High Performance Leadership

When is No Excuses Day? Every day.  Start tough. Stay tough. Play fair. No excuses. -- doug smith

Leading on the front lines can wear you down. The day-to-day routine with its reports and meetings can wear you down. That rut can take over just when you need to grow some wings and fly. High performance leaders works thru those ruts. They find time to grow, to learn, to develop their skills even as the demands of the every day wear them down. It takes resolve. It takes experience. It takes discipline. Successful supervisors value and develop discipline. In themselves, in their team members, and in their organization. -- doug smith

Successful supervisors solve problems -- even (especially) the ones that they caused. -- doug smith

If you want your team to be excited about your goals, you've got to set the example. Talk about them, promote them, staff them, resource them, and mainly keep your leadership focus on your goals. When they are important to you -- and obviously so -- they are much more likely to be important to others. Successful supervisors build enthusiasm for their goals. -- doug smith

Your first job as a leader is to be in charge of stuff you believe in, because unless you believe in the stuff that you are in charge of it's going to be very difficult to excel as a leader. Your first job, if that's not true, is to align that -- to make that true. If you can't do that in your organization, to show -- to demonstrate that you are a leader you may have to lead yourself someplace else. Otherwise, how will you ever have credibility as a leader? How will you ever have the authenticity to truly lead? How else will you ever really walk the talk, model the role of a leader unless you believe in what you're commanding, what you're directing, what you are, more importantly, facilitating? So that's it -- your first role as a leader is to be in charge of stuff you believe in. If you can't embrace what you're in charge of you could be in the wrong place. If you're not in charge of stuff you believe in, there is your opportunity for growth....

Have you ever inherited a big mess? When I first became a supervisor, a long time ago, the people who were assigned to me did not make a cohesive, collaborative, or cooperative team. We were one hot mess of humanity, working to meet personal production goals. I could have blamed upper management for selecting that team. I could have moaned about their previous supervisors. Maybe I was too young to be cynical. What I did instead was dig in, try different things, get to know my people, and give them every opportunity to succeed as a team. I could have done better, but maybe the learning was the best outcome. We grew together as a team, and in turn mysteriously grew as professional individuals as well. No matter how much of a mess you inherited it's still up to you what you do with it. Choose wisely and you'll like what you get. And if you don't? You get to keep choosing (and working) until you do. What kind of mess have you been blaming someone else for? Isn't i...

Do you believe in endless possibilities? I'm not one of those people who believe that anyone can do anything if they just believe. Here's why. No matter how much I believe, I will never play major league baseball. Even if I could learn to hit a fastball (my reflexes haven't kept up with these young pitchers' arms!) let's face it: I'm way past the age of sports prime. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other horizons to gaze into, explore, and travel. The possibilities don't shrink as we grow, they expand. They're just different. It is primarily important to pick the right goals. Sensible, achievable goals. When we do that, the possibilities are endless. I can't say that ANYthing is possible, what what IS possible is plenty. Seek that. -- Doug Smith ------------------------------------------ Shameless Promotion Department If you'd like to increase and improve your possibilities as a supervisor I can help you with tha...

Just because the boss is ready doesn't mean the team member is. The best supervisors meet people where they are. Do you know where that is? -- Doug Smith

As frustrating as it is to encounter a problem that resists any solution, there could be a benefit. Stay mindful. Stay attentive. Stay alert. Imbedded in that big problem are lots of little problems. Maybe they need to be solved before you can move forward. Maybe solving them will lead to a break thru that helps you in other areas. The problems that we fail to solve sometimes lead to those we do. And, that's no little thing. -- Doug Smith Interested in developing the supervisors in your organization? Contact me today about bringing our two-day workshop "Supervising for Success" to your organization. And if you're really in a hurry, there's a one-day version available. doug@dougsmithtraining.com

Do you like working for a leader who makes all the decisions? Important decisions, little decisions, scheduling decisions, work distribution decisions...one after another? I know I do not. I like to work for and with a leader who allows me to share in the decision-making. We talk about the details. We compare the options. We align our work to our goals. How involved is your team in your team's decisions? It can be a trap to justify a "decide-and-announce" approach when it feels like those same decisions are being handed down to you from your manager or above. But don't do it. Find the choices. Explore the options. Share them with your people and see what a difference it makes in their productivity and morale. Of course you're in charge. The bottom line likely does stop with you. But you don't need to make every decision. I'm going to work at sharing more decisions. How about you? -- Doug Smith

What do you consider the most important traits of a high performance leader? We could create a very long list of those. Five core strengths of a centered, high performance are clarity, courage, creativity, compassion, and centeredness. High performance leaders also show confidence and curiosity. Not so much confidence as to appear arrogant, but enough to assure the team that you are headed in the right direction and developing every day. High performance leaders also show an above-average amount of curiosity. Curious about questions, curious about answers, curious about what motivates the people on the team. To build your team to become its best, stay curious about each team member. What makes them tick? What motivates them? What challenges them? What do they need to bring their top performance to the team. Because high performance leaders build their teams, improve performance, and achieve their goals. They also operate effectively under pressure. How much pressure are you...

What do you say if a decision you made turns sour? Some leaders are tempted to blame others. Some leaders simply stay quiet. The best leaders that I've worked with own their decisions, right or wrong. If things turn out less than they expected, they say so. If the decision was off the mark the high performance leader takes the blame. It doesn't fool anyone, anyway, to hide from a bad decision. Admit it, and move on. Successful leaders take responsibility for their decisions. How about you? Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals What have you learned today?

Have you ever been tempted to ignore a problem? I have. More than once to be honest. And it never helped the problem to ignore it. That unmotivated team member doesn't magically turn it around. That broken process just stays broken. And that unhappy customer gets noisier. Sometimes we hesitate about dealing with a problem because we aren't even sure it is a problem. Maybe it's just the way things are and we need to learn to live with it. Maybe it's a fact of life. If we have no control or influence over the situation, it may be a fact of life. Calling something a problem doesn't make it a problem, but ignoring it might. What do successful supervisors do? What do centered, high performance leaders do? - Determine how much of the situation you control or influence - Analyze the root causes of your situation (what's really going on?) - Ask for help from the people involved in the situation. What's their view? - Deal with situations when they firs...