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Showing posts with the label high performance leaders

Make It Happen

Leaders are paid to produce results. What if the results that leaders produced included optimism? What if they included hope? What if they created great days? Leaders can do that. You can do that. Let's do that. Give people a reason to believe that this is a great day.  Because if you make it happen, it happens. -- doug smith

Practicing Respect

Wouldn't it be great if respect came naturally and we didn't even need to think about it? It doesn't. We carry around so many tensions, stresses, and levels of bias that sometimes respect comes very hard indeed. It might even feel impossible. Respect takes practice. It takes practice to demonstrate respect all of the time, and so it is always practice. Intentional, studied, demonstrated practice. I'm still practicing. How about you? -- doug smith  

Keeping Score

You don't need to keep score, but remember: someone is. Someone is paying attention to the way you handle feedback. Someone is monitoring your voice tones when you talk with team members. Someone is watching to see how you react when you are challenged. People, and especially leaders, are constantly evaluated. Will you be a perfect 10? Will you be a mixed up combination of varying opinions? Will you consistently treat people with the kind of respect and attentiveness that makes scoring irrelevant? High performance leaders relax on the scoring and focus on centering. Your self, your team, and some part of the world - all more centered, focused, balanced, and alive. (Oh, and don't worry -- it takes a lifetime to get there...) -- doug smith

Insulting the Leader

We live in wild, wide-open times. People feel confident and entitled to say whatever they want, whenever they want, about whoever they want. Freedom of speech is wonderful, isn't it? Don't we value candor and honesty? Of course. And, we also value respect, decency, dignity, and truthfulness. When as leaders we are insulted should it be cause for alarm? We don't need to take insults personally, but we do need to take them seriously.  How we respond will set the tone. The ways that we react will set an example for everyone on our team (and many people off of our team) for leadership behavior. Can we remain professional, respectful, truthful? Can we manage our emotions? If the insult is true, that is valuable feedback. If the insult is false, there's no reason to get upset. High performance leaders remain leaders even when that leadership is disparaged.  -- doug smith  

It's a Job!

Jobs are a balance of learning and repetition. We forge new ground and we walk on well-worn territory. The routine wears us down, even when it's necessary.  High performance leaders show the value of a well practiced, skillfully executed job routine. Discipline in work comes from the extra effort of pushing thru when the task is due. Maybe you did it before, maybe you'll do it again -- give it all you've got right now. Someone is watching. -- doug smith 

Trust the Truth

It's hard to escape it: there are lies everywhere. Behind every lie is a liar, someone who knows that they are deceiving people. The lies might be obvious. They might even rationalize the lies into harmless ways around the truth.  There is no way around the truth. The only way to the truth is telling the truth. It's tempting to rationalize our own reactions to lies. After all, they lied first so what's the harm in twisting the truth just a little for a good cause. No. You can't stop a liar from lying, but you don't have to play a liar's game. High performance leaders with integrity tell the truth. -- doug smith

Help Your Team Grow

Are you helping your team grow? Not in size, although that can be useful. Growth in terms of ability, skill, motivation, traction, change, endurance, happiness...are you building those components in your team? If you are the right leader for your team you'll help them grow.  Otherwise, they'll find someone who does. -- doug smith  

Sensitivity and Toughness

The art of leadership includes knowing when to be sensitive and when to be tough. It could even be a combination of sensitive (caring about the feelings of others) AND tough (standing your ground.) High performance leaders balance sensitivity and toughness to make sure they don't break themselves or anyone else.  -- doug smith  

Take Charge

Who's in charge? A call is unanswered, a customer is unattended, a product is out of stock, a car is our of fuel...every day we find ourselves in situations that lack leadership. Fill that gap. Take charge. Get things done. It's what high performance leaders do. -- doug smith  

Relate to your boss

How good is your relationship with your boss? If you're going to have a boss, you going to have to get along. I've had some terrific bosses who spent extra time building relationships with me and making sure that I had everything I needed to lead my teams effectively. Not every boss will do that. When they don't (and even when they do) it serves you well to initiate the conversation. Build the relationship. Get to know your boss so that your boss can get to know how invaluable you truly are. Every supervisor needs a robust, mutually supportive relationship with their own boss. -- doug smith

Tough AND Tender

High performance leaders are able to be simultaneously tough and kind. Tough on the task, tender on the person. -- doug smith  

