Keeping Working Toward Your Best Performance

What was your best performance?

When did you perform so well that you remember it as the best you could do at the time? You likely have several times in your life when, given what you had and who you were at the time, you did your very best performance. Things clicked. Results mattered positively. You felt satisfied.

One of the challenges to constantly improving our performance is that sometimes, even during our finest moments, we feel a sense of lacking - a downturn caused by the desire to do even better, or the let-down of a great performance followed by, what - normal behavior?

We do need to keep striving. We do need to keep improving. We do need to keep setting assertive, clear, noble goals that cause us to stretch and we do need to act relentlessly on our plan without satiating our desire, but -- why not also savor those moments of success? Why not celebrate the series of high performance results we have achieved?

All the while we continue to grow, continue to stretch, and continue to strive.

Your best performance is still inside you.

How do I know that? Just look at how many great performances you've already produced. Haven't they progressively gotten more impressive? The best is still inside you. Go for it.

-- Doug Smith

doug smith training: how to achieve your goals

Front Range Leadership: High Performance Leadership Training

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Bright Spots

We need to know how to improve, so as leaders part of our job is to provide the feedback-for-improvement that our teams need. Specifically, timely, kindly. It's easy to remember that if not so easy to do. We should also remember to call attention to what is working. Let people know what is great. Share our stories of how the team is excelling. Sharing the bright spots lights the way. The more we see what works, the better we can make it work. What positive bright spot can you share with your team today? -- doug smith

Goals with Bonus Benefits

Goals are important, but if you haven't achieved a goal does that mean that you've failed? Not always and certainly not completely. It's possible that a better goal opened up while you were working om the one that you left behind. Maybe you simply prioritized something more valuable. We shouldn't expect to achieve every goal because if we do either our goals are too small or our priorities are too rigid. A goal can be successful without being achieved. We learn. We grow. We adjust. We connect -- many ways that we are enriched by working toward something whether or not we achieve it. Of course we do want to achieve our goals. Even when we don't, though, we learn. What has your most recent unachieved goal taught you? -- doug smith

Service Appreciation

Delivering excellent service is tough enough and sometimes it's not enough, according to our customers. With some customer wanting a miracle, or a policy change, it mean that even when we do our best it may not be perceived as enough. We could have always done more. We should have somehow changed the world in order to change their outcome. Other times, customers are generous in their thanks. Our extra steps are appreciated, our efforts are more than enough, and our customers are happy to do business with us. We should work as if the second group of customers -- the real appreciators, the happy ones, are the norm and hold onto the joy they share. There are no guarantees that our service will be appreciated, but that's not why we do it. We serve because that's where the joy lives, in helping others. -- doug smith

Too Much Advice?

What happens with unsolicited advice? Probably nothing. If you didn't ask for a piece of advice, why would you take it? Well, then what happens to advice that you do ask for? Isn't that a whole different matter? Different, yes, and yet often the outcome is the same: advice given and then ignored. It's easy to give advice because we all have opinions on everything, even stuff we don't know anything about. Taking advice is harder because A) the advice we get is often wrong, B) the advice we get is usually hard, and C) the advice we get often doesn't work. As someone who is sometimes paid to give advice I've had to learn the primary consultant's rule of advice giving: first ask the questions and then let the client determine the best advice. It takes longer. It can take much longer. It's not immediately satisfying, but it works much better. I'm working on slowing down my approach to giving advice and yet I still go too fast sometimes. How about you? He...

A Key to Happiness

We all like to be happy. Many people devote their entire lives to being happy, trying a series of things until they find something that seems to work. I don't pretend to have the key to happiness but I've lived and worked long enough to learn one wonderful way to get there. If you want the secret to happiness, find out what you can do that makes other people happy. Then...do that. What are your keys to happiness? -- doug smith

Surprise!

What have been your major changes? What magnificent visions have you had that you eventually released? Sometimes, to make room for the next great thing, we need to let go of the less than great wish we're holding onto. What looks like success at one point in our lives because less convincing as it slips away, hides, or becomes impossible. Life goes on. New dreams form. Greatness always welcomes us to new opportunities. If your vision of success changes, that is also success. You are now free to be great (and happy) in another direction. Life goes on; the joy in it is up to you. -- doug smith

Joy at Work

Identify your source of joy, apply it to your work, and your work becomes a source of joy. -- doug smith

Agenda Reveals Character

You can tell much about someone by what they plan to do. You might learn all you need to know about someone by their plan, their strategy, their approach to communicating (or not communicating). Agenda is revealing. Agenda reveals character. Read the signals. No amount of accommodation will change a person's character. Maybe start with the agenda, and if you can't get that to an acceptable plan, read the signals. -- doug smith

Face Up To It

What;'s the longest you've ever gone without working on a goal that you were sincere about setting? Maybe your intention was true, but your execution was lacking. I don't think there's an absolute rule about this, but this feels right: If you haven't worked on a goal for over a month ask yourself why it's still on your list of goals. Maybe it's not really a goal at all. Just because a goal seems impressive doesn't mean that it's worth working on. Face up to it: do the work, or let it go... -- doug smith

Something Else

We do it frequently -- blame people for what's wrong. And when we blame people for something they did not cause it often makes things worse because now they feel bad about it and maybe even defensive. Even though it feels like people get i the way of perfection, it's usually something else. Fix the process. Fix the rule. Fix the presentation. Fix the product. People are better than we realize, and seldom to blame for service breakdowns. -- doug smith Training Activity Make a list of the three most recent service breakdowns that you have experienced. For each breakdown, score on a scale of 1 - 10 how much of that breakdown was caused by: Process Rules Presentation Product People Now you know where to start fixing things.

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