Take The Time To Know Your People

How well do you know your team?

Do you know each person's individual goals and desires? Do you know how they enjoy spending their time? Do you know if they are happy on the team and with the team mission and goals?

It's easy to take team members for granted. Sometimes we miss a window of opportunity when someone first joins a team to learn all about them and before we know it, days and weeks go by and we're working closely with someone we hardly know. We can do better than that.

Who ever is on your team, I encourage you to get to know them better. If you have a large team, it may take a while to get caught up, but it will be well worth the effort. Getting to know our team members better gives us:

- a more cohesive team
- short-cuts to conflict resolution
- insights into what motivates each other
- more fun!
- constant, real-time team-building
- better relationships for greater collaboration and cooperation

Centered leaders take the time to know their people.

Who do you need to spend some time with today?

-- Douglas Brent Smith

Comments

Celebrate Progress

When was the last time that you were frustrated in trying to learn something? If you can't remember, maybe it's time to learn something new -- something tough and challenging. Truly worthwhile endeavors are often struggles. The satisfaction comes not only in the final result, but also in the progress toward that final result. The best way to avoid a sad let-down once a goal is achieved is to enjoy the journey all the way thru. Celebrate your progress! Not so much that you feel finished, but enough so that you feel able. Celebrate progress, and then keep on progressing. As that beat poet and philosopher Harry X. Tudas once said, "Feel in the groove but continue to improve." -- doug smith

Start Positive

I went thru a grumpy period in my life. It was like a rut that was so deep no light could get in. It fed on its own bumpy grumpiness until that's all I could feel. Yuck. Forget that now. Now, I start with a positive thought. I could be wrong about finding the silver lining, but I've learned that I won't see the silver lining unless I look for it, and that's the place to start. Even the smallest positive effort has a positive impact. Let's start there. -- doug smith

Let Them See You Work

If you can't seem to hire good performers with a solid work ethic, you might need to develop them. Maybe start by showing them what that looks like, or as John Maxwell has said "Know the way, show the way, and go the way." You know, walk the talk. I know a LOT of leaders who complain about work ethic. Maybe they need to let their people see them work... -- doug smith

Feedback Takes Practice

How good are you at providing feedback? If you're not sure, ask your team members. If you are good at it, they'll tell you. If you're not good at it, then maybe they will and maybe they won't. Feedback does not come easy. Skillful, useful feedback that improves both performance AND self-esteem is a delicate balance of recognizing positives and occasionally providing insights on areas of improvement -- all placed into the context of why it matters. Without the "why" -- why the feedback matters, why the improvement matters, why the performance matters, all the feedback you can muster will only fluster whoever you provide it to. Tell them what they did that was great, ask how they could make it even greater, and share with them why it all makes a difference. Because unless it really makes a difference who cares? Feedback, like any skill, takes practice. -- doug smith

Leadership Warning

If you visit the dark side, don't get stuck there. -- doug smith

#ethics21 Leadership and the Duty of Care

I've been casually following a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) structured by Stephen Downes , Ethics, Analytics and the Duty of Care . While it is mainly focused on how ethics applies to analytics (particularly Artificial Intelligence) and learning, it strikes me as relevant to well, everything. In particular, leadership. Leaders must make decisions guided by their ethics on an almost daily basis. As the discuss in #ethics21 has pointed out, though, while it may seem clear what ethical behavior means, it is much more complicated than that. Ethics, when examined with any level of curiosity, uncovers more questions than answers. Maybe that's best, but it is also challenging. I did take one course in ethics in graduate school working on my masters in Organizational Leadership. Every course, though, contained ethical overtones. I learned that leaders must examine their motives and reconcile them against their values while behaving ethically. I learned that there are many more sha

Pausing Purity

Judging someone does not change them. Still, don't high performance leaders need a sense of judgment? Forgiving someone does not correct the fault. Still, isn't forgiveness necessary for a growing leader? Changing does not change the past. Still, leaders always change. Purity is a tough standard to match. Maybe pause perfection long enough to improve. -- doug smith

Building Discipline

It would be easy to skip my morning, or afternoon, or evening push-ups. Heck, I did skip them for most of my life. But regular exercise is a discipline that won't do itself. We don't have to like or enjoy discipline-building habits in order to need them. The drills prove, over and over, that we do. Start small if you need to, but definitely start. -- doug smith

Get Ready

Leadership: you can plan the very best plans possible and still miss. Whatever you were expecting, get ready for a surprise. Is that sometimes annoying? Sure -- and if we frame it cleverly enough, the surprises can also be energizing. They are coming anyway, let's make the best of it. -- doug smith

Careful Expectations

Change agents don't always play by the rules. Expecting them to is the act of a fool. -- doug smith

High Performance Leadership

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