High Performance Leadership

  Thriving leaders thrive as their teams thrive. It's a partnership. It's a deal. It takes constant support and service to sustain a high performance team. Thriving leaders recruit with the enthusiasm they show for their team. People can tell when your team is cohesive, cooperative, and collaborative and people crave that for themselves. Create and support a team that supports each other and others will rally to the cause. You have no weak links. You have no poor performers. You have no superstars. You do have team members who need your guidance and support. That's the role of a leader. -- doug smith

High performance leaders find out what their teams need. Teams won't always ask for what they need in a productive way. They might simply slow down or stop being productive. When they do, there's always a need, frequently one that they cannot fulfill on their own. Better communication... Motivation aligned with their skills... Personal development... Interpersonal intervention (when people just can't get along)... Clarification of goals, duties, responsibilities... The list is long. Do you know what your team needs? What are you doing to fulfill those needs? -- doug smith

Go ahead and build your team -- just let the team do most of the building. -- doug smith

Wouldn't it be nice if our teams were perfect? Every team eventually goes off the rails. It's up to the team leader to get the team back on track. -- doug smith

What are you doing to build your team? Do you have the talent you need assembled to achieve your mission? Teams are dynamic, constantly changing moving targets. Just when you think you've got your team figured out and moving forward, someone leaves or someone enters and the whole chemistry reacts in unexpected ways. It's like juggling three balls and having one of them turn into an egg. It's like riding a bike and having it lose all but one gear. It's like painting a picture and realizing that the paint hasn't dried from the last time you painted, resulting in an unsatisfying gray smear. It's not always like that, but team building can be tough. High performance leaders keep at it. They keep developing their teams and they know that the building never stops. There are no perfect teams which means that the road to perfection must always be navigated. Keep going. If you don't build your team someone else will diminish it. Keep building. -- doug ...

It's easy to forget that our team members are people with problems. They have issues. They have lives. They have families with situations we don't even know about. And, yes, they are also our team members. High performance leaders remember that there are no perfect people and that we all carry a bit more baggage than we'd like. We're all wired too tight in some spots and a bit unravelled in others. A great leader knows when to hold someone carefully accountable and when to ease up enough to allow for some room to ease the tension, to relax into the task. Everyone on your team is dealing with challenges that have nothing to do with you or your team. How you help help them handle those challenges will largely define what kind of leader you are. -- doug smith

The job of a leader is to take care of, not advantage of, team members. -- doug smith

This brief video poses the theory that in order to build an effective team it is important that the people on the team get along. Interpersonal dynamics are important. While this may seem obvious to anyone who has worked with many teams, it is still important. How well do the people on your team get along? What are the interpersonal behaviors that your teams needs and wants? Why not explore that idea at your next team meeting? It's cheaper than a retreat, requires no trust falls or zip lines, and might just be the best thing you do for your team this month. -- doug smith Leadership Call to Action: Gather your team. Plan a substantial portion of your meeting (or maybe nearly all of a meeting) to asking your team members the following questions. Make sure that someone is capturing the answers on a group memory (white board or flip chart or similar display.) What interpersonal behaviors do you find most helpful when working with others? What habits or behaviors are...

Building your team is a never ending project. No matter where you start, your team is constantly evolving. If you don't evolve, you devolve, and that's not what you want. Unfortunately, sometimes a team needs to add by subtracting. Maybe it's a poor performer who is a poor match and needs another place someplace else. Maybe it's a broken process that is so obsolete you can't even remember why you still use it. Maybe it's having lost sight of the vision for the team or needing a new one completely. Sometimes building your team means tearing down what doesn't work. No need for tears. No need for pain. Simply remove the no longer needed or useful wall that stands between and your team's goals. You do no one any favors by letting it stand. What stands in your team's way? -- Doug Smith Looking to develop high performance leadership in your life and your organization? Contact me today about bringing the two-day workshop "Supervising for ...

Teams are built from the inside - and from the outside. I saw a message from a famous person today touting the merits of promoting from within. It build morale, it sends a clear cultural message, it motivates people on the team. That's all true. It's also true that our teams may not have every strength that we need to make it to the next level. It may be necessary to add some spice to keep growing. Promote from within? Absolutely! AND build your team by constantly looking for talent interested in joining your cause. Who do you know who might serve your team incredibly well, but is not yet part of your team?  Have you talked with them lately? -- Doug Smith

What are you providing your team to grow today? Is it training (in your products, in your services, in the skills they need to communicate and lead more effectively?) Is it resources? Tools? Team chemistry? The team leader creates the team chemistry, or not. When the team leader helps build an environment of trust, growth, challenge, and support the team has the tendency to prosper through growth. When a team leader ignores or diminishes the team chemistry, it can degrade to levels of dysfunction. Your team is dynamic. It is constantly changing. Help your team grow. Keep it focused on the vision, serving the mission, and achieving its goals. That'll make you a coach, and a good one at that. -- Doug Smith

