High Performance Leadership

You don't build a team by tearing down any of the players. No matter how much a team member is struggling, successful supervisors work to help them, not trash them. Provide training. Coach. Counsel. When a team member is willing, find a way for them to learn. When they are not willing, find out why. Occasionally, a team member may need to leave, but they never need disrespect. High performance leaders build teams by building people. -- Doug Smith

High performance leaders drive results without crushing people. You can be exacting, and even demanding, without being a jerk. Centered leaders realize that people work best when they are challenged, supported, and appreciated. Drive that train fast -- but don't run over anyone. -- Doug Smith

Do you wish that you could clone yourself? Imagine the possibilities. Your one man band could be a one man BAND. Your team could be filled with people who meet your expectations exactly. Wouldn't that be great? No. That would not be great. And yet so often we are tempted to try to do that, even though it is (currently!) impossible. How? By hiring people like us. By hiring people and staffing our teams with people who remind us of us. By doing our best to create the team of our dreams filled with the perfect people: copies of ourself. Except, you wouldn't really like a whole team of you. Your problems would be magnified. Your weaknesses would be multiplied. And your sense of judgement, unregulated by any kind of diversity, would pull you right over a cliff. Building your team does not mean cloning yourself. Instead, building your team means finding diverse talent, people who are creative, people who are strong enough to disagree with you, and people who surprise you wi...

Ready, set, go. But then things get in the way and stop us from getting where we need to go. That's not the end, it's just a pause to refresh, to re-energize, to reset and learn. Sometimes the best we can do is to prepare to do better. -- Doug Smith

Working the wrong goals gets in the way, and yet we often find ourselves working on things that are assigned to us or poorly chosen. High performance leaders push against that. The final answer isn't the final answer if it doesn't serve the team. Work suffers when our goals stink. Fix that. Negotiate great goals. Reach agreement on exciting, ambitious, nobel goals and see what happens next. When our goals are right, our work is better. Give that a try. I think you'll like it. -- Doug Smith

How are you using your time today? -- Doug Smith

When the goal speaks to your soul nothing will stand in your way. Not for long. Not forever. The goals that speak to your soul prevail. What soul shaking goal are you working on today? -- Doug Smith

Just because a problem confronts you, doesn't mean that you must become confrontational. Stay calm. Stay focused. Stay centered. It works so much better than panic or anger. -- Doug Smith

I had a boss once who insulted me every day. It seemed like nothing would please her. And, it wasn't just me -- she insulted everyone on the staff. It made coming to work far more stressful than it needed to be, and took the joy right out of the job. Don't be that boss. Sure, we need to provide feedback for improvement - but that's what it is, not insults. No one is looking for judgments that make them feel bad. No one wants their self-esteem cut to shreds because the boss is having a bad day. Keep your bad days to yourself, please. Feedback designed to harm or insult is better left unexpressed. Your team will feel better, and you will, too. -- Doug Smith Bring our two-day workshop "Supervising for Success" to your location for just $149 per participant for organizations within 50 miles of Newtown, PA. For more info: Supervising for Success

Self-deception is so strong that we can't tell where it starts or ends. To avoid falling into a trap of self-deception, get all the feedback you need. Positive feedback, feedback for improvement, and reality-checks against deception. Find people you trust, and ask: does this make sense? Is this a noble goal, or is this a self-serving goal? High performance leaders confront self-deception. It's there: deal with it. -- Doug Smith Bring our two-day "Supervising for Success" workshop to your location. Contact me here: doug@dougsmithtraining.com What's in the workshop: - Achieving your goals - Developing leadership - Ten keys to leadership success - Communicating for results - Building your team - Developing motivation in yourself and others - Improving productivity - Coaching to improve performance - Exploring generational strengths and challenges - Setting and keeping priorities It's two-days of leadership training that your front-line s...

Holding yourself accountable helps hold others there, too. Show the world that you are a leader with honesty, integrity, and accountability and your team will more than notice -- they will model your example. -- Doug Smith

Building your team is a never ending project. No matter where you start, your team is constantly evolving. If you don't evolve, you devolve, and that's not what you want. Unfortunately, sometimes a team needs to add by subtracting. Maybe it's a poor performer who is a poor match and needs another place someplace else. Maybe it's a broken process that is so obsolete you can't even remember why you still use it. Maybe it's having lost sight of the vision for the team or needing a new one completely. Sometimes building your team means tearing down what doesn't work. No need for tears. No need for pain. Simply remove the no longer needed or useful wall that stands between and your team's goals. You do no one any favors by letting it stand. What stands in your team's way? -- Doug Smith Looking to develop high performance leadership in your life and your organization? Contact me today about bringing the two-day workshop "Supervising for ...

This is for you. You know who you are. You've got great ideas. You've got stories to tell. Adventures, misadventures, songs off tune and songs in key. The kind of material that fills you with so much lightness of being that you sometimes float away as well as the kind of material that weighs you down no strong wind could ever move you. Write that book. Chapter by chapter, idea by idea. Where it goes comes later. What you do with it comes later. Who cares about it comes later. You are filled with treasures unclaimed. Don't keep them in your chest. Don't trap them in your head. Put them in motion. Set them free. Write them out of you with the fervor and glee of a jazz musician gone mad. Go a little crazy, just get it all out. Write that book even if no one ever reads it. Especially if no one reads it. It's for you. -- Doug Smith