Speed or Distance?

I ran on the track and field team in high school. We had runners who were fast and skilled at short distances. We had runners better equipped for mid to long distance. I usually ran the half-mile, which is a mid-distance race. In those days it was unusual for anyone to run both short and long races. You trained for one or the other, because the stamina was different and the mental approach was different.

Leaders make a similar choice with their work teams. Are you going to push for short term results, whatever the cost? Or, are you going to build for the long view and develop your people even as they make some mistakes along the way?

I'm a strong advocate of the long view, of building for going the distance. In the mean time, leaders still must deliver short term results.

Like modern track athletes, leaders now must ask: are you running for speed or distance? -- knowing full well that it's not a choice. You must deliver both.

That's the tough news. The good news? When you build for the running the distance your speed -- and your short term results -- can improve as well.

High performance leaders are very skeptical about either/or questions. Like a great improv actor, leaders should ask "what if we did both?"

-- doug smith

Leadership Call to Action:

Think about your current short term pressures to perform. Ask yourself, how can you deliver on that short term result while also developing for the long haul?

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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

Side Hustle Blues?

As a leader, do you ever sing the side-hustle blues? That's when your team seems distracted because they're tired from working multiple jobs. When I worked in food service it was all around me: team members who were already wrestling with variable schedules and also juggling multiple jobs. Maybe because they enjoyed their other gigs -- like the musicians, actors, artists, and writers on the team. Or maybe because otherwise they couldn't make ends meet so there were the side-hustles in driving, delivering, retailing, and add-on food service shifts. People are wonderful and their potential is unlimited but their physical selves are not unlimited. Which can bring on the side hustle blues when people are tough to schedule, hard to motivate, and just plain tired. You'll never eliminate the gigs that team members enjoy, nor should you. Those are not the ones really sapping the energy as much as those that they are in only for the money. Employees won't need an only-for-t...

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

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

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

A Step In The Process

Does change sometimes surprise you? It is always all of a sudden, or does change sometimes sneak its way in a little at a time? Sometimes a problem is just a step in the process to the next big change. Should you resist it, or should you embrace your newest change? Is it a problem to be solved, or a possibility to be explored? Discovering the difference changes everything. Sometimes our perspective can shift from "the end of an era" to "just another step in the process" of becoming who we need to be. How do you prepare for that? -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

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

Opportunities

When do you seize an opportunity? Are you able to stop what you're doing long enough to work on an immediate opportunity? Opportunities are not interested in our schedules. They don't wait. They don't delay. They don't nestle nicely into what we have available. We either move on an opportunity when it presents itself or we watch it fly away. Are you keeping your eyes open for opportunities today? -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

Strong Self-Esteem

How do the people on your team feel about themselves? How about you? How do you feel about yourself? Self-esteem matters. The way we see ourselves influences the work that we do. If you want healthy, vibrant, vital work from your team, why not make sure that the way that they think about themselves is strong? There are few things stronger than healthy self-esteem. To strengthen self-esteem among your team members: Appreciate good performance by providing specific compliments Spend time talking one-on-one with team members just to let them talk about what interests them Smile The list is longer than that of course, but start with those three things and you'll like the results. And that is good for YOUR self-esteem, isn't it? -- 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...

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