Opinions rarely advance humanity, facts and action are what drive us forward.
In another week with a high profile drink driving case, the internet and printed media is awash with opinions about Ant McPartlin. Many have criticised his choices, many have suggested he has got off lightly (even though he has been charged) because of his celebrity. In reality, he is a person facing his own struggles and working through them as best he can, whilst living his private life in public. And there we have a critical point, his struggles are private. Like anyone who is struggling to live with mental health issues, his challenges and torments are only fully realised by himself. Only when the torment and anxiety lead to bad choices or unusual behaviour do these issues bubble to the surface and show themselves fleetingly in plain sight. It is at these moments when people with no skin in the game feel the need to opine.
Generally in life, our opinions count for nothing, it is our actions that take us forward. Expressing our opinion may provide information by which people can judge us or pigeon hole us based on what we tell them about our views. Yet, so many people spend so much time and energy expressing and sharing opinions on all sorts of matters and events. I guess we are all guilty of this from time to time. Sometimes a political sentiment expressed on social media is too irresistible to leave unchecked. However, in the workplace does sounding off with our views and opinions on other people’s work efforts or company policy really advance anything? A very effective colleague of mine once said “People are not persuaded by views and opinion they are persuaded by facts and plans”. So when tempted to voice your opinion on what has gone before, try extracting the facts from the situation and formulating a plan on what to do in the future.
With this brief but powerful idea in mind, we are sharing an article from September last year which looks at the facts of events that we have again seen recently, and provides information to help us plan and hopefully make better choices.