Personal management – Page 3

On seeing and being seen

I’ve been thinking a lot about perspectives recently. I’ve also written before about the value of different perspectives from a leadership point of view. But, lately, because of something lovely that someone did for me at work, I’ve also experienced what it’s like to be seen.

Understanding outcomes

My teenage daughter lost her phone last week. It’s not hard to imagine how devastating that was for her. So many of us rely on our phones for everything from real-time payments to maintaining our online social identities. For a teenager the potential data loss was one part; the loss of access was another, more important part. (Honestly, she also thought my wife and I would be mad at her, as well, so add that to the emotional stew).

Watch out for the Whoa!

There’s a moment in a learning journey when something just clicks. It doesn’t have to be a massive revelation. It can be a minor insight or, alternatively, the sense of an enormous vista of new learning opening up in front of you. I’ve started to think of it as the “Whoa!” moment.

Give the Gift of Useful Feedback

Last weekend I wrote a post about the importance of receiving feedback openly and without falling into defensiveness. A colleague kindly reminded me that receiving feedback is only half of the equation. As managers, leaders and human beings, we all have the ability to give feedback to help improve others. Honest, sometimes brutal, feedback is a gift – here’s why it’s important to give it, and some suggestions on how to give it well.

Why it’s important not to be defensive when we’re wrong

We’ve all experienced that horrible, sinking feeling of realisation that something we thought was okay turns out to be far from it. In our personal and professional lives, we all make mistakes in word and action. When we identify the error (or have it pointed out to us), our default response is often to justify our position. Here’s why that happens and why it is important to resist that defensive urge.

Dealing with the unpleasant gracefully

There’s a creature-wrangler in every home. Depending on the part of the world you live in, the creatures in question might range from the small to very large, the innocuous to the life-threatening. I’m the designated spider-evictor/creature-wrangler in my house. Despite my best intentions, I don’t always do the job with good grace.

On Feeling Stuck

There’s a feeling I get sometimes. It’s a stressful, sometimes even anxious feeling. And it comes from feeling stuck, creatively or practically. Having come back from a week’s vacation, I should have been feeling energised, but instead, I had a feeling of a significant loss of traction, and it took me a little while to figure out why.