doug smith training

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

Sometimes you can change yourself by changing your goal. -- Doug Smith

Are you growing? Are you learning? Are you excited about what you're working on? We need to keep growing. The alternative is just not appealing. Grow. Learn. Make new roads and set new directions. Here are some goals worth growing for: Achieve peace thru dialogue Reform banking into a fair and stable system Build stronger relationships thru deeper conversations. Develop shared understanding by discovering, exploring and creating art and music. Normalize climate thru conservation and renewable energy Do you need more? That's a hefty list. Call it my wish list. Noble goals all. I have NO IDEA how to achieve any of them, they are all much bigger than me or my influence. But maybe you have a clue. Maybe you have a way. Maybe you know someone who knows someone who...you get the idea. We've got to start somewhere, AND we've got to grow, so why not grow thru noble goals. Break them down. Get started. Grow. -- Doug Smith

We're either developing ourselves or falling behind. What will you do to develop yourself today? -- Doug Smith

Do you have at least one big goal that is stretching your comfort zone? If you do, good for you. We grow, we learn, we stretch or otherwise we fall behind. Sometimes working on a big goal tests us beyond anything we've endured before. Each time that I've set a goal of relocating (because, after all, moving is so much fun!) I have felt myself pushed to the limits to get all the details right and to move gracefully. Sometimes things get broken. It's reasonable to expect achieving your goals to feel uncomfortable at times as you stretch your boundaries. You might not choose the discomfort, but you have chosen the goal. See it thru. Don't experience the rough spots without the payoff. Set a solid, organized plan and then act relentlessly on your plan to achieve your goal. And then, the price of discomfort will seem very small indeed. -- Doug Smith

Do your goals change you? I think that the big ones do, and sometimes the little ones as well. When we set noble and ambitious goals, with enough stretch in them to cause us to grow, our goals change us. When we pick the right goals, that change is positive and contributes to future success. The best goals keep us growing. A goal doesn't need to change the world to change you. Not every goal is massive. Sometimes goals that matter the most to us matter very little to anyone else. But because they do matter to us, they can change us. I'm working on some goals right now that will definitely change me once I have achieved them. Some of them aren't even business goals, but they are just as important and the change will be just as profound. Are you working on goals that will change you? -- Doug Smith

What do you goals add up to? Do they add up to major changes? Do they show the progress in your career? Do they provide motion for your growth and change? I realize that many people wander thru life with no true goals. They clock in and out. They go thru the motions. They walk beside their shoes. We are meant for more than that. We are meant for great things. We are meant to leave footprints that help others to walk - not cause them to trip. Our goals add up to a different life. A different life than the one we started out with. A different life than the one we are living. A better, more purposeful, more directed, more powerful life. A life of growth, change, and helpfulness. I'm going to start paying more attention to what my goals add up to. How about you/ -- Doug Smith What have you learned today?

Who's in charge of your performance? Who's in charge of your results? The past couple of days I've focused these articles on performance and how we can always do better. We can't wait to do better. It's up to us. We need to read what we need to read, train where we need to train, develop in ways that keep us moving. We need to keep setting clear, noble, ambitious goals. Growth. It's our best direction. Achievement: it's the destination of growth training. You are in charge of how great you perform. Are you training hard enough to get to where you want to be? -- Doug Smith doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training

Yesterday, in this blog, I suggested that your best performance is still inside you. What do you think? Even as we take time to acknowledge our success, we hunger for doing even greater things. We long for achieving more. That's a positive motivator. Enjoy the moment, savor the success, and take a breath. Then, when you are fully centered and able to focus without any chance of criticizing who or where you are, get ready to go bigger still. Get ready to set and achieve an even better, even more noble, even more life-enhancing goal. There is always a way to take your performance to the next level. Are you willing to find it? Are you willing to work for it? Are you ready to start right now? -- Doug Smith doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by how much there is to change? I know the feeling - there are so many big problems to solve that it can crush expectations and send me into a zone of retreat. But, that's not where I belong. That's not where any of us belong. We belong involved in the work that makes life better. Better for us, better for our customers, better for our team members. Even (gasp!) better for our competitors and enemies. There IS a lot to be done. No single one of us will be able to change everything. What we can do is change what we can change. We can work constantly at learning, developing, improving, growing, caring. If I can't change the world I can at least change a moment at a time for the best. We can build great moments. One moment at a time. What will be your greatest moment today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors for Success doug smith training:  how to achieve your project goals

Are you perfect yet? What a silly question! Of course not. Neither am I. Which is why we should keep learning, keep growing, keep improving. Think about where you were a few years ago - you've no doubt improved many aspects of your performance and, hopefully, have created better results than the you of a few years ago could have. That's progress. We can always do better, and it's our responsibility to keep working on it. There's just no point when we are free to kick back and say "well, I nailed that one so I'm done here." We're never done, because when you're done, you're done . Growing and making progress keeps us sharp. Learning new skills leads to setting and achieving new goals. It's an endless and fascinating process. There's every reason to embrace it and own it: growth is what we do. Our best performance becomes our next starting point. The better we do, the more our potential grows. It can feel like hard work. It can

Want to send a powerful message to your people? Want to communicate more effectively? Smile. They want to know how they are doing -- AND they want to know how you're doing. Walking around with a serious face all the time will wear them down. They'll wonder what's up. They'll start to question the path your team is on. Their desire to communicate will diminish. You can do better. You can create better conversations. Start with a smile. Find the joy in what you do and share it. Find the happiness in your team and grow it. Smile. -- Doug Smith