Confidence or Arrogance: What to do with Feedback

A leader, inventor or artist must have a strong ego to persevere in the face of failures, mistakes and indifference. If you attempt to create what matters most you will receive feedback in many forms and sometimes the feedback will be in the deafening silence of apathy. When you are pushing forward, some will see your actions as confidence and others will see them as arrogance.


To ignore feedback is folly and yet to be weighted down by feedback is to disempower yourself and surely fail. There are several planes upon which critical examination of feedback is important among these are structural, values and financial.

Structural feedback is feedback focused upon whether your approach is naturally delivering the desired result. The focus here is not upon the opinions proffered but rather gaining understanding of what is working and to what degree is it working. To assess what is working, you need data whether it is observed or measured. Your own honest observations may, in fact, be the only available data early on and at points in your creative process.

When the developed parts of your intended creation exist primarily in your head, you need a thinking discipline to conduct experiments. These "thinking" or gedanken experiments were used by Einstein to test his theories. It was often decades before his could be tested with actual experiments due to both cost and technological capability. Both Eliyahu Goldratt in the book, Theory of Constraints and Gerald Nadler and Shozo Hibino in their book Breakthrough Thinking, have outlined approaches to conducting thinking experiments that are useful for both developing and testing solutions..

On the values plane, both your approach and the consequences must be examined in terms of your values. Here you must take in data that is direct and indirect as well as data which is immediate and data spaced over time. When you are creating, your ultimate success depends on the sum of all results including those which are unintended.

Many otherwise successful leaders and creators are undone by the long-term ripple of values flaws and their unintended consequences. Each creative idea has a window of opportunity for its fruition and this window narrows when value-based standards of behavior, methods and outcomes are lowered.

The final plane for examination at this time is the financial plane over which you are working. Given the rate at which the resources available to you are being consumed, how much time do you have to work with? Given the estimated cost of the next step or the next experiment, can you afford to take it? If not now, when?

Actions and experiments that are cost prohibitive may need to curtailed, modified or only conducted in your head.

Whether you are confident, will depend upon your ability to filter and handle input and then keep moving forward. Arrogance will need to be kept in check by honestly assessing the feedback and revisiting the values plane examination.

Community: Technology Connects and Disconnects

One of the legs of creating personal legacy is using appropriate technology to assist you directly in your creative efforts and to connect you with others in your effort to create your vision.

Technology has connected the globe primarily through advances in transportation and communication. The networks of highways, railways, shipping lanes and air traffic that allow us to move people and things so quickly and so far also move diseases, criminals and economic power. The networks of computers, smartphones and video/audio production equipment not only move our voices, image and creations instantly but they invade our privacy and expose us to the lowest standards of decency, morality and responsibility.



A few years ago, I traveled to Arizona for a week. I spent three days camping and hiking in the Grand Canyon with my oldest son Andrew and three days working in an office in my hotel suite on the sale of one of my client companies to its employees.

I hosted conference calls with participants in Florida, Ohio and Utah but they could have been anywhere. When I returned home, I posted photos of my Grand Canyon hike on Facebook where I shared them with my family and friends, some of whom I have not seen in person since high school.

The story above is common place. While it might have astounded our grandparents, it would not even impress our children. Through infrastructure networks on the ground and in the air and between towers, satellites and over optical fiber we are all truly connected on a potential level.

At the same time, we are becoming disconnected from our families, friends and neighbors. As email replaces hand written notes and texting replaces conversation the quick blast has replaced a deeper level of communication. What is being lost is subtle but its long-term impact is not.

The movement from face to face to writing letters to phone conversation to email to texting and tweeting has removed both reflection in choosing what we really want to say and the nuance of receiving the subtle emotions which provide meaning from our interactions. The full range of human emotion and interaction has been reduced to only those things that can be communicated more bluntly.

My observation is that the first wave of disconnect came from families moving physically apart from each other but currently the biggest disconnect of technology is within our neighborhoods and local communities. People often do not speak to or even know the names of their neighbors. Our local contacts have become more transaction-based and less about socialization and building deep friendships or intimate relationships over time.

Within large organizations this problem also occurs as people spend little time face to face and more communication is done with large distribution list emails or conference calls which shift all interaction into asynchronous, disinterested, distracted and impersonal inputs and outputs. Where it is easy to escape making a commitment, interpretting discordant body language or bonding emotionally.

What is lost with this disconnection? Community building is the primary casualty. Community is not just a function of sharing but it is also a function ownership. While a physical and transactional sharing goes on regardless of ownership, both building a shared vision and cultivating shared values are stunted by the lack of ownership required for community building.

Reconnection is possible but only when both time and space are sufficient. Direct human interaction whether around a task/problem or in celebration are needed to establish emotional ownership and hence a sense of community.

