In last week’s post, I presented a lesson on responding to negative criticism that utilized a Luann comic strip. It was so popular that I decided to once again have Luann help us out; but this time, rather than focusing on the most mature ways to respond to negative criticism, let’s focus on the most mature ways to provide negative criticism. For those of you…
Over the past year, followers of this blog have been learning how to skillfully deal with criticism. Some of the lessons focused on the four levels of maturity for responding to criticism (see HERE). Throughout these lessons we looked at the various reasons why some responses are viewed as more mature than others. I also noted that because people often get defensive when criticized, it…
Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today, to get us to think more deeply about dealing with insults, let’s discuss for few minutes what Jackie Robinson went through when he became the first black major leaguer. Just before Mr. Robinson began to play in the majors for the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Dodgers’ general manager, Branch Rickey, made it clear to him that he would face criticism…
For the past few weeks I have been discussing personal power. Power is the skill to achieve your desires. To help people to come up with plans to achieve their desires, we have been constructing a list, in alphabetical order, of sources of power. We are calling this list the ABCs of Power. So far, the list looks like this: THE ABCs OF POWER A=Advancing…
On this blog, for the past three weeks I have been discussing the nature of personal power. I’ve also been constructing a list, in alphabetical order, of the main sources of power. So far, the list looks like this: THE ABCs OF POWER A=Advancing Skill (see The ABCs of Power: The letter “A”) B=Breaking Down a Conflict into its Three Conditions: Desire, Interference and Guilt…
On this blog I often discuss mature ways to handle situations in which we feel that we are being insulted (see for example, RESPONDING TO CRITICISM: FOUR LEVELS OF MATURITY). Many people after reading several of these posts find that situations that previously gave them difficulty can now be handled with great confidence. As a result, they find that people have begun to treat them…
In my last blog post, THE ABCs OF POWER: THE LETTER “A” I presented some ideas about the nature of power. The key points are: 1. power consists of our skills to achieve our desires 2. when we feel confident that we can achieve our desires, generally speaking, we feel less defensive when someone throws insults at us 3. to better handle name calling, insults…
Power, in one sense, is the ability to achieve your desires. In another sense, it is the feeling you get when you have mastered a skill that increases the probability that some desire of yours will be fulfilled. And in yet another sense, it is the feeling that you get when you come to believe that you have the ability to master any skill that…
Regular readers of this blog know that in the past I’ve written quite a bit about the five levels of maturity for providing negative criticism (see HERE). In fact, I had written so much about it that I had come to believe that perhaps I had said all that was needed to be said on the subject. To my pleasant surprise, while reading Jon Meacham’s…
In last week’s post I began to discuss some forms of implied criticism. In this Dilbert comic that we first looked at in last week’s post, we see that complimenting someone in front of another person can lead to an experience that feels like a subtle form of negative criticism. Learning to recognize not only the most obvious types of negative criticism, but the more…