doug smith training

It's too late to perfect the past but it's not too late to learn a better future. Where is your next lesson taking you? What future are you working to create? -- doug smith  

Do you keep score on yourself?  When you set a goal, do you record your progress? How do you know when you're doing a great job? Track your results if you want to improve them. It works. -- doug smity  

How many eighty-hour work weeks do you put in? That's not meant to judge, but to ponder. I've put in plenty of eighty and more hour work weeks and while I don't regret any of them I know that they haven't all paid-off proportionately. It's possible to work so hard that you miss what's important. It's a frequent paradox that the longer one works the less productive they become. I've learned to tell myself: Take a break. Relax. Let it all come to you, flow thru you, and go on its merry way -- if only for a little while. Drink water, exercise, meditate, pray, and relax.  Healthy leaders build healthy teams. Take care of yourself. -- doug smith  

Leaders are paid to produce results. What if the results that leaders produced included optimism? What if they included hope? What if they created great days? Leaders can do that. You can do that. Let's do that. Give people a reason to believe that this is a great day.  Because if you make it happen, it happens. -- doug smith

Wouldn't it be great if respect came naturally and we didn't even need to think about it? It doesn't. We carry around so many tensions, stresses, and levels of bias that sometimes respect comes very hard indeed. It might even feel impossible. Respect takes practice. It takes practice to demonstrate respect all of the time, and so it is always practice. Intentional, studied, demonstrated practice. I'm still practicing. How about you? -- doug smith  

You don't need to keep score, but remember: someone is. Someone is paying attention to the way you handle feedback. Someone is monitoring your voice tones when you talk with team members. Someone is watching to see how you react when you are challenged. People, and especially leaders, are constantly evaluated. Will you be a perfect 10? Will you be a mixed up combination of varying opinions? Will you consistently treat people with the kind of respect and attentiveness that makes scoring irrelevant? High performance leaders relax on the scoring and focus on centering. Your self, your team, and some part of the world - all more centered, focused, balanced, and alive. (Oh, and don't worry -- it takes a lifetime to get there...) -- doug smith

We live in wild, wide-open times. People feel confident and entitled to say whatever they want, whenever they want, about whoever they want. Freedom of speech is wonderful, isn't it? Don't we value candor and honesty? Of course. And, we also value respect, decency, dignity, and truthfulness. When as leaders we are insulted should it be cause for alarm? We don't need to take insults personally, but we do need to take them seriously.  How we respond will set the tone. The ways that we react will set an example for everyone on our team (and many people off of our team) for leadership behavior. Can we remain professional, respectful, truthful? Can we manage our emotions? If the insult is true, that is valuable feedback. If the insult is false, there's no reason to get upset. High performance leaders remain leaders even when that leadership is disparaged.  -- doug smith  

Jobs are a balance of learning and repetition. We forge new ground and we walk on well-worn territory. The routine wears us down, even when it's necessary.  High performance leaders show the value of a well practiced, skillfully executed job routine. Discipline in work comes from the extra effort of pushing thru when the task is due. Maybe you did it before, maybe you'll do it again -- give it all you've got right now. Someone is watching. -- doug smith 

It's hard to escape it: there are lies everywhere. Behind every lie is a liar, someone who knows that they are deceiving people. The lies might be obvious. They might even rationalize the lies into harmless ways around the truth.  There is no way around the truth. The only way to the truth is telling the truth. It's tempting to rationalize our own reactions to lies. After all, they lied first so what's the harm in twisting the truth just a little for a good cause. No. You can't stop a liar from lying, but you don't have to play a liar's game. High performance leaders with integrity tell the truth. -- doug smith

Are you helping your team grow? Not in size, although that can be useful. Growth in terms of ability, skill, motivation, traction, change, endurance, happiness...are you building those components in your team? If you are the right leader for your team you'll help them grow.  Otherwise, they'll find someone who does. -- doug smith  

