Ready to Move Forward

The best leaders build organizations that become ready to move forward without them.

They do this thru skillful coaching, frequent training, and attentive focus toward develop their own individual courage, creativity, clarity, and compassion.

How are you developing your organization?

Will your team outlive your involvement?

-- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

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Leadership and Process Improvement

As a leader, how much attention do you give to improving processes? Do you watch your team install a process and then simply let it flow on and on -- or do you drive a constant focus to improve that process? Too often I've seen leaders spend their efforts trying to fix people , when the center of their problems is usually broken processes and procedures . Any process can be improved until it's no longer necessary. And then you can shut it down. It's work is done. So keep improving those processes. If you're still doing it, you can still improve it. -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

Perfect Relationships

Is your partner perfect? Are you? I've made enough mistakes in my life and in my relationships to know that the search for perfection is illusive at best and at worst, frustrating. There are no perfect people out there waiting for us, to fall in love with us, to fix us, to bring us what we need, to fulfill our dreams. But that's OK. In fact, that's wonderful. We don't need a perfect person in order to create love. Love creates the perfect person. -- Douglas Brent Smith

The Benefits of Supervisory Training

When was the last time you had any leadership training? How often do the supervisors in your organization get training? If you are like most organizations, it's never enough. Some teams go without any supervisory training at all and expect supervisors and managers to learn as they go, on the job. Unfortunately, while it is memorable to learn from your mistakes, it comes at a high cost. People get tired. People leave. Important accounts go away. Customers complain. And teams struggle without the skills and knowledge it takes to build cohesive teams that are capable of solving problems, improving performance and achieving goals. Admittedly, I can be expected to support training since I'm in the business. Still, take a closer look at your own leadership career and decide for yourself. Are leaders better off with more training and development or with less? Supervisory training can generate benefits that pay off long after the training is over. Here are just a few of the things sup...

Dear Home Office

Have you ever worked in the field with the responsibility of reporting to a home office? How did that feel? I've noticed that there are big distinctions between people working in the field, doing the work, selling the product, delivering the goods, facing the customers... and people in the home office who make the rules, collect the cash, drink free company coffee, and call in sick if they need a day off. When you work in the field you don't call in sick because then you don't get paid. At least not what you'd make by doing the work. So when someone from the home office wants to give you feedback, how does that feel? Maybe they have something to offer. Maybe they will give you tips that make a difference. Or maybe you might want to write them a note something like this... "Dear Home Office... Your advice sucks so please keep it to yourself. We know what works and what doesn't. We see our customers' faces. We feel their pain. We need new rules ...

No Hiding The Truth

What happens when someone tries to hide the truth? It pops up, unexpected, full-blown and often unforgiving. There is no hiding the truth. The truth always bubbles to the top. Pushing down what we regard as worth hiding, even when it's clearly true, simply delays the inevitable. The truth comes out, and then whoever attempted to hide it looks doubly suspicious and unreliable. Also, when we try to hide the truth we suddenly limit our possibilities. What can we say? What should we suppress? Where are we headed? Who can know and who cannot know? Did we tell the wrong person already? Maybe we should just keep quiet... Truth we try to hide becomes our tallest wall. It's a weight we carry around wondering when we can let it go. It's a wall that prevents us from seeing the beauty that belongs in all truth, even the truth that troubles us. What secret truth are you carrying around? Isn't it time to let that go? -- Douglas Brent Smith Front Range Leadership: ...

Centered Leaders Create Positive Change

Do you feel the need to make radical changes in your team? Are there deep flaws within your organization that you've just got to transform? It can be tempting to equate radical with rude. It can seem reasonable to bend rules to change them. Centered leaders know, and practice better habits for change. Maybe it takes longer. Maybe it involves more people. Certainly, it involves all the clarity, courage, creativity and compassion that a leader can invoke -- but centered leaders find ways to radically change things with dignity and respect. Revolutionaries need not be ill-mannered or violent. There are an infinite number of paths to positive change. How can you approach change more positively today? -- Douglas Brent Smith

Be Your Best You

I wrote an aphorism that I wanted to share, but have held back because it sounds a little edgy; it sounds a little presumptuous, maybe even conceited. That's not my intention. So in order to share it, let me first share this: it's up to each of us to be our best. Whatever anyone thinks about us, that does not define us. What defines us is what we see in ourselves and how we put that into action. How much clarity we bring to any issue, is completely up to us. How courageous we are under pressure is not up to anyone else but us. The degree of creativity we bring to the world depends on our daily practice and our willingness and discipline to develop that creativity. Our compassion can not be given to us -- we must make it, feel it, show it ourselves. It's true for you. It's true for me. Your best you is up to you. That keeps changing. That keeps growing. It's our lifetime project and adventure: perpetual improvement. Now here's that aphorism that...

Strategic and Communication Skills

Supervisors often bring strong technical skills to the job. When they have worked in technical jobs prior to becoming a supervisor, they were often the best at what they do. They know the ground level part of their business well enough to solve problems and deal with day to day issues. Leading is all that and more. High performance leadership requires attention to detail AND a constant view of the big picture: where is your team, your market, and your customer base headed? What does the future hold? Strong supervisors learn to add strategic and communication skills to their technical ability. What are you doing today to develop your sense of the big picture? -- Douglas Brent Smith

Evolve To Something Better

Are you evolving? High performance leaders evolve. Sometimes you can see it in revolutionary changes - they suddenly go from maintaining the status quo to driving exceptional and innovative performance. Sometimes it's incremental - happening so slowly that it's almost imperceptible until one day you realize: wow, they have really accomplished some major goals. That takes growth. That takes change. That takes evolving. Our goal is not just to keep pace. Our goal is to evolve something greater. What are you evolving today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership: High Performance Leadership Training doug smith training: how to achieve your goals

Be Careful About Judging

How many times a day do you judge other people? It might be more than you realize. We judge people all the time: their clothes, their hair, their weight, their gait, their intentions, their pretensions - there's so much to judge we spend an inordinate amount of time doing it. And for what? Does it help? Does it make them better performers? Does it make us better leaders? I know, some people judge more than others. If you are the type of person who manages how much they evaluate and judge others well then good for you. My point is that we can all judge less. The world doesn't depend our judging to keep spinning. Our judging doesn't create better quality. It's what we do to help that makes the meaningful changes. It's what we do, not what we judge, that helps us evolve. Judgment is seldom rational. It's not based on realistic expectations or planned development, but rather more based on how we were raised, who were our friends in early childhood, what ...

High Performance Leadership

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