Talk With Your Team

How often do you talk with your team members, one-on-one? Not counting the group meetings, are you scheduling and keeping regular conversations with each and every team member?

They need that level of attention. They require that level of attention. They have a much better chance of meeting your expectations when you give them that level of attention.

It's an effort. It takes discipline. But, what could be more important than clear and regular communication with your team members? I would say, just about nothing would be more important.

High performance leaders talk with each team member about what comes next.

High performance leaders talk with each team member about performance.

High performance leaders talk with each team member regularly, openly, honestly, and deeply. It's your best leadership tool. Talk with your team members.

-- doug smith

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How's Your Reputation

How important do you think it is to sustain a positive leadership reputation? It matters to your team. It matters to any future team that you might be leading. Your reputation tells a story about how you operate, how you facilitate and how you achieve your results. Leading positive change builds credibility. Making a difference right now builds credibility. Keeping your promises and showing care for others establishes the kind of character that people want to work with and maybe even follow. What positive change are you currently working on? -- doug smith

Where to Start?

It's harder to solve a problem alone when you are at the center of the problem. Get another perspective. Stay open to your own part of the problem. Sometimes, deep into the search, we discover that we could be the cause. Start with reflection. It could provide direction. -- doug smith

Creatively Human

In a world where anything can be duplicated, create what cannot be duplicated. -- doug smith

Extremes

Do you know what it is like to work for an unreasonable boss? When no matter what you do is ever good enough it can become demotivating, even crippling. We do need to challenge our teams, but not to esteem crushing extremes. Unreasonable expectations cause disappointment. High performance? Yes. Perfect performance? Not attainable. -- doug smith

Dig deeper

Obvious solutions are great, except that they seldom work. The chances are that the solution that first occurs to you has already been tried. Sticky, mysterious, subtle problems evade the obvious. They hide. They mask. They simmer. Mysterious problems seldom surrender to obvious solutions. Dig deeper. -- doug smith

More signal than noise

Criticism produces more noise than signal. The recipient will hear mostly noise. Find another way to share the relevant information and it will sound more like advice than insult. Here's one other way -- ask the person you want to give advice to what their advice is for improving performance. Listen. Find the tone. Catch the brilliance. Support the useful observations. When we coach positively with enthusiasm our advice lives longer. What do you think? -- doug smith

Share the Load

Are you in charge? Is the team your responsibility? Every team needs more than one leader. The highest leverage strategy a leader can employ is to develop more leaders. Build that mighty team one person at a time. Share the load. -- doug smith

No Victims

There will be offers, heading your way in obvious as well as subtle channels. Strong looking barriers. Refusals to see you. Efforts to take advantage of you. That's not meant for you, no matter how strong someone else's intentions imply that it is. Decline any opportunity to be a victim. It does not suit you. -- doug smith

Positive Value

If it does not support you, allow it to strengthen you. -- doug smith

Human Problems

Any problem created by a human can be solved by a human. I wrote that long before AI started solving problems for us. Many days it feels like we will soon not even need to solve our own problems at all because AI will do it for us. Honestly, we know better than that, right? For as long as it's still true, humans can still solve human problems. Let's do that. -- doug smith

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