Centered Leaders Create Clarity

Are you ever intentionally unclear?

Maybe that's not a fair question. Maybe few of us would ever admit that we blurred lines or fuzzied up our boundaries. My guess is though that we all do.

To become more centered, we need to get more clear. To reach our people and build better teams, we need to get more clear. To stop confusing people or deceiving them, we must seek more clarity.

We seek more clarity by saying what we mean, and what we feel. We uncover our covered motivations. We listen with curiosity to discover how others are reacting (did they understand us? are we comfortable in their misunderstanding us?)

Sometimes clarity comes from exploring the unclear places. It comes by asking honest and probing (and sometimes discomforting questions):

- Did you understand what I said?
- Did you mean to say that _____?
- Are you saying that ______ ?
- Does it sound to you that we agree or disagree on this?
- Tell me what that means to you?
- How do you feel about that?
- Does this make sense to you?
- How do you make sense of all this?

...and so many more. If anything, centered leaders, high performance leaders, are skilled at asking open ended questions with genuine curiosity. We don't know all the answers, and our clarity dissolves when we pretend that we do.

It's one of the fun paradoxes of leadership: the more we seek clarity the more we realize that we don't understand.

Until we do.

The price of clarity is commitment. Commitment to exploring our various versions of truth. Commitment to staying curious. Commitment to saying exactly what we think and feel while staying open to think and feel new things.

Are you open? Are you ready? Are you clear?

-- Douglas Brent Smith

Comments

The Gaps

Are you comfortable with ambiguity? I'm not a fan of not knowing, but I've learned that sometimes I just don't know. Try as I might, I don't understand what is going on with a customer, or a team member, or a boss. The effort to understand everything will always leave gaps. Closing those gaps could take a long time. In the meantime, keep working. -- doug smith

Competition AND Collaboration?

There's no avoiding competition -- or at least, when you do avoid it there could be unsavory side-effects if it's there anyway. Even when we prefer, and manage to facilitate collaboration and cooperation INSTEAD of competition there will still be some competition blending into the mix. It's part of who we are. It's largely how we operate. I didn't invent that, I just navigate it. How about you? Whether we are collaborating or competing we should do it with respect. There's no reason to disparage the competition. Calling your competition names just makes you a name-caller. It doesn't make you a better competitor. So go ahead and compete if that's the nature of your game. But mix a bit of collaboration and cooperation in there and see how that improves your results. Your support team just might be larger than you think! -- doug smith

Service Problems

The problem with bad service is that it creates bad customers. Solve your service problem or the problem customers will multiply. -- doug smith

No Complete Failure

"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker." -- Zig Zigler You know that we can learn from our mistakes. You might also know that failure carries many valuable lessons. I like the expression that comes from NLP (Neurolistic Programing) "there is no failure, only feedback." There's always something to learn. Any effort that results in learning is not a complete failure. So it's up to us. While we would never choose to fail at anything (oh horrors!) sometimes we will. Whether we learn or not is completely up to us. Find the learning. Find the success. What have you learned today? -- Doug Smith

Future Leaders

Guess what: the leaders of the future are watching you today. What will they see? What will they learn? How will they remember you? -- Douglas Brent Smith Developing Leadership Skills

Problem Solving and the Root Cause

How much time do you spent identifying the root cause of a problem? It's a risk to assume that we know the real problem, that the root cause is obvious. Sometimes it takes a harder look. Sometimes understanding the root causes of a problem is more important than solving it. Options open. Possibilities abound. Chances emerge. Perspective clears. Solving a problem? Get a good look at that root cause! -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

Small Steps

Incremental goals make geometric goals possible. Little goals get giant goals going. Whatever your goal is, break it down into something small enough to do right now. One step forward is all you need to get going. - - doug smith

When Comfort's Got to Go

Are you comfortable with something that's no good for you? I sometimes find myself completely comfortable with a routine, habit, or situation that I somehow know isn't in my best interest and yet there is something cozy and comfortable about the reliably consistent. Even when it's reliably disappointing, at least it's reliable. We struggle to let go of the reliable. We struggle to approach the unknown. We struggle to let go. Solving a problem may require you to change something your'e still comfortable with. That won't be easy. That might take some courage. I'm willing to work on that this week - how about you? -- Doug Smith

What Can Be

What can be possible right now? Is there a problem facing you that you've been avoiding because it feels like there are already just too many things going on? It's easy to fall into an "all or nothing" mindset where, unable to solve ALL of the problems we manage to solve NONE of the problems. That there are too many problems to solve them all shouldn't stop us from solving the ones we can. If what can be is one solution to one problem that is a wonderful place to begin. -- doug smith

Time Changes Everything

Do you sense the pace of change? Is life vastly different than what you remember it to be when you were a child? Things do keep changing. Sometimes unexpectedly. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes not. As leaders, it's our job to facilitate change. We're here to lead others in the direction of improvement, for the cause of positive change. Not every leader acts that way, but some part of every leader does believe that they have the right changes to bring about. Part of every leader's job is to make certain that the changes we create ARE for the better. It's our strength of character that keeps our acts of courage helpful. To do that, we need to know how to best align our goals with our mission and our mission with our vision. We need to know what it is that energizes our people. And, we need to mobilize our people by inspiring them with an important mission to begin with. Change driven in the direction of our mission makes all the difference in the...

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