High Performance Leadership

How are you at keeping your commitments? I don't need to convince you of the benefits of keeping promises, even (especially) promises to yourself.  One of those commitments could be to time and how you use it. Setting aside time for what is important. Knowing that in order to focus, you'll need focus time, and that means both scheduling it and protecting it. True commitment to time takes courage.  How do you feel about that? -- doug smith  

We can rationalize anything without making it justified. Leaders should always ask: who is this good for other than me?  High performance leadership does NOT mean performance at any cost. It means performance that serves a noble cause while also benefiting people. High performance leadership is a combination. Results without relationships are shallow and temporary. Take care of both, and you'll be a high performance leader. -- doug smith  

Leaders need courage. They also need compassion. We can use our compassion to balance our courage, and use our courage to increase our compassion. Compassion is so vital we must never give up on it. No matter how angry we are, no matter how disappointed we feel, no matter how high the stakes -- stay with compassion. If it cannot be done with compassion, it should not be done. -- doug smith

Weakness is no excuse to claim victimhood. Muscle up. Courage-up. Face your challenges without excuses. -- doug smith  

There are many meanings contained in what I consider the five core leadership strengths: courage, creativity, clarity, compassion, and centeredness (the skillful use of the other four.) Here's a humble point on two of them: Courage is knowing when someone can do better. Compassion is knowing when someone has done all they can. Push when pushing is needed. Support when to push would be wrong. How do you know, as a leader, when to push would be wrong? It's wrong when it doesn't make things better. It's wrong when it hurts someone. 

  Doesn't it seem a little hazy sometimes? The future is fuzzy. Uncertainty rules. It can knock us sideways with a dizziness that dazzles us without rest. Breathe. You are up to this. You are made for this. You can center yourself, focus yourself, clarify your own goals, and push. Relentlessly push positively in the direction you choose. If it's the wrong direction, you'll discover that and shift. High performance leaders are constantly shifting. From the old, to the new. From the uncertain, to the clear. Shift. Centered leaders live with ambiguity while pushing for clarity. Keep pushing. -- doug smith

Leaders lacking courage don't lead long. -- doug smith

Goals worth gold require us to be bold. Be bold. -- doug smith

We have so much capacity that we do not use. Like a warm spring day that goes by without a refreshing walk, once the capacity is gone, there is no getting it back. We renew each day, and then each day is gone. We develop and deploy our skills and opportunities to use those skills inch by us when we're not looking. The problems in front of us -- those that are not hiding, give us no excuse for not using those skills. High performance leaders apply their strengths in order to take the energy of those problems and convert it to some good. Problems. Every leader has them. How many problems could stand up to you using all of your clarity, courage, creativity, and compassion? -- doug smith

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are." Joseph Campbell Responding to my email from yesterday, I heard from a dear friend. She commented "Loved this thought for the day!". It made me smile. It also gave me pause to remember how and when she and I first met. We were freshmen together entering college, away from the comfort and safety of our parents homes. We had the same major at the time, music. It was during those early days of being on my own, that I chose to pledge a fraternity. I truly believe this experience was a significant part of me becoming the person I am and not the wuss that I could have been. This was not what anyone would consider the party animal or jock mentality frat that you often see portrayed in movies. It was however a place where the notion that you stand up to a challenge, rather than run away from one became part of who I am. It would have been easy to spend my college days anonymously,gett...

Leadership is more than strength and much more than power. Leading by strength alone ultimately fails. High performance leaders find balance, centeredness, subtlety. They exercise a skillful combination of clarity, courage, creativity, and compassion. And they do not give up or force the issue thru strength alone. Leading by strength alone ultimately fails. Why fail? Learn, and then do better. -- doug smith P.S. I'm still learning. How about you?

Where is your career headed? Ask some people, and they know exactly and will tell you. Maybe they'll get there, and maybe they won't, but they are on their way. I've been working a long time and have seen my career take some unusual turns. I wouldn't change any of it! And, part of the reason I am completely happy with my own career is that while I was working on other things, I always had my dream in mind as well. How about you? As you work on other things (paying bills, raising children, serving a cause) are you keeping your dream alive as well? It takes guts and my experience tells me it's filled with disappointment, and yet it's also filled with adventure, surprise, and joy. For all that, it takes courage. It takes taking charge. Steer your career with courage, not fear. Whether you get there or not, courage makes it easier to sleep at night... -- doug smith

