High Performance Leaders Show Confidence, Curiosity, and Courage

What do you consider the most important traits of a high performance leader?

We could create a very long list of those. Five core strengths of a centered, high performance are clarity, courage, creativity, compassion, and centeredness.

High performance leaders also show confidence and curiosity. Not so much confidence as to appear arrogant, but enough to assure the team that you are headed in the right direction and developing every day. High performance leaders also show an above-average amount of curiosity. Curious about questions, curious about answers, curious about what motivates the people on the team.

To build your team to become its best, stay curious about each team member. What makes them tick? What motivates them? What challenges them? What do they need to bring their top performance to the team.

Because high performance leaders build their teams, improve performance, and achieve their goals.

They also operate effectively under pressure.

How much pressure are you under? We know we're in a growth mode when we're right at the edge of the most pressure that we can take. But, high performance leaders don't buckle under pressure. They don't give in to the temptation to run away from a challenge. To build the team to its fullest, high performance leaders much show how it's done. As James Kouzes and Barry Posner detail in their great book The Leadership Challenge, the best leaders model the way.

Successful leaders handle pressure with confidence, curiosity, and courage.

They show how it's done. And they do it.

How are you modeling the way today?

-- Doug Smith

Front Range Leadership: High Performance Leadership Training

doug smith training: helping people communicate more effectively

What have you learned today?

Resource Suggestion: The Leadership Challenge, by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. If you're interested in increasing your effectiveness and influence as a high performance leader, this is one of the best books available.

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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

New Ideas

New ideas won't break you but they can make you bigger. -- doug smith

Decide

What do you want? Are you getting what you want? Intention is direction. Decide. And, then go. -- 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

What You Need

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

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

Personally

Improving performance does require us to take our work seriously. But it does not require us to take ourselves too seriously. Taking things personally is a waste of self-esteem. -- doug smith

Start With Kindness

When you start with kindness you don't have to stay there, but you probably will. It works better for others. It works better for you. If you're human, you'll probably relapse. It does take practice to stay the course. The course starts by starting. When you start with kindness, it becomes more naturally the way. High performance leadership develops from the core leadership strengths of clarity, creativity, courage, and compassion. Build one of those strengths today thru some act of kindness and the others will get stronger as well. -- doug smith

Show Integrity

The goals we seek bring a lot of pull to them. We get wrapped in them. It's useful and it's powerful when we care about our goals so much that they propel us forward and keep us working even when we're tired, beyond the boundaries of our usual limitations. But they should not take us beyond the boundaries of our usual values. They should not trick us into bending the rules just because the rules are in the way. Truly high performance leaders of character who are focused, and centered, and noble maintain integrity. No cheating is ever worth the outcome. Integrity is so rare that many people don't even recognize. If you do, be thankful. We need leaders like you. To truly understand integrity you've got to keep it. Even when it's hard. Even the lines are blurred. -- doug smith

High Performance Leadership

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