Courage Continuum

Small acts of courage lead to big acts of courage.

It starts out tough and stays tough yet one courageous act leads to an even more courageous act, just like building a muscle.

What courageous thing will you do this week?

-- doug smith

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Rival as Coach

Competition can be rough but it can also be educational. If you study your opponent you might learn their secrets. If you can listen to your opposition, they might be sending you valuable signals that could improve your own performance. What if your rival is also your best coach? -- doug smith

Steps of Success

Remember to celebrate the goals you've already achieved. They are powerful steps toward your next great goal. -- doug smith

Start With...

Why do people follow you? Where's the magnet? What's the attraction? What's the draw? People look for leaders who are leading causes they believe in. Start with the cause and then look for commitment. If your cause is real, your team will respond. -- doug smith

Appreciation

Your team members might need more validation than you've been giving them. Many of the artifacts of the past that indicated power and showed success are no longer provided. Flattening the organization has also eliminated promotion opportunities. Career tracks have turned into career plains. How do you build a career and your self-esteem if money is your only measure of success? That might not be the wrong question, but the implied answer is incomplete. We still have other ways of measuring and celebrating success. We can find ways to show our team members that they are making progress. We can show our team members that we recognition their success and we appreciate their work. Elevate their status. Distinguish those who achieve their team goals and show them respect beyond the basic into esteemed associate admiration. People didn't stop caring about these things just because companies stopped providing them. No matter what your organizational culture declares, as a leader you ...

How Far?

How far will you go? How much will you work? How important is it to you? Your goals will go as far as you will go... -- doug smith

Action!

You've heard the term "Action!" in the movie business applied to beginning a scene. Get moving. Do your part. Play your role. Action. Often, the action is incomplete, incorrect, or just insufficient. When that happens on the set you'll hear "Back to one!" which means start the scene over from the beginning. You get another chance. Some directors will even give you a couple extra chances to get it right. Other directors, like Stanley Kubrick, might insist on dozens of "back to ones" to make sure something brilliant happens. We don't always get do-overs in real life, do we? But we can't get stuck at "one" or "back to one". We need action. Sketch out all the plans you want as long as you remember that it takes action to achieve your goals. And what if you don't like the results of your action? Maybe...just maybe, give back to one a chance... -- doug smith

Turn That Feedback Upside Down

Is feedback painful? Do you hate both giving AND receiving feedback? Most people, in my experience, tend to avoid feedback because there is pain and even emotional trauma attached. Critical feedback hurts. Positive feedback, when it comes at all, isn't always enough to counter the trauma of the critical feedback. We do need critical feedback. We need to be able to benefit from observations and experiences to improve our performance going forward. As leaders, we have a responsibility to provide our team members with both support and challenge. Feedback should be part of that challenge. But it's not really "feedback" unless it's flipped upside down. On my Fender amplifier, if I play my guitar too loud and too close to the speaker the sound feeds-back. I like that sound (it reminds me of Jimi Hendrix) but many people don't and it certainly would not fit in most worship services or orchestra pits. The feedback is essentially telling me to turn it down. But I don...

Do It Anyway

Do you ever have to talk yourself into doing what you need to do? We might even need to talk ourselves into doing some things we WANT to do...we just get busy and stuck. Working on your goals can feel like work sometimes. Do it anyway. Do the work. Achieve your goals. -- doug smith

Decide...

It might seem hard, even impossible. I've found myself immobilized at times out of fear of making a choice. Especially if a bad decision has created a problem. That decision, right or wrong, has been made. It's time for a new choice. The best way out of a bad decision is another decision. Decide. -- doug smith

How To Give and Receive Constructive Feedback

I'm facilitating a training session this week on feedback and coaching so of course my research never stops. No matter how many times I've delivered a program, there's always more to learn. I found this video and recommend it. If you'd like to take some of the "sting" out of feedback, don't even think of it as feedback. Think of it as advice. Here's the ten minute video. If you don't have ten minutes, the first three minutes are golden. Three key points that I got from the video: Focus on the task, not the person Ask for advice, not feedback Your "second score" is how you take and process your first score. If someone says that your performance was a three on a scale of ten (ouch!) you can still get a ten on how you use that information. -- doug smith

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