High Performance Leadership

Are your team members skilled at creating deeper conversations? The kinds of conversations that go far below the surface level of day to day trivial. The kind of conversations about values, mission, goals, and (gasp!) feelings. You do know that your team members are living, breathing critters with (yes...) feelings, don't you? I remember what it's like as a front line supervisor trying to ignore those feelings. They didn't go away when I ignored them -- they just got more complicated. Strong teams are built thru deep conversations. Got a problem? Talk about it. Need to focus more on a particular goal? Talk about it. Wondering what comes next? Talk about it. I remember Susan Scott saying that relationships are built one conversation at a time -- and (most importantly) that the conversation is not about the relationship, the conversation IS the relationship. She also says that the heart of leadership is conversation. So when we want to be better leaders, the faste...

Do you find some people difficult to get along with? There are all types of difficult people. Some are difficult because they say things that offend us. Some are challenging because they do not say what they are thinking and yet expect us to read their minds. Some people have opinions so sharp and abrasive that we wonder how anyone gets along with them. We can find a hundred ways to disagree and a thousand ways to avoid people who make us feel uncomfortable. Is that our best choice? I've discovered that to some people I am that difficult person. My insights around that are that I didn't set out to become that difficult person. It wasn't my idea to say things or do things that anger the very people I most want to influence. Sometimes it happens by accident. Sometimes it happens out of misunderstanding. And, it's always unfortunate. What if your difficult people didn't mean to be difficult either? What if we could adjust something that would improve our inte...