Producing Value versus Being Important

Leaders and Creators need egos to persevere and enlist support for their endeavors. One of the traps of ego is the need for recognition. Receiving positive recognition for your accomplishments is rewarding for most people and in fact motivates many leaders. The trap comes up to bite you when you attempt to be important rather than of value to others.

In America today marketing takes precedence over research. The sizzle gets more attention than the steak. Do you remember the 1984 tagline, "Where's the beef?". It is common knowledge that we are both an impatient and impressionable society. This all feeds the ego into trying to be important rather than being of value. Being of value is a soft sell but a long term winner. Being important is a quick sell -or- a hard sell and typically temporary.

Joe Dominguez, referenced in other blog posts of mine, presented the following model in his workshop on "Transforming Your Relationship With Money"

HAVE-DO-BE versus BE-DO-HAVE

Have is the result whether its money or praise or recognition.

Be is the inherent qualities and attributes.

Do is the activity.

According to Dominguez, true success comes from BE-DO-HAVE. That is; BE honest, hardworking and professional when you DO your work and you will HAVE rewards.

He also says that failure comes when the focus is HAVE-DO-BE. That is; if I HAVE money, fame and resources then I could DO all these things and then I would BE happy or succesful.

Value is delivered in many forms whether it is the support and assistance you provide to those in need or the pleasure you provide to those who listen to your music and observe your art. Within organizations value can be multi-faceted across the various stakeholders.

Providing value to your customers is contexted by the product or service that you deliver but ultimately comes down to the customer receiving benefits that they value far beyond the money they pay you.

In educational organizations, some value comes from a degree or certification but true and deep value comes from the life-long benefits of the application of knowledge, skill and awareness or perspective imparted by the education. Value in education is also delivered through relationships both in the form of peer relationships with fellow seekers and in mentoring relationships with faculty members.

Leaders and creators who focus on providing value rather than being important are more likely to keep both themselves personally and their organizations, grounded and engaged in the work that will create value to society. When you regularly produce societal value then importance is an attribute given to you by others rather than an illusory and ego driven futile quest.

Developing a Personal Creative Vision

What is the source of meaning in your life? As Viktor Frankl discussed in Man's Search For Meaning, each individual brings or grants "meaning" to their own life. Dr. Frankl gained deep insights into the human condition while a prisoner at Auschwitz.

If one was "lucky" enough to survive the initial selection process at Auschwitz, a short life of brutality, starvation, hard labor and hopelessness was bound to follow. Yet, among this alien world, Dr. Frankl saw hope, love and humanity. While an individual was constantly subjected to the prospects of a random death over which the inmate had no control, the key factors for survival in Auschwitz emerged, which were a rich or strong inner-life and a sense that one had unfinished work to do if they managed to survive.

Dr. Frankl addressed both of these by collecting examples of expressed humanity at Auschwitz and designing lectures to be given regarding his observations in the future after his release. He would imagine teaching his future students and engaging in dialogue with them.

If you were given a finite lifeline, what unfinished work would you want to accomplish?

For many people, this work will have nothing to do with how they earn a living. For some, it will be a modification or refinement of what they primarily do for a living.

Some helpful clarifying questions are:

What are you passionate about?

If you had the power to change the world, what would you change about it?

How would you ensure that your values or perspective or abilities are passed on to others.

Your creation can be a work of art or a fictional story, a business or institution, a book or a movie, a forest or park, a new law, a solution to a problem.

The important part is to have enough clarity to begin to envision (if only in your dreams) a desired result.

As Robert Fritz discusses in The Path of Least Resistance, the more clarity and detail you bring to your desired result the more tension and power you create. When you climb a cliff the rope tightens under the tension of your weight and your progess or lack of progress becomes painfully clear to all.

Many of us use being vague or unclear to keep us emotionally "off the hook" for producing a result. No one wants to fail. Most of the time, we actually prevent failure by avoiding the competition. We do not even enter the race or step up to bat. (Please excuse the sporty metaphors.) I plead guilty to this myself.

So to avoid the pain of failing at something that we put our heart and soul into, we stay vague about what we truly want, keep our distance from the tension of wanting something that does not exist and ultimately guarantee that we will fail just a little bit each and every day.

I want to create, build and lead a successful alternative adult education institution that addresses our spiritual needs, general well being and professional abilities in a holistic way. I have taken some risks and followed up on some of my opportunities to further this vision and yet I have held back and delayed much energy and commitment as well.

What fires you up? What fires you up on an ongoing basis? Of the things you were passionate about as an idealistic teenager or youngster, which of those things still hold interest?

