doug smith training

Do you ever get discouraged? It's not a weakness, but it is a roadblock. Even when we don't choose to get discouraged, once that feeling is there it can stand in our way. We missed. We made a mistake. We failed. Crap happens. What I've learned (and keep relearning) is to dust myself up, jump back up and find something compelling to get encouraged about. Sometimes picking the positive path really is empowering. Getting discouraged isn't going to get you what you want.  Remaining unhappy won't achieve your goals. Let's move forward. I've had some really big disappointment in my personal life this year and yet as I see sparks of sunlight at the end of a rather dark tunnel I know that I've kept moving through the encouragement of friends. When I am not able to encourage myself, I am not without help - friends will encourage me. Do you have friends who encourage you? Are you encouraging your friends? We're all in this together, my friends.

Have you ever set a goal and then later realized that for some crazy reason you were waiting for it to achieve itself? Or been assigned a task, knew it was yours, and somehow found yourself waiting for someone else to get it done? Not too often, I hope, but possibly sometimes? I have. It's alarming when the wake-up call hits but the wake-up is needed. It's up to us to achieve our goals. It's up to us to act relentlessly on our plan. There's not much point in waiting for someone else to achieve our goals. It's up to us. What are you waiting for? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals What have you learned today?

What is your number one goal? Which goal, if given the opportunity, you'd want the most people to know about? We've all got tons of goals. Sometimes we have too many goals to keep track of them all. When I find myself getting lost in the details and spinning my creative wheels it's likely due to having too many goals. It's good to have lots of goals, but we still need to prioritize. We need to have a number one goal. As one of my great mentors Anne Delaney once said to me, "You have one number one goal. When you achieve that number two gets a promotion." That has always stayed with me. How to prioritize your goals - which one would you most like to talk about on The Tonight Show? That's your number one goal. What's your number one goal? What are you doing to achieve it right now? -- Doug Smith

Are you busy? Those are words that many of us dread because we ARE so busy. When someone asks "are you busy" it is likely that they are about to ask us to do something else. Can't they see that we ARE busy? Can't they see that we're working on something important? I've learned that it is OK to say "yes, I am busy. I'm working on an important goal. Can we chat another time?" People live thru that. They don't die. They don't run off into the street screaming. They adjust. Because - you ARE busy. When you're busy working on your goals, stay with it. Focus. Distractions will come looking for you so you'll need to develop the discipline to stay on task, stay on goal, and achieve what you came here for. With so many things battling for your time, shouldn't you let your goals win? I'm going to practice letting my goals win today. How about you? -- Doug Smith

How are your goals? Where are they leading you? How excited are you about them? More exciting careers - and lives - are built one goal after another. What's your next exciting goal? -- Doug Smith doug smith training

How much is an excuse worth? Don't think too hard on that one. I think you know. Excuses are worthless. Especially when it comes to goals. What we need to achieve our goals is action. Putting things in motion. Working relentlessly on our plan. Goals need action, not excuses. So the next time you are tempted to bring up an excuse - or the next time you hear an excuse, let that go. Take some action instead. See how powerful that is. -- Doug Smith

When you work to solve a problem, what work do you put into improving communication? How much of your problem solving action plan is focused on communication? Communication matters. Few problems can be truly permanently solved unless there is a change in how people communicate. What's your plan? You may not have solved the problem unless you've also improved or enhanced communication. What does enhanced communication look like? Better, deeper conversations. More trusting relationships. More powerful presentations. More productive meetings. When project managers do an outstanding job of delivering on their project and solving a problem, they improve communication along the way. What are you doing to improve your communication today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training doug smith training:  helping people communicate more effectively What have you learned today?

When I was growing up there was a TV commercial for 7Up that branded the soft drink as the "uncola". It was defined by what it was not. It was an interesting experiment directed at getting people to change a habit to a new solution based on their old solution. Instead of drinking Coke, drink 7Up. I never became a 7Up drinker (Mountain Dew was more my style) but I have borrowed the phrase slightly in something that I call the magic unquestion. It's an unquestion because it's not really a question, although it acts like one. And you can substitute it in situations where you might be looking for another question but can't think of one. Here is the magic unquestion: Tell me more about that. It's not a question, but it keeps the other person talking. It uncovers more information. It stays nonjudgmental and does the work of a question. It changes my habit from closing the inquiry to keeping it open. Tell me more about that. When you need to talk about it,

Do you focus mainly on possibilities or on limitations? We need people who focus on limitations so that we can determine how to overcome them or avoid frustrating our efforts. We need people who focus on possibilities because the answers are out there, we just need to find them. There are always better ways to communicate. There are always better solutions. There are always new ways to bring joy and to reduce suffering. These are all in the possibilities that we develop. I'd much rather talk about possibilities than limitations . Often, by expanding possibilities we overcome what we had perceived to be as limitations. We can get creative. We can patiently pursue perfection without judging our imperfections. Possibilities are our future. Without thinking critically of those who think critically, I like the expanded (and expanding) view. What's your view? -- Doug Smith

How do you feel about broken promises? I hate them. They break my heart. They tear me up. And yet, I've broken lots of promises of my own. It feels different when someone else breaks a promise. They've made a terrible mistake. And yet when it's me who has broken the promise I can easily find a rationalization or a reason or even put blinders on so that I don't see the broken promise. Some days we all have blinders on. Some things we can't see because they're too close. Then, what does a promise mean? Is it really so transitory? Is it really just the hope of a promise and not really a promise? When we make a promise, how long are we obligated to keep it? A promise is a promise. To break it requires a new agreement. If both people do not reach that new agreement, a broken promise is an infraction, a harm. I'm learning oh so well to be very careful about promises. Careful about what I promise, and careful about what I accept from others as a promi

Have you ever caught someone simply "going through the motions" in communicating with you? They say the right words, their motions seems fine, they just aren't fully engaged in what's going on. They appear to listen, but it feels like their mind is somewhere else. So many of us go through the motions. We read our mobile phones when we're with loved ones we seldom see. We keep an eye on the television while our significant others tells us something important (hint - when it comes from your significant other it's all important), we phone it in. It's one of my biggest faults and it has recently come back to haunt me as I experienced that level of inattentive attention returned. It doesn't look mean, it doesn't look premeditated, and yet it hurts at a level that sinks gradually deeper until it can't be excised. The other day I was riding my bike and I came upon a man playing with his dog. At first it looked really charming. The dog was ve

Are there conversations that scare you? It's easy to quote Eleanor Roosevelt and say "face into your fears" but the reality is that there are some conversations that freeze us. Some discussions that put us off, so we put them off. I know that I have missed some vital conversational opportunities. I expect that to change. If we want better conversations, we need to initiate them when the opportunity emerges (not when we feel like it, right then and there). Let's keep the conversation going. Let's talk when we need to talk. Let's build our relationships, our teams, and our organizations using much more effective communication. It takes hard work, it takes courage, but as I have recently discovered in many startling ways, how you communicate is who you are. Who you are to yourself, who you are to other people, the who of you that you create. It's big. It's scary. It's critically important. I'm willing to work through the fear of a tough conv