doug smith training

How much time do you spend managing your own boss? Front line leaders can spend so much time leading their own people that it's easy to forget how important it is to develop your relationship with your own boss. You do need your boss's support for any plans, discipline, or development you have for your people. You do need your boss's cooperation when your team members go over your head about an issue and go directly to your boss. And, you'd like your boss's help in developing your career. But your boss is busy. Your boss has personal tasks to take care of. Your boss has a challenging boss to keep happy. It's easy for you and your boss to drift apart as you both work hard to accomplish your goals. But still you've got to find a way. The toughest task for any boss is managing their own boss. Although it may be tough, your future could depend on it. Without your boss's help, everything is harder. With it, almost anything is possible. Here are...

Which is more important to you as a leader, results or relationships? That's a trick question of course. You do not need to pick one or the other. In fact, high performance leaders focus on both and they start with relationships. Take care of your relationships and your results will improve. -- doug smith Leadership Call to Action: Build the relationships on your team today. Spend at least part of your day having meaningful conversations with team members, one at a time.

What are your leadership conversations about? High performance leaders conduct all kinds of conversations -- around performance, goals, aspirations, tasks, schedules, development, customer service, process improvement...all KINDS of conversations. Something every high performance leadership conversation needs is time to build the relationship. Unhurried. Deeper conversations. Getting to know your people. That's one reason why two-thirds of the three part conversations we help develop at doug smith training contain relationship building: 1. Small talk 2. Big talk (goals, performance, etc.) 3. Appreciation You could think of it as a performance sandwich but that's not all of it. The "bread" of that sandwich is all about getting to know each other better, spending meaningful time together, and bonding in such a way that working together becomes easier and more effective. You're still the boss. You still get to decide in the end. But, as you get t...