New Year; New Resolutions
Please enjoy the thoughts and musings of our friend, supporter, and long-time contributor Art van Bodegraven Jr., who passed away on June 18, 2017. Art was a prolific writer and had amassed a collection of unpublished blog posts he had planned to run well into the future. To honor his memory, we will continue to post these remaining blogs as he had intended. If you’ve been a fan of The Art of Art blog, check out our tribute.
New Years' Resolutions are generally of a class of self-improvement, such as losing weight, smoking cessation, working out, running, and the like.
From a leader's standpoint, there may be other ways to better oneself and the lives of others.
I'm sticking with the knowledge of when to shut up as a very good thing to pursue come 2018. Know when to be quiet!
Be quiet when the heat of anger fills a room; let even provoked irrationality take up the place of heat and substitute decorum and civility. Be quiet when you don't have all - or any - of the facts; it's OK to let silence suck up all the awkward gaps in oral communications.
Be quiet when an independent source hasn't verified the tale; this works in social media, too. Be quiet if - and when - you might offend a weaker or subordinate party to dispute. Or a marginalized or disrespected human being.
Be quiet when it is time to listen, to hear the views and voices of others. The clichee of two ears and one mouth, to be used in that ratio, still apply.
Be quiet when you are boring an audience of one or one hundred; if you don't know when you are boring, work on building self-awareness.
Be quiet when someone has asked a question. He or she may genuinely want an answer - and the odds of you having all of them are slim to none, especially if you're trying to think of the right one while the question remains open.
Keep Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon in mind - and The Sounds of Silence.