High Performance Leadership

Many leaders lecture on and on about value. Where's the value? Have you produced any value?  Value comes from what you give, not what you receive. When do you provide the most value? Sometimes? When it's demanded? Or all of the time. It is, after all, completely up to you. -- doug smith

Have you ever really read the complete terms of agreement on any device, any contract? If so, when was the last time that you did it? We skim over those things. We click "agree" as fast as we can scroll to it and move on with whatever it was that we wanted to do. That's high risk. You know that, I know that, and yet we do that anyway. It's hard to stop. But here's what I would like you (and me) to stop, to desist from, to resist. Stop doing that to others. Just don't do it. Be gentle. Be kind. Be honest. Be real. And (when you can) be brief. Overwhelming people;le with long, extensive, even convoluted terms of agreement is a low form of coercion and manipulation. Here's why: it's not an agreement, it's a weapon agreements that are unjust and unfair are NOT agreements it's not clever or smart to trick someone (say, your customer) into signing away rights -- it's evil and it's theft the ability to take advantage of someon...

OK High performance leaders, here's a question for you: what's more important and comes first in your priorities -- customers or team members? I've worked with many organizations that always put customers first. A few teams would also focus on team member happiness (or at least say they do). Here's the problem. Unhappy team members create more unhappy customers. Here's another problem: really poorly behaving customers make it so rough for team members that they also become unhappy, spreading the unhappiness around. That's not the result we want. Conversely, nice customers recognize the hard work that team members do. Polite customer realize that they may not always BE the center of the universe. Smart and reasonable customers realize that you are not entitled to something just because you demand it and that demanding it progressively louder does not increase the merits of your case. Can't we all play well together? As a high performance leader, I e...