companies house made easy

Yesterday I was walking my dog, through the woods, on the phone, whilst watching my wobbly footed 18 month old son, when a huge Labrador bounded up to us. As always my instant reaction was to stand next to my boy to prevent the dog knocking him over or at worst biting him. 

The Labrador was friendly and keen to express that to my son who was now really excited. Whilst talking to my friend, I knelt next to my son and prevented the dog from licking his face by using my hand as a shield. The sour faced owner walked past me and when she was at a safe distance aggressively shouted back “don’t be so ridiculous, he can’t catch anything from my dog”.

 My instant reaction was fury and I immediately wanted to confront this woman. I finished the conversation with my friend, who told me to leave it, however I decided I still wanted to discuss this with her. There are positive and negative ways of dealing with issues and I wanted to understand why this had caused her such offense and hopefully resolve it because personal branding is important.  

As I continued walking through the woods I started to think about why my instant reaction was so negative when actually receiving criticism is a positive thing. Without criticism how do we expose our flaws? How do we get the chance to improve things?

Almost every action we take will cause offense to someone whose priorities are different to yours. As business owners and managers it’s essential that you can take criticism and if you’re not regularly receiving it, if everybody thinks you’re great, then you are not doing your job properly!  In order to be successful you constantly need to adapt and encourage others out of their comfort zones.

“If it’s not broke then don’t fix it” – I couldn’t agree less; things can always be improved, this is not the time for complacency. If you are not being regularly criticised, then you can’t be taking many actions and something is very wrong.