Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.
If you get honest feedback and do nothing about it, then the feedback will stop.
The best thing anybody has ever done is to advise me against publishing a poem that shows me at less than my best, such as it is. That's the kind of advice most of us resist but really should relish.
You have to appreciate the finer points of your work; criticise, too, if needed. I am also my own worst and most honest critic. I can say things which nobody will ever dare say. Even the best of friends will stop at a point, whereas I can go beyond.
Give Honest and Sincere Appreciation.
There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself - an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.
Here I am, a struggling actor, and movie executives are saying to me, 'My son's not playing much. What can we do about that?' How do I tell someone I'm dying to work with, 'Your kid is kind of lazy?'
Because friends have to be brutally honest with each other. I'd feel terrible if I didn't tell you what I was thinking, especially at a time like this
Your close men friends should be willing to challenge your mediocrity by suggesting a concrete action you can perform that will pop you out of your rut, one way or the other. And you must be willing to offer them your brutal honesty, in the same way, if you are all to grow.
You make real progress when somebody is honest enough to say something that's really uncomfortable. Of course when you're a candidate's wife and when you're first lady and the first African-American first lady to boot, that is very, very hard to do.
I grew up in the South, in New Orleans, where guys torture you all the time. So I didn't really grow up on the self-esteem campaign. When you were lousy at something, they told you you were lousy, and they told you how to fix it.
They're a great audience, kids. They actually respond. They don't have the references that adults have, so everything is immediate. It's always interesting to see what they react to in whatever I'm working on at the moment. And they don't even want to discuss why. That's a lesson to remember: My son doesn't care about why.
If you get criticized, good - I don't think people get criticized enough. People talk behind your back and they criticize you, but they don't often come up and say it to you.
We hold back our true feelings and beliefs, whether it's from a sense of being polite or fear of hurting someone's feelings. But what I have seen on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' is that no one benefits from holding back and keeping things bottled up inside. So I pride myself on speaking my mind and not being afraid to give honest feedback.
My working style is democratic and I want people to be honest with me. Reputation makes everyone agree with your point, which is dangerous for any filmmaker.
You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: 'Yes, you're doing the right thing, you're always right.' No, they tell me when I'm wrong, and that's why I've been able to stay who I am and stay humble.
My closest friends are the ones who tell me that I'm being dumb or that I'm being wrong.
There are a lot of fighters with no family support, but your family are honest with you. Look at the types who were around Mike Tyson. They are not going to tell you when you are wrong; they'll just call you the champ.
You can get through your whole day only around people who will tell you that you're wonderful. But pretty soon they're going to have to be lying about that.
The object of this competition is not to be mean to the losers but to find a winner. The process makes you mean because you get frustrated. Kids turn up unrehearsed, wearing the wrong clothes, singing out of tune and you can either say, "Good job" and patronize them or tell them the truth, and sometimes the truth is perceived as mean.
I feel like I learn every day how I can be a better producer or writer or storyteller. The thing that keeps me the most balanced is just going home every day and getting my ass kicked by my kids, and having a wife who is the most wonderfully/brutally honest person I've ever met. I think that that is always the first lens through which I see the world. For everything else, I'm just grateful for the people I work with.
My daughter is my number one fan. She has always been incredibly supportive, and she tells like it is and how it is.
I have to be able to be honest and be credible, and I think I can say, 'This guy did not have his best game today' rather than, 'He is awful and I cannot believe he did that.'
Don't kill the messenger, but I'm think you should change your dating profil to balding." -- Paris to William
I think most athletes want to be told when they make a mistake. They don't want to be coddled. They can deal with criticism, especially when it's valid.
