Scott Ginsberg recently posted on the need to be specific when making statements to promote credibility. Those of us who in some way make a living from conveying information to people are told this repeatedly. Be able to demonstrate where your information comes from. Be able to explain or defend it.
In both the education world and the museum exhibit world, we are also taught to introduce an idea generally and then move to the specifics. Again, that is about getting down to the specificity that people respond to well. Scott does a great job of illustrating the need for being specific, for citing the provenance.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 7:50 AM EST
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On Monday, I shared a manifesto on the stages of creativity from Change This. Today, I have another one to share looking at creativity from a different side.
19.02 The Creative Generalist
Is there a chance we are stifling potential opportunities for creativty by creating magnet schools in our attempt to play catch-up on the global stage? Can a generalist approach (which really is my specialty, strangely enough) really help remedy the situation?
Posted by Rebecca as Creativity, inspiration, and motivation at 7:31 AM EST
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Change This recently released a new batch of manifestos, including a couple on creativity.
19.04 The Life Cycle of the Creative Soul is a nice look at the various stages of creativity with good, relevant examples for each stage. Definitely worth a look!
Posted by Rebecca as Creativity, inspiration, and motivation at 8:17 AM EST
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Something just tells me I would really like Karen Salmansohn’s new book (highlighted at Worthwhile this week). I’d love to be a bit (read: a lot) more assertive in my professional endeavors!
I especially like the points called out in the article. I’ve always been a fan of delegating things I don’t do well to people who will do them much better. Keeps from having to redo work!
Posted by Rebecca as Skill building at 2:22 PM EST
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I’ve mentioned in the past about how good customer service can save a bad situation. What I may have neglected to mention is that it also can makea bad situation worse.
Last night, I went to a birthday dinner for a friend. She selected a new Italian restaurant in Lincoln Center for the venue (a chain just opened up this shop). The atmosphere was wonderful. The banter was fun. The food was divine.
The service, on the other hand, ruined the night.
My friend’s boyfriend had set up the reservation beforehand. When he did, they told him nothing about their policies regarding large parties (and at fourteen, we were definitely a large party). My housemate and I got to the restuarant about ten minutes before the reservation, and the staff had not even started setting up the table. (I’ve done my time in food service. Unless you’re trying to drive your staff to quit, you have your big party tables set up and ready to go in a timely fashion.)
Once the table was set (nearly twenty minutes after the reservation time), they seated us and gave us all very strange menus. The server then walked off without explaining the menu to us. We all tried to make sense of it, thinking we had been given normal menus. The server finally returned, more interested in filling drink orders than trying to help us understand what we had been handed. We finally managed to get him to tell us that they don’t offer the normal menu to large parties. Instead, they do a family-style situation where the group picks two dishes from every category, and then serve themselves smaller portions from the large ones brought to the table. The cost for this lovely service: nearly $30. A number of us in the group aren’t that well off to begin with, being students or entrepreneurs trying to hold down one or two part-time jobs. This didn’t sit well with us, and it didn’t sit well with the boyfriend who had arranged the entire dinner because he wasn’t warned about it up front.
The servers were fairly rude to us most of the night. We were the only table in the place after ten (when they close), and they showed little interest in doing anything beyond keeping our water glasses full. A manger finally came by to see how we were, and our fearless organizer pulled him side to talk about what happened. The manager never apologized, never agreed to pursue any sort of action. In fact, it became apparent that he didn’t even know about the menu policy.
The waiter who essentially ran our table came over around eleven and asked us to hurry and handle our bill so he could let his wait staff go, and he wasn’t particularly nice about it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was thinking, "If our food had been delivered promptly for each of the rounds, then I’m willing to bet we’d have already vacated the restaurant."
On the service alone, I don’t think I’d ever willingly want to visit this place ever again, and I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone either.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 10:32 AM EST
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A skill often considered useful in leadership and networking roles, yet applies to so many others, is active listening. In active listening, you not only listen to what the other person is saying, but you listen to what they are saying.
No, I didn’t mistype that. It really does repeat itself.
Oftentimes when we are listening to people, we are engaged in the process of creating banter instead of being actively immersed in the parts of the conversation where we are not speaking. However, if we stop for a moment, actually listen to what the other person is saying, and then take a moment at that point to formulate our own response, the conversation can take on a whole new life. It even has the potential for clearing up misconceptions before they become arguments that leave us wondering how we got there.
Found via Random Thoughts From a CTO
Posted by Rebecca as Freelancing, Networking, Leadership and management, Work skills at 8:17 AM EST
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"To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all."
-Peter McWilliams
There are so many reasons to become an entrepreneur, but I think that, from my own experience, the very best is having the freedom to make a mistake. It’s nice to be able to do things my own way (with all of the prerequisite research, of course) without having to worry about whether or not I’m doing them correctly!
A lot of this thinking has to do with the fact that I know that from mistakes come great things. Any inventor, aritst, and scientist will tell you that. When fear of making a mistake enters the equation, you’ve completley stifled the creative nature, the problem solving process that allows better things to develop.
Go ahead, make a mistake. It’s fun, and it can often lead to wonderful discoveries and creations!
Posted by Rebecca as Entrepreneurship at 8:19 AM EST
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Here is an intereting leadership model, in the shape of a tetrahedron (a pyramid with a triangular base instead of a square one). I played with it for a little bit this morning, and really I like how it is constructed. It shows various aspects of leadership and how they are connected.
really, it’s just a great visualization tool
Found via Fast Company
Posted by Rebecca as Leadership and management at 8:18 AM EST
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