The first step in developing a personal creative vision is looking inward for that spark and then envisioning how that spark would grow if you fed it and breathed your life's energy in to it.

Breathing and Calming the Mind

Although not a great book, I own an interesting book about working with "dinosaurs" that identifies the reptilian responses behind those difficult people at work. When confronted, a reptile either fights, flees or freezes. Inside our human brain are those reptilian impulses and they are triggered during periods of stress and anxiety.

If you want to read more about the evolution of the human mind in a readable book, I would suggest; Boca's Brain by Dr. Carl Sagan. (Yes, it was written by the "billions of stars" astronomer.)

The reptilian response to freeze, results in us holding our breath when we are stressed or in discomfort. It is not just the breath that is frozen, but rather we have involuntarily contracted most of the muscles of our body. When you are in the midst of a reptilian response, it is difficult to maintain an open perspective, let alone harness your conscience and your values.

Both practioners of yoga and buddist mediation already understand the focus upon and use of breathing in relaxation and meditation. During my training as a yoga teacher, the most difficult work we did was learning and practicing the various types of breathing. It was hard to master and exhausting.

When anxious or upset, taking a breath or two before you speak or act gives you a meaningful pause. You can train yourself to notice when you are holding your breathing. During the next 24 hours, make a mental note whenever you catch yourself holding your breath. When you catch yourself doing this take a handful of slow deep breaths. This will assist you in being responsive to the situation as opposed to being reactive.

The creative stance as I've discussed is a responsive stance. It is driven by vision, passion and values. The creative stance requires taking in the truth whether that truth is pleasant or unpleasant. In the creative stance, what works is more important than being right. So when failures occur and bad news comes in....breathe. As they say in sports, "take a breather".

The impulsive reaction to difficulty or disappointment is reptilian and undermines both creativity and our spirit. When we catch our reaction and add breathing and a pause, we empower ourselves to be responsive. We enable our vision, our passion and our values to shape a response. We can context our action against the desired envisioned result we seek. We can filter our options against the values we wish to affirm.

So have a great day. Take a breath and plunge ahead.

Spiritual Path: The Real Meaning of Affirmation

During the past two decades or so, small books of daily affirmations became popular. Saturday Night Live lampooned these affirmations with the Stuart Smalley character played by Al Fraken. The term affirmation has been subjugated to the self-esteem and meditation movement for too long.

When you make a purposeful choice to follow a spiritual path, the term affirmation takes upon itself a very different meaning. Affirmation is transformed from something you tell yourself to how you live when you begin to purposely affirm your spiritual path through your actions each and every day.

While the destination you seek will be a reflection of your specific beliefs and the values you choose to affirm, your progress down the path is a direct function of daily practice.

Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, founder of the Suzuki School of Talent Education had a very simple example he used to demonstrate the value of daily practice. In his book, Nurtured by Love, he spoke of pointing out to his students that they now possessed a strong hand. (For most of us it's the right hand). Then he reminded them that on the day they were born, both of their hands had equal potential and equal ability.

He continued on, that each and every day they had paid more attention to their strong hand and practiced using it to do things requiring both skill and strength. They had developed their strong hand through simple actions and efforts on a daily basis. Today both hands still contained the same potential but the strong hand now had much greater ability as a result of thousands of days of focus and practice.

Although the American branch of Dr. Suzuki's school has focused almost exclusively upon music, the Japanese branch took upon itself a much broader curriculum including mathematics and more importantly character development. To read more about Dr. Suzuki and his philosophy, methods and accomplishments follow this link. http://suzukiassociation.org/about/suzuki/

I will use more examples from Dr. Suzuki in future blogs as I have found his compassion, wisdom and methods to be astoundingly effective in the transformation of individuals and development of true mastery.

One of the simplest decisions that I needed to make for myself was that I would not allow external circumstances or pressures to define how I express my values. Part of my spiritual path was to de-link my experience of external events from my internal sense of self. The de-linking was the hard part and it took years and it took help.

I attended a meeting a few months ago where I was subjected to the angry venting of frustration and some inappropriate statements were made by the frustrated person in front of a group of a half dozen people.

I did not react to the venting nor the inappropriateness of the comments, however I did respond by acknowledging the other person's frustration and then walking back through the process we had all followed together. I did not defend myself. I did not point out the inappropriateness of the comments. I did not allow this other person to dump their anger, frustration and inappropriateness into my soul.

If I have done my best, then I am at peace with the resulting successes or failures. I do not need to react to negative comments made by other people. If I choose to respond rather than react, then I have just a little bit of a chance of checking in to my values and affirming them. You will find no perfection with me but you will find someone committed to being at peace with myself and working on it every single day with small, medium and on rare occaision large acts of values affirmation.