Quote-A-Day: Day 153

If you're going to be a critical #leader, you need to make sure you know what you're talking about. #QuoteADay #Day153 #edchat #edu

This past Sunday's Review in the New York Times was truly a great issue.  There were a number of phenomenal articles, including one on making the place of work more enjoyable, and therefore making all of us better employees.  It is truly a must-read (here's the link).

Along with this great article, there was another piece that was written by Frank Bruni that speaks to the importance of knowing what you're talking about before you start talking about it (read it here).  He mentions that too often these days, the speed of our society leads people to want to break a story and share their "facts" before anyone even knows what the facts are.

This presents a tremendous problem for leaders, as the best leaders are nothing if not meticulous about how they handle situations.  The "must know now" mentality of our society today makes it more challenging to not only have the patience to do some truly investigative work, but it also explains why our stakeholders are so much less patient today then they were even twenty years ago.

While we can't force others to truly think before they speak, we can make sure that when we put on a critical lens, we're doing so with the facts on our side.  This means that we don't critique the work of others, or act as a judge, without first having the necessary information to do so.

I'll be the first to admit that this can be tough, especially with so much on our plates at any given time, and with the hours in the day not getting any longer.

Regardless of this, if we take the time to investigate before we critique, we stand to save time in the long run, as we won't have to worry about rebuilding the relationships we've hurt, or fixing the additional problems we have in turn created.

So, be critical, but only when you've got the content.