Be Strong Without Being A Bully

There is a balance that leaders must find. Go too easy on your team and they will perceive that you don't care. You're not there to create a country club atmosphere. There are standards. There are goals. There are expectations. Your job is to communicate those goals and expectations and follow-up to make sure that your team is achieving them.

That does not mean shouting, demanding unreasonably, or bullying. You know who works for a bully? Only people who have no choice, and then they deliver the bare minimum. The popular image of a yelling, demanding boss only works in the movies. In real life, people find ways to leave the bully flat.

No one wants a weak supervisor. They want someone who has their back, who backs them up, who lets them know when they are delivering exemplary results and who also lets them know when they need to feedback. People want and need feedback. Just choose it carefully. Focus on the behavior, not the person.

No one wants a bully, either. Yell at me, shout at me, call me names, deride my character OR my intentions and I am out of here. No one wants or needs that.

Successful supervisors preserve respect and dignity even while requiring strong results. It's not either or. As is the case in so much of leadership, it is a question of balanced.

You do want to be known as someone who is balanced, don't you?

Find the balance.

-- Doug Smith

Comments

Get Going!

What goal are you working on? Maybe you don't spend every minute of every day working on your goals. I certainly don't. But when I do work on my goals they propel me forward. They get me going. Find your favorite goal. Work on it. Even if you start with the smallest task. Put one task after the other like little steps leading to a lofty elevation. Goals get us going. Because standing still goes nowhere. -- Doug Smith

Start With Decisions

Do you share leadership? The most powerful teams share leadership responsibilities AND attitude. When you develop a team where people feel empowered to take charge, take responsibility, and take ownership you then no longer need to do all the difficult work. Delegation becomes easier. Collaboration feels more natural. Start with decisions. It's fast and easy as a leader to make all of the big decisions, but when you include your team in the conversations it takes to gain mutually shared understandings and collaborative decisions, you no longer have to "sell" your decisions --- people simply know what you as a team have decided and act accordingly. No passive aggressive resistance, no passengers on your team "bus" -- just fully engaged team members. Start with collaborative decisions. The rest will be much easier. -- Doug Smith

Focused Truth

Focused leaders have zero time for inauthentic messages. They tell the truth unconditionally and insist on the truth consistently. Be a leader who can handle the truth. Be a leader who tells the truth. -- 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

Expanding Capacity

High performance leaders expand capacity by constantly developing their people. How does your team grow? How can you get more done with less? There are many answers to the question of increasing capacity and responsible leaders explore them all, including improving processes and design. It's also important to constantly develop your people People who feel valued and who are constantly growing develop new ideas. They fix problems. They engage in processes and structures and find better ways to get things done. People who are developing stop tolerating defects and instead work toward optimizing their environment. They raise their capacity and increase the value of the team. What are you doing to develop your people? How much more capacity could your team have with people who were fully engaged, truly energized, and growing? -- Douglas Brent Smith Learn more in the workshop: Building Your Team

Life Never Stops Teaching

Which learning curve are you climbing? The lessons keep coming. When we keep growing, our energy sparks with new creativity, new courage, new compassion, and new clarity. When we keep growing, life's adventure brings more smiles than troubles. High performance leaders make it a point to keep learning. That means taking on the tough assignments. That means listening to the needs of your team and building on their ideas. That means constantly debriefing, decoding, and deciding. There's a lesson in all of this somewhere. Centered leaders find the lesson and grow. Life never stops teaching. What have you learned today? -- Doug Smith

Solving Problems and Perspective

Have you noticed how much our ability to solve problems relies on our perspective? Sometimes we get too tight to think. Sometimes our thinking is so narrow that even the walls seem to close in on us as we struggle with a persistent problem. It costs almost nothing to take a fifteen and think it over. Talk with a trusted friend. Maybe the conversation will be about the problem at hand or maybe it will be about something else. Take a break. Many problems look smaller after a cup of coffee and a friendly conversation. Isn't it worth a try? -- Douglas Brent Smith Workshops and Teleclasses for Front Line Supervisors

Dessert of Darkness

Lead long enough, and some type of crisis will develop. Stay the course and eventually you will find obstacles to overcome. Resistance is a natural part of progress. Difficulty is bound to follow innovation. How do you handle it? Does every leader eventually travel thru a dessert of darkness when you're not sure of the answer and not even sure of the direction? What will pull YOU thru? Having an answer before you get to that dessert is critical to success. -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

Promise and then Deliver

Be careful what you promise to gain a new customer. They are only new for a day. After that, expectations continue even if you forget your promise. Be careful what you promise. Do you have what you need to give your customers what they want? Because probably, what they want, is what you've promised. -- doug smith

More Than Convenience

This is probably get some disagreement. We've come to rely so much on one particular trait of business, probably even more than price. Convenience. We make so many decisions based on how EASY a transaction is. It's so much EASIER than ever before and we've all been spoiled by click-and-ship that anything with any friction whatsoever gets passed over. That's an understandable decision, but not always the best one. Convenience is great, but no substitute for quality. Hamburgers are convenient but wouldn't you rather eat a steak? (please excuse me my vegetarian and vegan friends.) Social media is convenient but how about the depth and richness of a long face to face conversation with a dear friend? I advocate that we consider other measures in our important decisions. Measures other than convenience: Quality Durability Care Beauty Drama What would you add to the list? Convenience is a poor measure of quality. Let's consider everything else that makes business -- a...

High Performance Leadership

Search This Blog