Your Clarity Question

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...

Welcome More Questions

Does it ever seem like your people have an inexhaustible supply of questions? That's probably because they do. How do I do this? Why are we doing this? Can I have my birthday off? Why did Donna get a promotion? Is our business going to lay people off? Questions! While it is not completely your job to answer every question -- your people are looking to you for guidance. When you can provide that by allowing them to discover their own answers to questions, they will grow. Sometimes, though, they simply can't get the answers or would be in danger of making answers up unless you help them. So help them. Every answer raises two more questions. Or as I like to think of it, two more opportunities to lead. -- Douglas Brent Smith Would you like the supervisors in your organization to get better at answering the tough questions? Consider bringing our workshop Supervising for Success to your location. It's surprisingly affordable -- especially in the Rocky Mountain front...

Move from "Me" to "We"

by David Spiegel "The secret to success is to know something nobody else does." -- Aristotle Here is another guest entry from my friend, David Spiegel. I especially like how he ties this together with one of John Maxwell's Words of The Day. As you read this, think about how you can move in the direction of turning what you do best from a "me" effort to a "we" movement. A s I was stretching this morning waiting for my trainer to finish up with his 7:30 clients, I had the opportunity to look around the gym. When I started working with Cris, the head trainer,he had appointments set pretty much back to back for himself. There was another trainer who I saw occasionally. Today, there was Cris working with "the Killer Couple" (these two really work hard!). There were also 3 or 4 other trainers working with clients. Some individuals and some working with two clients at the same time.There was a buzz of activity as these tr...

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 ...

High Performance Leadership

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