High Performance Leadership

When someone is disappointing you they may have misunderstood your intentions. (Or, maybe you have...) The challenge to misunderstanding is that we seldom understand that we have understood. The illusion of truth is as strong as steel. Disappointment, originating in unmet expectations, requires clarity to be cured. Clarify your intentions. Clarify your expectations. Clarify, and confirm. What do you think? -- doug smith

So you think you understand? How many times have you been wrong? I've been wrong too many times to count, even if I only counted this week. Usually it's about something that I think I understand, but do not. I'm not sure I'll ever understand romantic love, for instance. Just when I think I do, SURPRISE! I'm not sure I'll ever understand why good teams fall apart. We work hard to build them, we make our customers happy, and then one day SURPRISE! our team squeaks and bleeds. To understand keep learning. The facts keep changes. The faces keep changing. Life keeps rearranging. Don't get it yet? Don't worry, just roll up your sleeves and keeping asking questions. Keep the inquiry active and you'll keep moving ahead. One humble step at a time, perhaps, but moving ahead. It's dangerous to pretend we understand...so often we do not. -- doug smith

One of the biggest mistakes I've made, many times, was assuming that someone agreed with me. That's a dangerous practice. It feels easier to agree. It just isn't always the agreement we think we have. High performance leaders constantly clarify the truth. They clarify meaning. The granular details reveal the truth. Abstractions keep us smiling and nodding. Clear communication sparks the awareness needed to see true disagreement. Disagreement can be the start to understanding, and without understanding there can be no true agreement. The more clearly we communicate the more likely it is that someone will disagree with us. Then we know where we stand, and the direction we need to move. -- doug smith

Are you ready for a bold statement? I don't know if it's statistically sound, but intuitively it feels true. See what you think: More than half of our problems are simply misunderstanding our situation. Misunderstandings come in all sizes: what someone said what they meant by what they said how strongly someone feels about something a person's willingness or unwillingness to help the measurements we are relying on deadlines specifications You get the idea. Unless as leaders we constantly clarify the meanings we are seeking we are open to misunderstanding the situation. And that can lead to serious problems that, left misunderstood, only grow worse. Start by clarifying the situation. Maybe you don't even have a problem after all. And if you do, then now you know more about what that problem is. -- Douglas Brent Smith Interested in helping your team develop its problem solving skills? Bring our one-day workshop Solving Problems to your lo...