High Performance Leadership

When: Tuesday, Oct. 23 at 12:00 Noon ET $30 / 30 Minutes It's on every list of key leadership skills. It's on the minds of every recruiter, manager, executive, and team member: communication. How to Communicate More Effectively is 30 fast moving minutes for you to explore key levers that will immediately improve your communicate skills. We'll explore and practice five key communication skills that, once practiced, will give you: Deeper conversations More productive meetings More powerful presentations Better relationships Join with me in playing with the CLUES to Success model for developing and sharing more communication effectiveness. You'll get a downloadable learner's guide plus 30 minutes of instantly usable skill building. Register for the teleclass here. Preview and download the Learner's Guide here.

Do you ever struggle to communicate with someone really close to you? Maybe it's a family member. Maybe it's your team. Maybe it's someone you are building a relationship with. Even with much practice, it can be difficult to communicate with someone we're really close to. We take some messages for granted. We expect them to know exactly what we want (turning them into the mind reader they are NOT). We can even lose patience. I've had days when I spent the whole day helping other people learn how to communicate more effectively only to come home and fail to communicate clearly, or attentively, with my own family. I'm not proud of it. I worked to get better. But there you have it. Sometimes it's hardest to communicate with those we are closest to. We push their buttons. They push our buttons. It's a good time to practice our communication CLUES to Success: Create agreements Listen with curiosity Understand the facts and feelings Express ...

"The greatest motivational act one person can do for another is to listen." -- Roy Moody How would your work and your life be different if everyone you encountered listened carefully, compassionately, and attentively to each other? It seems so simple, yet it's not. Listening takes focus. Listening takes attention. Listening positively takes curiosity. How curious are you when you listen? Here's what I'm working on: listening without judging. I remember a time when I had an answer to every question, an opinion to every view, and something to say in any situation. I wasn't wise enough to know that smart wasn't always enough. We need to listen. Listening is a gift as profound as any you might give today. Who will you give that free yet awesome gift? -- Doug Smith

Have you ever had a hard time getting someone to understand what you were saying because they were too emotional? That can be frustrating, especially for those of us who mainly focus on facts first, and not so much on feelings. But feelings are important. To some people, the feelings come first. Until we care about their feelings, they likely don't care about our facts. We all feel things differently. Sometimes, what seems like a small challenge to someone else could be a cause for hurt feelings for another. We feel what we're feelings and hope that others can understand that. It takes attention and work. When feelings are fragile, answers are hard to find. We need to take care of our feelings and the feelings of others. That doesn't mean that we must share those feelings, but we do need to understand them. That answer we're looking for is likely hidden by a fog of feelings too thick to ignore. Don't ignore it. -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  ...

How many conversations have you taken the time to plan today? Leaders conduct highly important conversations. While we can sometimes do that on the fly, what about those conversations that require deeper thinking? What about those conversations when the people we want to be most communicative with resist our thinking or our message? Those deeper conversations benefit from planning. What do we plan? Here are some areas of planning that I've found useful: The goal of the conversation - Is it just to touch base? Are you trying to influence the other person? Do you need to reach agreement on a next action? Be sure to set a goal (I'd recommend  a goal with these three elements: an action word, the result that you want, and the time involved). Transition time - It's often jarring to be thrust into a conversation unexpectedly. Create some transitional topic or ice-breaker to transition into your deeper conversation. Small talk works here, but make it more personal than ...

Do you interview job candidates? Do you find yourself being interviewed? Would it make you a better leader if you could be both a better interviewer and interview? There's a lot to improving our interviewing skills, and the reasons to improve are important. When we are more skillful at interviewing it gives us: More highly qualified team members Greater leadership opportunities Opportunities to avoid costly mistakes Clearer understanding about situations Useful team development information Critical problem solving examples Stories we can share ...and more.  Here's the fastest way that I know to improve interviewing skills. Stay curious. You don't need twelve action steps or a plan for tips and techniques that take hours of practice. Oh, those will help and do them if you like. But, your biggest single boost in interviewing comes from staying genuinely curious. Curious about the other person, about what they have to say, about the questions that th...

What do you do with a team member who doesn't seem happy on the team? What do you do when that unhappy team member fails to meet your standards or perform to your expectations? Whenever this has happened to me it's been cause for deep concern. Why on earth won't they get on board? What are they waiting for? And, then I've learned that sometimes a team member's biggest obstacle to success is me. For one reason or another we've confused our messages, twisted our signals, and started on opposite paths unnecessarily. The best place to start - if it's possible that I'm part of the problem - is in dialogue. Talk it over. Think through the situation. Find out the perspectives of the person involved. Reach agreement on building the start of an ongoing conversation that includes what I call the CLUES to Success: Create agreements Listen with curiosity Understand the facts and the feelings Express yourself positively Share responsibility for success ...

Do your people ask you a lot of questions? I remember as a supervisor getting tons of questions, so many in fact that I appointed my number two (who was smarter than me at the technical details anyway) in charge of any question focused on the technical details. That freed me up to answer questions about discipline, vacations, team orientations, training, or the occasional rambling series of questions meant to just spend some quality time with the boss. I'm thinking of you, Carl. It feels flattering to get so many questions. I must be smart, and I must have answers if so many people ask. That is only partly true, but I did learn that how I answered each question mattered. How the supervisor answers questions largely determines how valued each team member feels. There's a line wide enough to park your car on between answering too much and answering too little. Supervisors have lots of attitude. They also have lots of work to do, so it's tempting to give the briefest of ...