doug smith training

When was the last time your team changed? If you answered "today" or "about a minute ago" you are thinking the way that I'm thinking: your team is constantly changing. Every time you add someone to your team, it changes. Every time you say goodbye to someone from your team, it changes. Your team changes when you change a process, when you change a procedure, when you change a rule, when you change the schedule...on and on your team is a relentless mixture of change. The good news is that team leaders can influence that change. You have the opportunity to change in ways that makes your team better, faster, smarter. Your change is open to better change. Changing one person on a team could change the whole team. High performance leaders build constantly, change intentionally, grow patiently. They change on purpose, and so does their team. -- 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

There are no perfect people and there are no perfect processes. Still, we must improve. Performance matters and we can "perfect" that performance even though we will not achieve perfection. Perfection is somewhere in the practice. Practice. -- 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

Companies sometimes post their espoused values. Do they really live by them? It depends on the company. It's worth asking questions, with curiosity, to see if they really do live by those values. Questions like: what does integrity mean to you? how do you create an environment of development and support? how do you make sure that equal opportunity is an active part of your culture? how do you balance competition and cooperation in your company? can you give me an example of a time when your organization was tempted to do something that would have been good for profit but bad for people? what did you do? Values sound great. Values sound uplifting and noble. It is important to make sure that they are real. The problem with shared values is that they are so rarely shared. Check to be sure. -- doug smith

When was the last time that you misunderstood someone? It might have been more recent than you think. We are all misunderstood sometimes. Without clarifying and confirming, we are misunderstood far too many times. Remember, most of the time we misunderstand something we are not aware of our misunderstanding. Clarify constantly. -- doug smith

I'm not a good dancer. I used to think that I was, but then I figured out that it was my partner who was such a good dancer that she could also make me feel like a good dancer. It was wonderful. And, when I realized later, when she'd moved on to a new partner, that I was NOT such a good dancer, at first I wanted to stop dancing. It was so disappointing. It was all just an illusion. And then, I realized. It didn't matter. There are degrees of dancing. Somewhere there are people who dance even better than my former partner. Somewhere there are people who can hardly dance at all. No matter where we start, in dancing or in leading, we can always level up. Start where we are and get better. And, realize that the dance is not about us at all anyway. The dance is, and always has been, about your partners. Your creative muse likes to dance. It will open up new roads to you. It will light you up and allow blood to flow to the places that make you tingle. Listen to that muse

Do you know how powerful your goals are? The best goals spark curiosity, which inspires creativity, expanding possibilities. -- doug smith

In every workshop I facilitate - every one - I share this important piece of wisdom from one of my mentors, Andrew Oxley: "if you don't like the answer to a question, ask a better question." That's profound. That's powerful. That's endlessly useful. Often, people will struggle with that. Sometimes they ask, "How do you ask better questions? What if you can't think of one?" Here's the answer. Ask with curiosity and you'll think of better questions. Stay curious, my friend. -- doug smith

It's was great to work with two highly motivated groups this week, one in Washington D.C. and one in Frederick, MD.  Here are some photos from the workshops.

Do you believe that you are appreciated enough? If so, you are probably lucky and have a healthy sense of self-esteem. Many people do NOT feel appreciated enough. Leaders often do a great job of applying pressure on their teams to achieve more. The results do improve. Does it matter how people feel about it? I think that it does matter. You can only push so long before the pushing leads to falling down. People can drift into being difficult because their lives have become difficult. The job is a big part of that. Too much pressure and release is unstoppable. That can make a person seem difficult. No one wants to feel taken for granted. We all crave appreciation. Some people crave far more than they ever receive, leaving a gap where something must fill the emptiness. That something could make the person seem troubling and difficult. It's hard to appreciate a difficult person, but until we do they are likely to stay difficult. -- doug smith

Problems! If the solution were obvious it would be no problem. We have to sit with it, figure it out, focus on our goal, and move forward. Maybe we move tentatively at first. Maybe we boldly act with decisiveness. Maybe we first solve the puzzle behind the problem. The puzzle is the piece of the problem that is not obvious, yet is strongly effecting the outcome. Maybe it's on there periphery. It could be understated. It could be misunderstood. It is puzzling and must be teased out of its dilemma status into an openly more obvious presence. We can't do that if we ourselves are flying in all directions. We must sit still and breathe. We must center ourselves. We must scrutinize the puzzle. Your problem is more than a puzzle but the puzzle will not be denied. -- doug smith