GarthBox

Every challenge is an opportunity to learn something new.

For ourselves, it’s trying new things and ensuring we take a moment after succeeding or failing to reflect on what we learned.

For others, it’s more about what it’s not; it’s not doing the challenge for them. It’s not telling them how. It’s not chastising them for not getting it right. It’s not arguing with them. It’s not about redirecting.

Leaders are as successful as the combination of what they learn and what they help others learn.

Stay Positive & Create The Learning Opportunity

There’s two problems at bay if you’re not getting criticized.

The first is the obvious one; the trap many fall into: we don’t do anything worth getting criticized. The solution is just as obvious: do something new, steal from another industry and apply it to yours, ideate against the status quo.

The second is the oft-forgotten one: you’re not asking for criticism.

That team meeting that you had with a prospect, did you ask your team for radical candor right after it? How could you have better contributed?

What about asking folks to point out your weak points on the same map that you have built for the marketing campaign?

How often do you go into a one-on-one with a direct report and ask them for criticism?

Stay Positive & Feedback Is Ripe For Your Taking

There’s no means of measuring how much of a lake you can be. The size of lake is a choice.

You can be a lake that many others gather water from. You can be a lake that people throw rocks in. You can be a lake that gets rained on. You can be a lake that hundreds or thousands rely on.

No one gets to decide what size of lake you are, but you.

Of course, it’s not about being a lake so much as its about being human.

Stay Positive & You Decide

How many left turns do I have to make to get to the grocery store isn’t a bad question. With the answer, you can deduce how to get to the grocery store. But is there a better question?

A product leader asked the marketing team how far in advance do they need to know about a new product or significant feature. The question about timing isn’t a bad one. Knowing timing influences bandwidth, planning, and other resources. But there’s a better question about what the value and audience and pain points it solves that would drive a greater marketing campaign.

One more example: I was in a meeting that a team member asked what it would take for a customer to develop a workaround regarding another third party service provider. That’s actually a really good question. But the better one was what would it take for a customer to get their clients to change instead of needing to adopt a workaround procedure.

Next time you have a question (or hear one), take a moment to think about if there’s a better question.

So it goes. Great answers don’t just appear out of thin air. They’re triggered by great questions.

Stay Positive & Go From Good To Great

When we really invest in something, we want to get all we can out of it to make the expense worth it.

What if we didn’t let the amount of investment dictate the amount in which we try to get all we can out of it?

What if…what if… we decided to make the most out of all the little things, too?

Stay Positive & What About Making The Most Out Of The Next Moment?

For some reason, it’s easier to accept that on the path to greatness there’s bound to be frustration and adversity and setbacks. You’re bound to feel emotions of fear and worry and doubt.

Yet the one variable that often gets us is tension and here’s why I think it does.

1. Tension isn’t an emotion. It’s an action, a force that takes place and impacts us, but more importantly it impacts others at the same time. (You can’t create tension with only one end of a string). The realness of it impacting our empathetic chords is exhausting, so we create a narrative that maybe, just maybe, we can reach the same goal and avoid it. If that means we face a bit more frustration than tension, so be it.
   
2. Tension doesn’t inherently lead to a “bad” emotion. I’m being on the nose by calling it bad like fear, worry, doubt (they’re healthy but debating their goodness or badness can be it’s own blog post for another day). That means we’re in emotional limbo when there’s tension: will we feel good after this? or bad? Ironically, when we don’t know how we will feel, default setting is bad, which explains why no one enjoys confrontation (you know, the assumed negative impact of there being tension).

All said, it’s worth remembering that like a string of a bow drawn tight, tension builds the energy needed for us to soar to new heights. It is discomfort that is advantageous: sharpening our focus and heightening our emotional awareness.

Stay Positive & Lean Into The Tension, Not Away

There’s no shortage of advantages to find with AI, but it’s not the end-all-be-all to reaching your objective.

Going out to lunch with a key prospect can be influenced and supported by AI but AI can’t go to lunch with them for you.

It’s really easy to fall down the rabbit hole of AI and how it can support your goals.

While others are zigging to leverage it in a way that removes humanity, perhaps it’s worth zagging to how it can support it.

There’s a difference in impact for a person to ask ChatGPT “can you write an email that convinces them to watch a recorded demo” versus “can you write an email that convinces them to have a meeting with me at their headquarters.”

Even if both result in the same impact: which prompt do you want to be the author of?

Stay Positive & Use AI, But Keep The Humanity