High Performance Leadership

Do you keep your deadline promises? High performance leaders deliver on their deadlines. No excuses. No delays. No renegotiation. Occasionally, mistakes force us into extending a deadline. Vendors or team members let us down. But we should never take this lightly. As high performance leaders we keep our promises. The time to negotiate a deadline is before you agree to it. Once it's yours, deliver. Because that's what high performance leaders do. -- Douglas Brent Smith Develop more high performance leadership in your team, your organization, and in yourself by bringing our one-day workshops to your location. A great place to start is with Supervising for Success . Need a free sample first? Ask to schedule our free webinar " Ten Secrets to Leadership Success "

Do you like fake deadlines? We've all experienced them: someone isn't sure if you'll deliver on time so they pad their deadline. It could be days, or even weeks subtracted from the actual time you'd have to finish a project or task. Why do people do this? People give us fake deadlines because they don't trust us, or they need to approve the work first, or they need to do something with the work after we hand it in -- or any number of personal reasons. The problem is, when we don't know the real deadline for something it becomes much more difficult to prioritize our portfolio of work. We deserve real deadlines, and we work best when our deadlines are real. False deadlines destroy trust. Successful supervisors build trust by sharing real deadlines with their people. Do you share your actual deadlines with your people? -- Douglas Brent Smith

Is your team under stress? Yes, it's every leader's task to help the team to produce at its highest level. That will at times put some people under stress. Eustress, or positive stress, can help to energize, motivate and activate people. But too much stress -- distress -- can send people into polarizing tailspins and produce counter-productive effects. That's not what you want. If you constantly place your people under stress don't be surprised if they are less than their best. Sometimes, reduce the stress.  Show some patience. Forgive a lost deadline if its not mission-critical. Laugh more, forgive often, empathize constantly. When leaders balance their strength with their compassion they become even more effective. What can you do to relieve your team of some piece of stress? Are you willing to do that? -- Douglas Brent Smith