Challenge Your Team

What unusual, really big, thoroughly challenging project is your team working on this week?

High performance leaders help their teams find challenges worth completing. The status quo is not where you or your team belongs. You belong in the space of creativity, innovation, and vibrantly significant change.

Bigger challenges are signs of growth.

And, growth is where you want to be.

-- Douglas Brent Smith

Interested in helping your team grow and take on bigger challenges? Bring our one-day workshop "Building Your Team" to your location. Ask me how here: doug@frontrangeleadership.com

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Your Reputation

More authority means higher levels of responsibility. More power requires more service to others, not less. What you do with your power is who you will be known as. Also, how you use the power you have creates who people will remember you as. How do you want to be remembered? -- doug smith

For example

Get good at something that won't obsolete itself. For example: emotional intelligence creating great conversations encouraging people leadership What would you add to the list? Which ones are you developing? -- doug smith

Measures Matter

Some people measure quantify first and quality later. Some people measure money first and impact to the team later (not even second!). How you measure productivity might determine your character and your reputation. Put people first. -- doug smith

High Performance Leadership Combination

We can rationalize anything without making it justified. Leaders should always ask: who is this good for other than me? High performance leadership does NOT mean performance at any cost. It means performance that serves a noble cause while also benefiting people. High performance leadership is a combination. Results without relationships are shallow and temporary. Take care of both, and you'll be a high performance leader. -- doug smith

Bristling Feedback

Do you ever find it really hard to listen to feedback? I can recall a few times when the feedback that I was getting was either so far off base as to be insulting or so extreme as to be hurtful. Maybe it was just me, but there didn't seem to be any point. Or was there? At other times, when I have kept my feelings at bay long enough to listen, there is some element of truth worth exploring. There is often some kernel of insight that can be useful. Not always -- sometimes the feedback we get isn't even meant to be useful -- but sometimes. Centered leaders suspend judgment of themselves and the person providing the feedback to find the insight that's worth exploring. It may be in the feedback. It may be concerning your relationship. It may be in your reaction. But, it is likely there. We can usually learn something if we are open to the lesson available. Is there someone you work with who you find it hard to take feedback from? What would happen if you listened w...

Embracing an Art of Possibility

The creative arts have taken in on the chin this month. A poorly made trailer for an ill-conceived movie has sparked demonstrations around the world. Are people taking this piece of crap "art" too seriously? Is "art" that dangerous? Art sometimes is dangerous. It has the power to stir minds, to generate energy, to instigate change. It pries its way into our emotions and stirs up feelings we've been pushing down. It offers new ways of seeing things we may not have expected. It frames issues and personalities in plots and scenes we can be uncomfortable with. Shouldn't we talk about our feelings? Shouldn't we open our imaginations to new possibilities? Shouldn't we solve problems creatively by tapping into the creative tools and attitudes we learn from the arts? Ah yes, if we can only do that without throwing dangerous objects at each other! The answer is not to suppress the arts. The answer is not censorship or surrender. The answer is somew...

A Creative Leader's Approach to Boundaries

How firm are your boundaries? Are you willing to try new things, even if they are so new that they seem frightening? When I worked at GE there was a lot of talk about creating more boundarylessness. Yes, they made up the word. The broke a semantic boundary in service to their notion. It's not that there are no boundaries. We need those. It's just that our boundaries tend to get fixed into configurations that constrain us unnecessarily. We need to break those boundaries, or simply pass thru them without breaking them. They become (again, as we referred to them at GE) as permeable boundaries. Nature knows all about this. Got a fence? Nature will find a way around it or over it or thru it. Build a wall? Nature will find a way to slowly knock it down. Cities and states? Nature doesn't care. If a storm is headed your way, those artificial boundaries that you think are so sacrosanct will not protect you. Be like nature. Test your boundaries. Cross those borderlines som...

Team Building Never Ends

What are you doing to build your team? Do you have the talent you need assembled to achieve your mission? Teams are dynamic, constantly changing moving targets. Just when you think you've got your team figured out and moving forward, someone leaves or someone enters and the whole chemistry reacts in unexpected ways. It's like juggling three balls and having one of them turn into an egg. It's like riding a bike and having it lose all but one gear. It's like painting a picture and realizing that the paint hasn't dried from the last time you painted, resulting in an unsatisfying gray smear. It's not always like that, but team building can be tough. High performance leaders keep at it. They keep developing their teams and they know that the building never stops. There are no perfect teams which means that the road to perfection must always be navigated. Keep going. If you don't build your team someone else will diminish it. Keep building. -- doug ...

Harmony or Discord

Centered leaders know when to facilitate harmony or stir up discord. Balancing challenge and support is an art. We all know leaders who specialize in one or the other -- they either always seek to restore harmony or it seems like they are always challenging, always stirring up trouble. Either approach can fatigue a team quickly and prevent efficiency. Centered leaders may want harmony but realize that complacency or stasis is never the answer. Sometimes it's necessary to stir things up. Done positively, and with kindness, this is a high performance behavior. Done carelessly or callously, this is disaster. Challenging leaders realize that people can get tired of being challenged and that sometimes the waves are too rough to sail. Sometimes a leader must find ways to restore stability and create a more harmonious environment. It's more art than science -- and that takes creativity. How are you at stirring up a challenge when it's needed? ...

What You Need

Use what you've learned to become what you need. -- doug smith

High Performance Leadership

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