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

Do you enjoy success? If that seems like a silly question (Of COURSE I enjoy success!) think about it from another perspective.  Sometimes we can taper down our enjoyment and appreciation of something because we know it's not perfect yet, and how can we be happy if it's not perfect? I do that somethings. It's not helpful. OF COURSE  it's not perfect: nothing else and nothing ever will be. There are no perfect people, processes, performances, or plan. If we wait for perfection, we'll just keep waiting (and probably without gaining ground...) Let's do both. Let's enjoy our current level of success and achievement while also working to improve it. Performance must constantly improve, AND we can enjoy our exiting improvements. -- doug smith  

Performance excellence takes effort. Performance comes from practice, patience, and persistence. Put in the time. Put in the effort. Enjoy the performance. -- doug smith

I'm happy to share this guest appearance from my good friend and fraternity brother, David Spiegel because it's a great article and well, he mentions me.  "Life is like a roll of toilet paper.The closer you get to the end,the faster it seems to go." -John Maxwell I love my song choice for my Sunday Song of the Day today, Corner of the Sky from Pippin .The song transports me back in time. Pippin may very well have been the first show I saw on Broadway.I had become involved in musical theater when I went to college. Growing up a stones throw away from the Big Apple, it seems strange that I had never seen a Broadway show until then.We had just struck set on our latest stage triumph, Celebration , a musical by the same gentlemen who brought us The Fantastiks . For a college fraternity, we did an amazing job, assembling a cast and crew that to this day still fascinates me.The show has a magical quality about it. Those of us involved in this production all ...

Photo by Christopher Smith Who lifts you up creatively? When you think about the people you know, who among them startles you with how much they inspire you to act creatively, even when you make mistakes? So many people underestimate so many others. We are all capable of great things. We all have an endless store of creativity to draw on. How we think about other people can strongly (and sometimes strangely) effect how much creativity, promise, and potential they deliver. Why make that small? Why not expand it? Why not grow our possibilities as creatively and expansively as we can? Any belief that diminishes another person is flawed. The next time you're tempted to think small of someone, catch yourself and think instead, "I wonder what creative store house of knowledge they have that I haven't discovered yet..." See if it makes a difference. -- Douglas Brent Smith

How does your team make decisions? Are your meetings times to work through your projects and move closer to your goals? Or are they dominated by one person who makes a series of announcements and decisions? Which works better for you? High performance leaders who manage meetings by consensus power up performance. When everyone has a hand in the decisions, those hands end up pushing the agenda forward. How much better could your team meetings be? -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

To start improving someone's performance, simply watch them perform their job. Let them know that you'll be watching, and then watch. If your relationship is strong enough to share feedback, that will enhance the performance even more, but it's not necessary at first. You will likely see improved performance simply by observing. Why do people perform better when being watched? It puts them on notice that their performance is important. It provides focus. It creates a reason to work at their best. You might not want to do this everyday, but it's an excellent performance tool occasionally. You might even try doing the job to see where some of the process and procedure issues are. You might be surprised. When was the last time you observed one of your team member's performance? What are you doing to improve the performance of your team? Who on your team would benefit from your observations? -- Doug Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com