High Performance Leadership

Are your team members skilled at creating deeper conversations? The kinds of conversations that go far below the surface level of day to day trivial. The kind of conversations about values, mission, goals, and (gasp!) feelings. You do know that your team members are living, breathing critters with (yes...) feelings, don't you? I remember what it's like as a front line supervisor trying to ignore those feelings. They didn't go away when I ignored them -- they just got more complicated. Strong teams are built thru deep conversations. Got a problem? Talk about it. Need to focus more on a particular goal? Talk about it. Wondering what comes next? Talk about it. I remember Susan Scott saying that relationships are built one conversation at a time -- and (most importantly) that the conversation is not about the relationship, the conversation IS the relationship. She also says that the heart of leadership is conversation. So when we want to be better leaders, the faste...

This is a tough question, and when I ask myself sometimes I don't like the answer: do you ever ignore your own advice? I train people in leadership skills. One of the skills includes communication. I encourage people to identify, plan, initiate, and follow-thru on tough conversations. You know what I mean - the kinds of conversations that make us nervous. It takes courage, confidence, and focus to see them thru. But it's so important, conducting those tough conversations is at the heart of effective high performance leadership. But sometimes I duck them myself. Whoa. Sometimes, I know I have a tough conversation that is needed with someone that I work with, work for, or live with and then...and then...suddenly I get so busy with other important stuff that the conversation misses its window of opportunity. Could that be a mistake? From my experience I'd say that is always a mistake. I've learned to have the tough conversations, whether they are comfortable or not...

Do you find some people difficult to get along with? There are all types of difficult people. Some are difficult because they say things that offend us. Some are challenging because they do not say what they are thinking and yet expect us to read their minds. Some people have opinions so sharp and abrasive that we wonder how anyone gets along with them. We can find a hundred ways to disagree and a thousand ways to avoid people who make us feel uncomfortable. Is that our best choice? I've discovered that to some people I am that difficult person. My insights around that are that I didn't set out to become that difficult person. It wasn't my idea to say things or do things that anger the very people I most want to influence. Sometimes it happens by accident. Sometimes it happens out of misunderstanding. And, it's always unfortunate. What if your difficult people didn't mean to be difficult either? What if we could adjust something that would improve our inte...

How many conversations have you taken the time to plan today? Leaders conduct highly important conversations. While we can sometimes do that on the fly, what about those conversations that require deeper thinking? What about those conversations when the people we want to be most communicative with resist our thinking or our message? Those deeper conversations benefit from planning. What do we plan? Here are some areas of planning that I've found useful: The goal of the conversation - Is it just to touch base? Are you trying to influence the other person? Do you need to reach agreement on a next action? Be sure to set a goal (I'd recommend  a goal with these three elements: an action word, the result that you want, and the time involved). Transition time - It's often jarring to be thrust into a conversation unexpectedly. Create some transitional topic or ice-breaker to transition into your deeper conversation. Small talk works here, but make it more personal than ...

Are your communication skills better today than they were yesterday? Lately, I've been thinking of Tuesdays as Communicating for Results days. It's become the focus of this blog on Tuesdays to work on creating deeper conversations, more productive meetings, and more powerful presentations. But, isn't communication important everyday? So, whenever you're reading this (Tuesday or not!) the question is still the same: how are you improving your communication skills? Maybe it's one or more of these ways that I've been working on it: listening with curiosity (instead of by forming a response) planning my meetings to take only as long as they need (not necessarily an hour) reaching out to people I don't usually talk with to see how they feel entertaining other people's ideas even when I've got a great idea of my own stopping whatever I'm doing when someone wants to talk with me keeping my mobile phone in my pocket instead of taking it ou...

Are you telling the truth? Don't you feel like asking that sometimes when the person you are talking to seems to be spinning the truth? Sometimes we are so close to our version of the truth that we fail to see it could be only our version of the truth. It might not be true at all -- certainly not for others. The best way around that is to stay curious. Stay curious about what other people say. Stay curious about what we say. Even stay curious about what we think. Every idea we clutch in our tight little hands comes to us filtered by factors we've forgotten about long ago: culture, ego, gender, parenting, schooling, experience, ethnicity...so many details strained thru lenses we don't even know are there. Let's work a little more to stay curious. Sometimes we're so good at spinning the truth that we don't even know it's not true anymore. That's not helpful or useful. It doesn't have to take long but it does take some serious mindful awaren...

Can we talk about it? When a problem is bothering you, can you share that trouble? Do you have people who will listen without judging to your concerns? Do you know a confidante who will hold your secret fears in trust long enough to hear them out? Problems require communication. Deep communication. Listening with curiosity. Speaking with clarity. Knowing what matters and keeping focus on the clear boundaries of a larger vision. Problems are part of the journey, why not make them part of the conversation. The bigger the problem, the greater the need for deeper conversations. Talk your problem over. Build the relationships you need to deal effectively and with respect to the problems at hand. That's how it works best. -- Douglas Brent Smith Curious? Explore our workshop  Centered Problem Solving .

When you are in a conversation, who asks the most questions -- you or the other person? Are you able to stay curious for long stretches of time and send your inner judge out for milk and cookies? You know, the judge who wants to evaluate what your conversational partners say and dismiss anything that's not in your agenda. You wouldn't like that from anyone else, so why do that to anyone? Centered leaders ask questions. Big questions. Little questions. Probing questions. Non-leading questions asked out of pure curiosity. Questions to see what sides of the truth are still a mystery. Knowing what questions to ask is often more useful than expertise. The possibilities are endless. Ask, and then wait long enough for genuine answers. It's worth it for the surprises alone, but there will be much more in it than surprises. -- Douglas Brent Smith Curious? Check out our workshop " Communicating for Results ".