It's not courage until it's tested. Before the big test it's all intentions. We go thru life with great intentions. When those noble intentions are tested, it takes energy to stay true to our values. It takes courage. Have you defined and clarified your convictions? Is what you believe so firmly rooted that it can stand against any storm? Mean well. Stay strong. Define what matters. Stay true. All of this is easier said than done. The doing takes courage, and courage requires convictions. To quote a line from a great movie, "The Untouchables" delivered by Sean Connery, "what are you prepared to give?" -- doug smith

It may be natural to think of ourselves first. It's perfectly normal to look out for our own interests. But, that's different than self-centered. We need to consider others in our actions and especially in our solutions. As leaders, the purpose behind our purpose should be to make things better -- for ourselves AND for others. The strongest action is seldom the self-centered one. -- doug smith

Clarity requires courage to persist. There are so many distractions and perspectives. People will even do their best (or worst) to cloud our vision and distort our truth. To remain clear, focused, and balanced takes large amounts of courage. Stay clear on your values and then stay courageous about keeping them. You are not alone. -- Doug Smith

Is it easier to start strong as a leader or to start tender? Which gives you the most payoff? Which gives you the most credibility? Start strong. I don't mean bossy. No one needs or wants you barking orders at them. By start strong I mea get a grip on what you want from your team and let them know. Coach, coach, coach every single team member from struggler to super star. Everyone. Who benefits from coaching? Everyone. Get them the help they need to sharpen their skills and expand their capacity. Give them so much feedback that it becomes as natural as breathing. When you've reached that point -- when feedback (both sending and receiving) becomes as natural as breathing -- you are well on your way to a very strong team. And isn't that what you want? How strong will your team get if you're not strong? Your team looks to you for your strength. They draw inspiration from knowing that no challenge is too tough and no upper management person is too constraining t...

Why would anyone not support one of your goals? It seems clear to you. You know the benefit. You see the value. It's an easy choice. Why isn't it getting the support that you want? People need help. We don't always understand a goal the first time we hear it. Or even the second. Or third. We're all so busy, that for any one goal to catch our attention (especially if it's not even our ow goal) it had better be clear, creative, courageous, and compassionate. In other words, it must prepare to do bold things in a kind way. When we can frame our goals from that point of view, they seem much more compelling. People who stand in the way of your goals don't yet understand them. So make sure that people understand these keys to your goals: - the financial value - the personal value (how it effects people positively) - what makes it cool (how is it amazingly creative?) - the adventure (where's the challenge in it that makes it almost a dare?) Include...

Problems resist easy answers. That's why we need to ask the tough questions. Why are things the way they are? What is the deeper cause? On the surface, we may think we understand a problem. Digging deeper, asking probing and open ended questions, we can get at the heart of what is really going on. Are people being rewarded for incorrect behavior? Is someone benefitting from the problem situation? If so, who? Is it too easy to ignore the problem? Is the source of the problem aware that there is even a problem? For example, those who most resist a fair distribution of work are those who may not be working too hard. Why change?  Executives making juicy bonuses may not even be aware of how hard it is to live paycheck to paycheck. Creative problem solvers ask the tough questions with curiosity. Not to judge. Not to punish. But to know. What's really going on? Centered problem solvers use their creativity to separate people from the problem. They use their compassion to f...

There is strength. There is courage. There is assertiveness. None of them have room for bullying. When leaders cross the line from courage to bullying they may feel immediate gratification but they have planted the seeds of long lasting and critically damaging conflict. If people cannot obtain what they are entitled to fairly, they will find another way. And that other way could be bad for the leader who created the disparity. No matter how committed we are to a cause, to a mission, to a goal, it is never our right to impose any of that on others. The courage of our convictions does not allow us to disregard the rights of others. There is no license for that, ever. -- Doug Smith

How tight are your boundaries? When I worked at GE an expression that was popular was "boundaries". We were boundaries in our search for solutions, in our work to satisfy customers, and in our pursuit of profit. Boundaries were permeable, not insurmountable. With one exception: integrity. That was one boundary that could not be stretched, could not be crossed, and could not be ignored. But for other boundaries much of the time our sense of what the boundary is depends on our perspective. How fixed it is depends on our creativity. How cold it is depends on our compassion. How formless it is depends on our clarity. And how limiting it is depends on our courage. We need to consider all four of these leadership strengths when we find ourselves held by boundaries. Without examining our boundaries and staying curious about why they are there or what function they serve we stay stuck. Stuck is not where we want to be. To get past stuck might take creativity, and it certainly...