doug smith training

Which should come first to be a high performance leader, strength, or character? High performance leaders do need to be strong. They need to be able to stand against opposition, correct wrong doing, and push on even when loss seems certain. But even more important than strength is character. Being truthful, trustworthy, and fair. Making a difficult decision even when personal gain could tempt that decision to go in another direction. Treating people with compassion. Leaders can easily cross ethical lines but a person of character sees those lines, honors those lines, and no matter how creative, manages to stay within those ethical lines. Strength without character breeds corruption. Stay strong, stay true, and may your character never be questioned. -- doug smith

When we first get promoted to supervisor we tend to make mistakes. I remember one mistake that I made was being too "hands-off" as a leader.  I didn't want to come off as a boss. I didn't want to take command because I thought that people's feelings would be hurt. I tended to let them be.  It didn't work very well, and I quickly got over it. People DO need attention. Your team members NEED to know what matters to you. They NEED to know your expectations. And, they expect YOU to challenge them a bit. They won't ever ask for that, but they do need you to edge them forward. Keep your hands on. Conduct regular one-on-ones with your team members. Challenge any assumptions your team is making. Raise the bar and keep on raising it. Your job as a leader is to help your team members level up, not level off.  A hands-off leader is not really leading at all.  Stay in the game. -- doug smith

Why should anyone help you with your goals? You can probably think of at least three people right now who are not yet helping you, but if they did, would make achieving your goal much easier. You might even be able to think of some people who seem to be standing in your way of achieving your goals. Why would they do that? How do people decide whether or not to help? People have their own sense of reason, but one thing that influences them is whether or not they have gotten help from you. When we build relationships of trust and serving it becomes much easier for someone to offer help. It even becomes easier for them to see the need to offer help without being asked. But if there is no history of helping, if in fact there is a memory of an unpleasant lack of help, it's natural that they would resist offering help of their own. It's all in the history of the relationship. People can help us achieve our goals or they can hinder us -- it could depend on how well we serve those peop

It's hard to find a permanent job. Could it be that they don't exist anymore? While that is tough news it does bring opportunity for certain types of leaders. High performance leaders who create dependable results, who perform according to their goals, AND who develop their teams into high performance produces tend to prevail. Create that leadership dependability: dependable on your word, dependable on your performance, dependable on your fairness to others, dependable in your strong and steady use of clarity, courage, creativity, and compassion.  If you're not dependable, you are expendable. Be dependable. -- doug smith

Everyday that we don't head where we want we're headed someplace else. The choice is ours, everyday. -- doug smith  

Have you ever had a leader who kept trying to push you out of your comfort zone? Kept trying to get you to do more than you'd ever done before and try things that are, frankly, scary? I sure have. And truth be told, didn't like it much at the time. A great boss is supportive, which we like, AND also challenging, which we might not be so happy about. The growth does happen, though, outside of our areas of ease. To stretch, we need to move those muscles.  The hope of a high performance leader is that we'll move those muscles so much that they grow stronger. The goal is to grow so much that our former team looks like the glimmer of promise that our future team becomes: faster, stronger, smarter, better. The growing zone takes us far, far beyond our comfort level. What if we pushed ourselves so far out of our comfort zone that we never came back?  What are you doing today to stretch yourself or your team? -- doug smith

Fast, affordable leadership training ! Supervising for Success Whether you've just been promoted to supervisor or need a refresher on how to take the aggravation out of leading so that you can achieve your goals and enjoy your job more, this program will help. Discover what people are looking for in a leader, and what you can do to get what you're looking for from them. Discover how to: Build your leadership strength Set goals that motivate action Manage different personalities Delegate with confidence Motivate your team Supervise multiple generations Coach to improve performance Manage virtual teams Get more done and enjoy your job more The entire program is presented in one day. There are two sessions with a two-hour break between sessions. This is a zoom meeting but you will not be on camera. Schedule: 10:00 am ET to 12:00pm  Part One 2:00 pm ET to 4:00 pm, Part Two What to Expect: We start on time We get to the point There is no sales pitch You will NOT be on camera The sl

What controls your focus? There are so many choices. We can focus on trivial activities and simply pass the time. We can focus on noble causes but miss taking action to move those causes forward. We can focus on our goals and direct ourselves accordingly. It's up to us. It's up to you. No one else can decide where you'll focus but you. Find what matters most to you, and focus on that. -- doug smith  

There's a lot of overwhelm going around. People are doing more than ever before in circumstances not ever experienced. Should we keep adding more and more goals to the mix? How much is enough? How many are too many? That's up to you. I've heard people describe keeping a list of one-hundred goals. It's their bucket list. I've seen enough episodes of "The Twilight Zone" to never keep a bucket list for fear that once I've completed them all it would be check-out time.  But mainly, I'd be overwhelmed by all of them. A hundred? A thousand? Let's take a shorter list please and narrow it down to goals we actually expect to achieve. If you have too many goals to remember them all you have too many goals. (and now for some advice to myself, but you're welcome to listen in) Narrow your list. Prioritize your list. Get busy. Get stuff done. -- doug smith

Once I was rehearsing with a band and as we were tuning one of the musicians said, in jest, "close enough for jazz." We could spend more time getting it more precise, we could find an electronic tuner to get it exactly right, or we could settle for a quick "good enough." It was a joke because good enough is not good enough -- for a jam session, a rehearsal, or a performance. Quality matters. The audience can sense your level of quality even when they are not trained to detect it. And, if you don't start out "in tune" there's no telling where you'll go. It doesn't automatically get better. In fact it tends to get progressively more out of tune. It starts a cavalcade of crap. Letting quality slide starts an avalanche of chaos. High performance leaders insist on quality. Not perfection, but a quality so high that it appears to be perfect to most people. It takes longer. It's usually harder. Give it the time. Give it the effort. Quality mat

Stay healthy, stay happy, stay honest. At least one is all up to you. We all prefer good health. With good health comes many blessings. Every day I am humbly grateful for my good health.  Happiness? That can be a moving target sometimes. Just when you think you've got a formula figured out, the rules change. But, we can influence our own happiness and yes, maybe even control it. Even when our circumstances are less than ideal, our attitude can determine our level of happiness. And that brings me to the third thing on this list: honesty. That one is completely up to you. We each determine how honest we will be. To quibble a bit, it may not be a matter of "how honest" anyone is: you and I are either honest, or not. There isn't really a middle ground. You can't be a "little bit honest." But we're not perfect. We have to work at it all -- even being honest because every day there is some new temptation to twist the truth, hide the facts, or stay silent w