Mike DomitrzPresident, Author, and Speaker on Respect, The Center for Respect, Inc. · Author & Speaker on Respect for Schools, Corporations, & the Military since 1990 (has reached

The failure to listen to other ideas can stifle growth!

19 Jun 2023 · 1 min

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In this brief presentation, the speaker emphasizes that excluding diverse ideas and people—such as dancers, parents, and fellow teachers—isolates an organization and blocks new solutions, growth, and leadership development. He critiques the common defensive response of saying “that never worked here before,” and instead advocates for a shift in leadership language from dismissive statements to solution‑focused questions like “how could we overcome this?” The talk calls leaders to recognize overlooked contributors and to adopt a more inclusive, problem‑solving mindset.

Chapters

Here's a quote that I said years ago and people said, you gotta put that in the program, and here it is. The failure to be inclusive of both ideas and people keeps your organization isolated from new solution, growth, and leaders. By the way, we're talking about dancers who are leaders within the dancers. Ideas that could have helped your organization grow that could have come from a dancer, that could have come from a parent, from another teacher, that we didn't fully see them. People say, oh, that, that never worked here before. We tried that. Well, this should have been a good leader's response. You know what? We have struggled with that. I'd love to figure out a way to overcome that. How would you overcome this part we struggled with? Notice I went from a that doesn't work to a how could it.