Be Nice

Have you ever had a boss who thought that in order to get the best performance from you they had to treat you like dirt? If so, how did you feel about that? Leadership is a balance, but that balance too often leans to the side of manipulation and force. Being mean is a poor, sad, troubling strategy.  When is it appropriate for a leader to act like a jerk? Never. Many supervisors could double their effectiveness if they stopped acting like jerks. If you catch yourself about to get mean, come clean and restart.  -- doug smith

Status Booster

I'd prefer it if status was not a factor. Especially, when it comes to leadership, wouldn't it be better if we didn't need to concern ourselves with status? But there it is: status as a constant. In the face of all of the surface maneuvers around status, we also have the opportunity to prove our professionalism. If we can focus on the mission when other people focus on their own personal enhancement, we can get more done. People are more likely to follow a leader who serves the mission first and their own esteem much later. I'm not saying that esteem isn't important, only that it should be down on your list after serving your mission and other people -- especially the people you lead. When we are challenged -- when people force an issue to see how professional we are -- that can be managed skillfully. We do not need to over-react. We do not need to cover our exterior. An opportunity to prove your professionalism is reason to celebrate, because it can be a convincing

Being Professional

What makes someone a professional? Many factors, you might say: - certifications - education - peer recognition - ability - attitude and while the list is long, here's what I think: When you behave like a professional, professional status will emerge. Because if you change how you approach your work to be focused on being as professional as you can be, by serving your customers to the fullest, by committing to only top quality -- when you change and form habits that reinforce your personal belief that you ARE a professional -- your results, and your reactions, change. Act like a professional -- why would you ever do anything else? -- doug smith

Leadership Productivity

Productivity = do what can be done with what is available. And if you add in leadership? If you add in leadership productivity becomes on time, on budget, and to quality specifications. Isn't that what high performance leaders do? -- doug smith

Was It Only Imagination?

  Have you ever imagined something so much or so strongly that you believe it's happened, even when it hasn't?  Like a dream, a creative endeavor takes on a quiet life of its own. We see it. We feel it. We're sure we did our work to make it happen.  But if we didn't do the work, it didn't happen. That's why some  writers will not talk about a piece they're working on: if they talk about it too much, it already feels complete, and it's NOT. Our minds are wonderful, and sometimes they're funny. We can do that with "facts" as well. Our own inner bias convinces us that a particular view is true, even in the face of contrary evidence. We see that all over these days. What we imagine to be true sometimes gets in the way of what is actually true. It's the job of a true high performance leader to know the truth, to tell the truth, and to lead with the truth. Leaders who don't, don't deserve to be leaders.  -- doug smith

Always Recruiting

In lean staff times, in fully staffed times, in hard-to-find-the-talent times, we need to keep recruiting. Even when you don't have a hiring requisition, or an open position. Top talent doesn't always show up on schedule. Sometimes it peaks in thru the window. High performance leaders are always recruiting. Your next MVP is out there somewhere. Keep recruiting. Keep recruiting by: creating an environment where people want to work developing your people, no matter what stage of their career building diverse teams with all kinds of people saying positive things to people about your team smiling when you are asked about your team and about your goals Keep recruiting. -- doug smith

Something Better than Survival

We tend to glamorize bad instincts. Not intentionally, but dramatically. We feature movies with guns. We cast self-driven egotists as strong leaders. We talk about survival of the fittest as if it were some type of idyllic meritocracy. It is not. Survival of the fittest leaves a majority of non-survivors. That's not the kind of world that high performance leaders should create. It's not the kind of environment centered leaders want to promote.   Survival of the fittest puts everyone at risk. What if everyone survived? Not as some type of hand-out free-gift. People do need to work. People need to get stuff done. And those who do should not just survive but should also thrive. That dish-washer who quietly keeps the kitchen together so that you can sell those hundred dollar dinners? They should be able to thrive. That customer service representative who calms a customer crazed by poor processes and a world in constant crisis? They should thrive. It's more than money. It's

It's In The Work

Every job, no matter how glamorous, has work you'd have to push yourself to do and details you'd find uncomfortable. Do the noble work that your work requires without complaining and then you won't have anything to complain about. -- doug smith  

The Significance of a Choice

  When you have a choice, how do you decide? Do you consider the long-term impact? Do you think about the affect on other people?  Sometimes the significance of a choice emerges long after the choice is available. We learn later how important the choice was. What if we could figure that out before it was too late? -- doug smith