High Performance Leadership

What goes into developing leadership character? Values - how you choose to live your life. Ethics -- how you operate. Morales -- how you respect other individuals.  It's also willingness to learn, willingness to hear feedback, willingness to listen. Add more to that (what do you think?) and the list of qualified leaders with positive character gets small. And yet, we need leaders with character. We need leaders who will do the right thing. We need leaders who consider the needs of the whole team, organization, and (yes) planet when making decisions.  Leadership character matters no matter what you lead. -- doug smith

I once had a boss who, during my performance evaluation, told me that I was doing a good job as a leader but that I needed to develop more of an edge. I wasn't quite assertive enough. She was concerned that people might take advantage of me. I worked on my edge as a result. I sharpened it thru steady practice. I had an edge to end all edges. At the next evaluation, what do you think she suggested? "You need to dial that edge down a bit," she laughed. It's not either/or. Assertiveness is valuable and necessary. Aggression, not so much. You don't have to dull your edge -- just don't cut yourself with it. -- doug smith

This is a guest entry from my friend and fraternity brother, David Spiegel. He's a hard-working, deep-loving family and business person who shares his insights on a daily (almost!) basis. I like the positive nature of this entry and I have some leadership questions for you to contemplate after reading... Today is one of the days of the year that I truly enjoy. As the rest of the world seems to be shutting down from the mundane and gearing up for the upcoming holiday,we are busy doing business! When I arrived at The Grooming Shoppe this morning, Becca had already opened, brought in our first client, put on the Christmas music and straightened and cleaned up the front end. We were ready for action on what should be one of our busiest days of the year. Truth be told, we were actually busier on the Saturday before Christmas last year. It was the single busiest day we ever had. It's not that we have any less business. On the contrary. Becca has done a marvelous ...

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 ...

We live in a time when it is so easy to attack, so simple to disrespect. Our beliefs clash and our logic melts into emotions. It happens between friends, within families, and often, within our teams. High performance leaders avoid the temptation to personalize every dispute. When that rush of adrenaline hits our hearts, we would do well to pause and think it over. Let people be people and lead with respect regardless. It's harder when we don't know people very well because we jump to conclusions or we defend our emotional turf. Still, it's senseless. It's harder when we know people so well that they know just how to push the right emotional buttons to flare us up and we know all their emotional triggers so well that we play right into the conflict. Two extremes invite disrespect: not knowing someone at all and knowing them extremely well. What to do? Pause, and respect. Pause, and respect. -- doug smith

Have you ever known a leader who loves to make up rules? One of my favorite quotes comes from that great fictional leader, Lou Grant, who once proclaimed "I don't like to make a lot of rules because then I just have to enforce them!" Exactly. High performance leaders develop team members who always do their best, who exercise their best judgment, and who constantly grow. They also make mistakes, but they don't need a lot of rules about those mistakes. Learn, grow, adjust and move on is more like the approach that works rather than "follow these exact rules or we'll write your butt up and ship you out..." Of course we need rules. Of course their are boundaries and ethical limits. But, be care about unilaterally imposing rules as a test of your will. Your rules are not automatically my rules. To test that theory is to court disappointment... -- doug smith