High Performance Leadership

How hard does your team try? "We're doing the best we can." "Are you sure?" "We can't do any more, we're already at capacity." "How sure are you about that?" "It's too much, I just feel like giving up." "What will that get you?" "Nothing." "Is that what you want?" "I want to stop struggling?" "What does that sound like to you?" "Sleep. Or worse. But it doesn't hurt anymore." "Are you sure about that? What if you kept trying? What if better than trying, you insisted on doing. Achieving. What if the harder it is to succeed the bigger the success? What if as a team we persisted until we won?" "That would be good." "Yes, it would. Let's get started." When you talk with your team members, do you talk about persistence? Do you encourage people to keep working (not trying - beyond trying into actually getting thi...

As a leader, are you often confronted with injustice? Do you witness actions and events that are simply unfair? Anyone who lives long enough will be frequently faced with injustice -- whether it's felt personally or witnessed effecting other people. Many people ignore and walk away from injustice. It's too hard of a battle, it's not my fight, it's not the right time...any number of rationalizations can stop us from doing what in our hearts we know we should do: confront evil. Did I say evil? Yes, injustice is a kind of evil. It may not even be intentional, but it must not be permitted to stand, because it gains strength and credibility the longer that it does. When we have come to permit and then accept injustice it becomes an institutionalized part of our lives. After thousands of years of injustice, it's easy to think that it's already too late, that we're all really institutionalized to injustice until it is practically an invisible part of our value syst...