doug smith training

We do have time for mistakes. We don't have time to ignore them. -- doug smith  

  Leaders make mistakes. Oh wow, do they make mistakes. At question is, are we learning from those mistakes? Can we manage our emotions? Do we redirect our misdirection? Do we serve instead of pander? Leadership is hard. That's why people are asking you to be in charge. Learning constantly will make it better, but it will always be hard. When it stops being hard, ask someone what is it that you're missing -- because you are definitely missing something. -- doug smith

I don't have it all figured out, how about you? Every day there is more to learn. I do my best to anticipate what I'll need to learn next, but some things emerge by surprise. Some things reveal themselves as lessons to be learned right in the middle of the lesson. Sometimes we don't know what we need to learn until we start to learn it. Whats's the answer? Keep learning. -- doug smith

What have you learned today? That's the question I ask the most. I ask other people, and I ask myself: what have you learned today? We get energy from learning. We get experience and we learn some more. We work toward wisdom and we always learn more. Learn constantly, it's the best way to improve. It's our responsibility to get smarter everyday. And how do we do that? Keep learning! -- doug smith Call to Action: Play nice, work hard, be smart. Whatever that means to you today, please do more of that. The world needs your best!

Who has taught you the best lessons? What have you learned that has become part of the value of your life and who was it who taught you? Some people in your life had lots of opportunity to teach you. They had time. They had proximity. Maybe they even had authority. They were people involved with you closely: your parents, your grand parents, siblings, elementary school teachers, high school teachers, college professors, best friends, lovers, adversaries, organizational leaders, pastors, priests, gurus, yoga teachers, improv coaches, music conductors, choir leaders, policy officers, military officers, coaches, cooks, fraternity and sorority members, doctors, therapists, nurses, dental hygienists, dentists, chiropractors, delivery staff, food service workers, co-workers, bosses, mentors...if you dive deep enough for long enough the list is extensive. For all of us. Ponder that list. Ponder those lessons. Know it. Do it. Teach it. What did you learn? What have you learned so completely, s...

I remember making up an answer. If I'm honest, I've done it more than once. How about you? And, sometimes the answer was right. But of course sometimes the answer was wrong. Instead of looking like I didn't know the answer, it looked like I made it up. I don't do that anymore. I don't know everything, and I admit it. I'd like to know everything. I'm working on it (LOL) but not even close. How about you? Sometimes, in order to discover how much a team member knows, I'll hold back on information that I DO know, to allow them to explore and discover it. That could be considered pretending to NOT know the answer, but honestly, many times by staying silent that gives the team member time to think it thru, explore the idea, and discover a fabulous answer. Often, that answer is much better than the one I had in mind. Pretending to know the answer is less useful than pretending to NOT know the answer.  Stay curious. It works. -- doug smith

We could argue absolute truth all day, all week, all year. Let's not. What if there is some element of doubt? What if there are undiscovered truths underneath the surface? We could take the time to experiment and learn along the way. We could conduct dialogues that explore rather than expose, that interrogate rather than interrupt. We could probe instead of poke.  The trouble with absolutes is that if you're wrong you are absolutely wrong. Let's stay curious instead. -- doug smith

Are you a big reader? Do you read from one book or another every day?  I'm usually reading four or more books at a time. Not all at once (what an image that is!) but it's not unusual to pick one up, read a few chapters, then switch to fiction, then something else. Books give us depth. The slow journey through ideas helps us learn.  Reading helps to stretch our minds. Reading readies the mind for bigger and better things. What are you reading today? -- doug smith

What NOT to do: wish that you'd done something differently. Learn from it? Yes. Focus on it? Probably not. Clinging to the past will not bring it back. -- doug smith

You can't train for the olympics by watching a three-minute video. And yet, some people think you can learn leadership that fast. You can't. Besides, imagine all the cat-video distractions you'd encounter along the way. High performance leadership takes real training, real devotion, steady discipline, and constant learning. Oh, and it never ends. -- doug smith

What you learn is up to you. -- doug smith

A goal worth working on will produce high levels of learning. If that learning doesn't help you with this goal, it's guaranteed to help you on another. Keep learning. Learn constantly. -- doug smith

What was the last lesson that you learned that you wish you didn't need to learn? Learn isn't always fun. But, if we take the time to reflect on what we have learned, it CAN always be useful. Like that time as a child when I put my wrist on a hot stove. I had a scar for years, but I never did THAT again. Or that time when I yelled at an employee in front of customers. It felt necessary at the time, but I soon realized that it was not productive and that it impacted the other team members and I've never done THAT again. We need to learn. And the more we stretch ourselves, the more likely we are to learn things we hadn't planned on, some of them uncomfortable. Learn anyway. Grow. Learn constantly, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. -- doug smith

Leading requires following, and not just from your followers. What do you believe in? Where is your faith? What drives you? What is your mission? Great leaders know that their direction - the place they are leading others - is built from a combination of influences, some remembered and some forgotten. It's gravity inside. It's magnetic attraction and a pull that keeps pulling. We influence those influences. What we read, what we learn, what we talk about, the art we appreciate and the people we spend time with...we influence our influences. Why not do that with a sense of purpose and adventure? Every great leader is following something. Are you paying attention to what you're following? -- doug smith

High performance leaders grow. They grow their teams. They grow their organizations. They grow themselves. Growth produces strength, resilience, and opportunity. How are you growing today? -- doug smith

Have you ever thought that you've got this leadership thing all worked out? I've never reached a point where I thought "that does it, it's all easy from now on..." It gets better, but not necessarily easier. As the goals get bigger, the plans take longer. As the tasks pile up, the discipline must grow or it all stumbles to a stop. Just when you think you've got your team where you want them, a star performer leaves, or a struggling performer slips even further. The work never stops. Some of it is the science of leadership (mind your metrics, facilitate your meetings, improve your processes) and some of it is art (develop your people, conduct those on-the-spot tough conversations.) The art of leadership seldom stops after one draft. Don't stop. Keep moving. Keep learning. Keep growing. -- doug smith

Materials: Each participant's smart phone. Process: Share with us the last ten pictures in your phone and tell us what they say about you. Each person on the team shares. Variations: Use a lower number of pictures if the team is larger than ten people. ASK: What pictures should be in there but are not? What does this say about the team? What have you learned?

"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker." -- Zig Zigler You know that we can learn from our mistakes. You might also know that failure carries many valuable lessons. I like the expression that comes from NLP (Neurolistic Programing) "there is no failure, only feedback." There's always something to learn. Any effort that results in learning is not a complete failure. So it's up to us. While we would never choose to fail at anything (oh horrors!) sometimes we will. Whether we learn or not is completely up to us. Find the learning. Find the success. What have you learned today? -- Doug Smith

Some things that annoy us the most grow us the most. I never asked for some of my biggest lessons. I probably didn't ask for any of them. They hurt. They bruised. They provoked anxiety. They made me sweat. But I learned. I learned that people need lots of attention. That sending an email isn't enough. That a handshake (and even a kiss) doesn't mean that a deal won't ever be broken. That broken promises (especially when a kiss IS involved) are the hardest lessons to take. We go on. We strive forward. We learn. We forgive. I am annoyed by big lessons. My ex-wife once gave me a little present that was a miniature traffic cone with the words "Oh no, not another learning opportunity!" on it. That about sums it up: not right now please, I'd rather not get that lesson. We don't always get to pick the timing, but we do get to decide whether or not we learn from those things that annoy us. Things like the team member who isn't finishing the importa...

Calling something "common sense" doesn't mean that you don't need it. We're never finished learning. What have you learned today? -- Doug Smith