High Performance Leadership

Do you enjoy conference calls? Despite good intentions, conference calls often end up being train wrecks of epic proportions. People check out. People leave, multitask, or argue. Sometimes one voice will be easy to hear but others are inaudible. Compounding this is a very common practice. Maybe you fall into this practice. I've seen it over and over and even been a participant myself. The flawed practice is mixing the group, with part of the call all together in one conference room and the rest of the group off site on separate phones. A variation of this, and even tougher to manage, is a chain of conference rooms with groups of people sharing one phone at each location. What's wrong with this arrangement? People are then communicating on different levels, in different channels, and on different status plane. In any room you have the issues of status to deal with. When you put some people together in one room, that is one status dynamic to manage. When you mix that wit...

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