High Performance Leadership

We can rationalize anything without making it justified. Leaders should always ask: who is this good for other than me?  High performance leadership does NOT mean performance at any cost. It means performance that serves a noble cause while also benefiting people. High performance leadership is a combination. Results without relationships are shallow and temporary. Take care of both, and you'll be a high performance leader. -- doug smith  

If you had to build a winning team, what kinds of team members would you recruit? I haven't ever heard anyone ever say that they'd start with subpar performers. No one wants to build a team of strugglers. Wouldn't we rather have a perfect team? Ah, yes, but there are NO perfect performers, are there? We are all flawed. We are all in various stages of growth. Superstars, as well as subpar performers all need to grow, all need to develop. How do we do that best? As high performance leaders we must do two fundamental things very well. First of all, we must support our team members. Give them the resources, the training, the attention, and the respect that they need in order to prosper. The second fundamental we must master is to challenge our team members. Challenge them in ways that they've never been offered before. Give them tough projects, delegate them advanced tasks, push them beyond their initial expectations until they see their own potential as something ...

What did you get? What was the result? What's the bottom line? Don't expect anyone to appreciate the effort unless they like the result. As my former boss, Bruce Green once said, "nobody cares how hard you tried." That might sound cold, but it's right on point. Effort is important, but results rule. Useful, productive, noble results of course. Results that align with your values. But effort without results? Nobody really cares. -- Doug Smith

Have you noticed how much our results depends on our relationships? We might be able to achieve short term results on our own, but long time, sustained results thrive when relationships are strong. That doesn't come naturally to all of us, but it needs to come. If we need to work on it, that's what we need to do. People care more about your results when they care more about you as a person. I'm trying to keep that in mind whenever I'm tempted to work heads down without consulting others. How bout you? -- Doug Smith

How well do you know the people on your team? Do you know what motivates each person? What their interests are? How happy they are at home? What they want to do when they grow up? Work is more than work. Work is also relationships. Successful supervisors build strong relationships with their team. Some even socialize with them. You may not need to socialize outside of the workplace with your team members, but it does help their performance (and your results) when you know a lot about them. When you show that you care. Supervisors succeed by getting to know their people. What can you do today to get to know your people a little more? -- Douglas Brent Smith

What do other people think of your team? What do non-team members say about your team, the way you operate, and your results? Are you creating a stir in the world? Is your team making a difference? How can you upgrade your team's curb appeal? Because you will need to recruit some of the best people available to take your team to the next level, won't you? What will make your team so exciting that strangers want to join? Some possibilities include: a vision so compelling that it energizes people a culture of adventure, excitement, and creativity team members who clearly succeed as part of the team results that make things better processes that are fun dialogue that leads to lasting relationships ways to resolve conflict that dignify everyone involved field-changing products or services energized and delighted customers What ideas can you add to the list? What will make your team SO exciting that strangers want to join? -- Douglas Brent Smith Developing Leadership Skills

It's almost a curse word in the lexicon of leadership: micromanage. Haven't we all felt resentment at being overly managed? Haven't we all bristled at the manager who seems to want to control every aspect of our jobs, maybe even our very lives? And so as leaders we work hard to develop other approaches. We build skills that create participative, transforming leadership. We seek to motivate thru influence rather than power, because in the end, as John Maxwell said, "leadership is influence." But what if your job goes beyond leadership? What if the core of your job is to supervise? It's one of those things that makes front line supervision one of the toughest jobs in any organization. We are called to lead, to motivate, to inspire AND to achieve ever improving results. And, sometimes we must supervise a team member who simply does not get it. It's not because people are bad or have bad intentions. Most of the time, if someone is not meeting our expe...

No matter what the circumstances, we are always free to choose a loving response. Should leaders operate out of love? The larger question, since leaders are human, is "should people operate out of love?" What does it mean to operate out of love? What does it look like to choose a loving response no matter what the circumstances? When things happen around us we can choose to react. How we react may determine what happens from that point on. Often as leaders we are tested with tough circumstances. We can be tempted to react out of aggression, out of competitiveness, out of revenge. But any study of literature or history will show us where that leads. Our actions touch others, and others touch us. What we initiate hits us as it perpetuates. Beyond that and the effects it has on us, choosing a loving response simply does more good. Helping others, feeling compassion for others feels better and does better. Whether or not it comes naturally, the impact is better. Try it today. ...