The art of leadership includes knowing when to be sensitive and when to be tough. It could even be a combination of sensitive (caring about the feelings of others) AND tough (standing your ground.) High performance leaders balance sensitivity and toughness to make sure they don't break themselves or anyone else.  -- doug smith  

Who's in charge? A call is unanswered, a customer is unattended, a product is out of stock, a car is our of fuel...every day we find ourselves in situations that lack leadership. Fill that gap. Take charge. Get things done. It's what high performance leaders do. -- doug smith  

How good is your relationship with your boss? If you're going to have a boss, you going to have to get along. I've had some terrific bosses who spent extra time building relationships with me and making sure that I had everything I needed to lead my teams effectively. Not every boss will do that. When they don't (and even when they do) it serves you well to initiate the conversation. Build the relationship. Get to know your boss so that your boss can get to know how invaluable you truly are. Every supervisor needs a robust, mutually supportive relationship with their own boss. -- doug smith

High performance leaders are able to be simultaneously tough and kind. Tough on the task, tender on the person. -- doug smith  

Have you ever had a boss who thought that in order to get the best performance from you they had to treat you like dirt? If so, how did you feel about that? Leadership is a balance, but that balance too often leans to the side of manipulation and force. Being mean is a poor, sad, troubling strategy.  When is it appropriate for a leader to act like a jerk? Never. Many supervisors could double their effectiveness if they stopped acting like jerks. If you catch yourself about to get mean, come clean and restart.  -- doug smith

I'd prefer it if status was not a factor. Especially, when it comes to leadership, wouldn't it be better if we didn't need to concern ourselves with status? But there it is: status as a constant. In the face of all of the surface maneuvers around status, we also have the opportunity to prove our professionalism. If we can focus on the mission when other people focus on their own personal enhancement, we can get more done. People are more likely to follow a leader who serves the mission first and their own esteem much later. I'm not saying that esteem isn't important, only that it should be down on your list after serving your mission and other people -- especially the people you lead. When we are challenged -- when people force an issue to see how professional we are -- that can be managed skillfully. We do not need to over-react. We do not need to cover our exterior. An opportunity to prove your professionalism is reason to celebrate, because it can be a convincing...

What makes someone a professional? Many factors, you might say: - certifications - education - peer recognition - ability - attitude and while the list is long, here's what I think: When you behave like a professional, professional status will emerge. Because if you change how you approach your work to be focused on being as professional as you can be, by serving your customers to the fullest, by committing to only top quality -- when you change and form habits that reinforce your personal belief that you ARE a professional -- your results, and your reactions, change. Act like a professional -- why would you ever do anything else? -- doug smith

Productivity = do what can be done with what is available. And if you add in leadership? If you add in leadership productivity becomes on time, on budget, and to quality specifications. Isn't that what high performance leaders do? -- doug smith

  Have you ever imagined something so much or so strongly that you believe it's happened, even when it hasn't?  Like a dream, a creative endeavor takes on a quiet life of its own. We see it. We feel it. We're sure we did our work to make it happen.  But if we didn't do the work, it didn't happen. That's why some  writers will not talk about a piece they're working on: if they talk about it too much, it already feels complete, and it's NOT. Our minds are wonderful, and sometimes they're funny. We can do that with "facts" as well. Our own inner bias convinces us that a particular view is true, even in the face of contrary evidence. We see that all over these days. What we imagine to be true sometimes gets in the way of what is actually true. It's the job of a true high performance leader to know the truth, to tell the truth, and to lead with the truth. Leaders who don't, don't deserve to be leaders.  -- doug smith

In lean staff times, in fully staffed times, in hard-to-find-the-talent times, we need to keep recruiting. Even when you don't have a hiring requisition, or an open position. Top talent doesn't always show up on schedule. Sometimes it peaks in thru the window. High performance leaders are always recruiting. Your next MVP is out there somewhere. Keep recruiting. Keep recruiting by: creating an environment where people want to work developing your people, no matter what stage of their career building diverse teams with all kinds of people saying positive things to people about your team smiling when you are asked about your team and about your goals Keep recruiting. -- doug smith