you are none of your business.

 

Cindy Ratzlaff on Leaders' Successful Daily Habits

Marketing expert and blogger Cindy Ratzlaff gathers an insightful list of daily rituals from successful leaders in a variety of fields and industries in her post "15 Daily Habits of Powerhouse Leaders." She interviews her friends and colleagues on tips ranging from philosophical to immediately practical, in areas such as social media, curiosity, time management and creativity. Some good food for thought during a time-out break this week. (Photo taken from her website.)

Seven Different Types of Meetings

One book that keeps finding its way to the top of my shelves is How To Make Meetings Work, by Michael Doyle and David Straus.

One book section lists the seven different type of meetings, which I've listed below with some of their tips - and a few of my own - to consider prior to planning or facilitating your next meeting.

Problem-Solving Meetings

• Make sure the problem is well-defined and agreed-to by key decision makers in advance of the meeting.
• What problem-solving methodology or tool will you use during the meeting? Agree to it in advance, and make sure someone is fluent in the methodology.
• Energy is critical: attendees must want to solve the problem, or feel urgency to solve it.
• Incorporate plenty of time for discussion and debate.
• Engage a neutral facilitator depending upon the discussion and debate you expect.

Decision-Making Meetings

• The key decision maker must be involved, if not attend the meeting.
• Identify the coaches (the positive influencers to the decision maker) to determine how to win or leverage their support
• Identify the gatekeepers (the negative influencers to the decision maker) and the bomb-throwers (the ‘devil’s advocate’ type of people). Determine how to minimise, neutralise, or think ahead of them to counter-balance or address their concerns.
• Keep the number of attendees to a smaller number than a larger.
• Make sure team knows how they will be impacted by decision, that they have responsibility for the decision. At the same time, do not steam-roll.
• And last – perhaps most important – don’t fake a decision-making meeting. Be honest.

Prioritising Meeting Items

Many people are familiar with the Time Management Matrix - a simple tool which helps to prioritise tasks, based on whether they are Urgent or Important, or both, or neither.

The general rule of thumb is to plan the bulk of your day focused working on Urgent/Important tasks, get the Urgent/Non-Important tasks out of the way as soon as possible (or at appropriate breaks), plan ahead to get Important/Not-Urgent tasks started, and leave Non-Urgent/Non-Important tasks to the side until they become either Urgent or Important.

Sadly, we live more and more in a world where "status meetings" are catch-all events in many organisations. Most of them are unfacilitated and without any sense of prioritisation ... and no, "chronological order" is not prioritisation.

As a way to counter-balance, if not correct these unfiltered status meetings, consider using the Time Management Matrix to categories the items into the four areas to determine their spot on an effective meeting agenda.

1. Urgent-Important Items should directly link specifically to the purpose of the meeting, and should be discussed as soon as possible on the agenda. They almost always involve the key decision makers. Unless you have all the time in the world (and who doesn't, in our lazy, carefree world), focus on fewer items in this category than more. Or, prioritise the these items in case time is lost on discussion and debate. Also, make sure you have enough time after the presentation of each item for discussion and debate.

You Are Not A Robot

A friend introduced me to Productive Flourishing - a great site on matters about productivity.

The recent article - "You Are Not A Robot" - makes some great points about working alone, being an entrepreneur, how to stay creative.

(Thanks Georgia for the link.)