How important is leadership style on the performance of a team? Incredibly so. Think about the best team you've ever worked on. It was a great team because a) you achieved your team goals, and b) you enjoyed yourself doing it and working together The team leader's style matters. An autocratic, micromanaging leader (I'm sure you know a few) constrains a team and stifles its motivation. In the effort to control every little detail, a leader loses the big picture. It's in the big picture view that quantum success awaits. It's in the chemistry of the team that champions are made. Some leaders are not micromanagers, but they aren't much of a manager at all either. So completely hands-off and quiet that the team probably forgets who is in charge. That might feel safe. That might feel friendly. But team members need two fundamental things from their leader, and neither of the above type styles deliver on both. People need: 1. the feel supported by their bo...

Does your team believe in itself? Here's how you know that a team believes in itself: Each person on the team can tell you the team's vision and mission People are remarkably not focused on the clock Smiles! Team members are enthusiastic and positive Team members come up with new ideas Problem solving is a way of life, not a chore A team must believe in itself to succeed.  What are you doing to help your team believe more fully in itself? -- Doug Smith

A team's strength is often threatened by its weaknesses. High performance leaders attend to both. Ask yourself these questions: What does my team do best?  How am I making the best use of my team strengths? Where is my biggest team opportunity?  What small flaw in my team could grow into a major problem unless we take care of it? What strengths do similar teams use that we lack? What are we doing today to build our team? Team building is never done. Left ignored, a team descends. Attended to carefully and constantly built, a team may reach its potential. -- Doug Smith

Do you share leadership? The most powerful teams share leadership responsibilities AND attitude. When you develop a team where people feel empowered to take charge, take responsibility, and take ownership you then no longer need to do all the difficult work. Delegation becomes easier. Collaboration feels more natural. Start with decisions. It's fast and easy as a leader to make all of the big decisions, but when you include your team in the conversations it takes to gain mutually shared understandings and collaborative decisions, you no longer have to "sell" your decisions --- people simply know what you as a team have decided and act accordingly. No passive aggressive resistance, no passengers on your team "bus" -- just fully engaged team members. Start with collaborative decisions. The rest will be much easier. -- Doug Smith

How much attention are you giving your team? One of the toughest lessons I learned when I was a beginning supervisor was to give my people enough attention. The struggling performers need attention. The superstars need challenges and support. Everyone on the team needed something, even when (especially when) they didn't make those needs clear. High performance leaders find ways to give each team member the attention needed. Attention is useful. Attention is immediate. Attention is critical. Attention is the sincerest form of energizing your people.  Energize your team. Give them the attention that they need. What's the best and easiest way to do that? Talk about it. Initiate conversations with each team member. Take the talking just a little deeper than usual. Talk about what matters. Ask how they feel. Listen to their hopes, their goals, their motivations. That kind of attention is pure magic. -- Doug Smith

Have you surprised yourself today? Boo! Nah, I don't mean like that. What creative ideas have occurred to you? What brand new actions emerged today? Creativity benefits from frequent encounters with the unexpected. It's that painting that distorts the way we see faces. It's that bridge that goes nowhere. It's that snowman in Miami. People surprise me, sometimes. When a friend says something unexpected and kind, it generates a burst of creative energy that propels me forward. Suddenly my goals seem more achievable. When a collaborator suggests an idea that surprises me completely I get a sense of confusion followed by profound delight. It's a possibility! It's creative! And, there's no way in the world I would have thought of it without this surprise. Surprise yourself, often. Expose yourself to people and ideas that would not normally come your way. Find the connections. Creativity thrives on the unexpected. It's hard to plan to surprise yo...

Does each team member on your team know how much you care about your vision, your mission, your goals? Even more importantly, do they each know how much you care about them? Team members look to their leaders for skill, for initiative, for courage, compassion, creativity, and clarity but most importantly they look to leaders who care. Showing your team members how you care about them will develop the type of loyalty and effort you need as a high performance leader to solve problems and achieve your goals. It's what we want, but it is oh so easy to overlook. Leaders often take for granted that people know how much they care. Sometimes, leaders don't even invest the level of caring that is needed for people to feel valued and connected. It's hard to measure, this caring, but without it all of our other measures suffer. As leaders, we need to care, and we need to communicate that caring to our team. Team members don't expect us to be perfect. They know that we...

What unusual, really big, thoroughly challenging project is your team working on this week? High performance leaders help their teams find challenges worth completing. The status quo is not where you or your team belongs. You belong in the space of creativity, innovation, and vibrantly significant change. Bigger challenges are signs of growth. And, growth is where you want to be. -- Douglas Brent Smith Interested in helping your team grow and take on bigger challenges? Bring our one-day workshop " Building Your Team " to your location.  Ask me how here: doug@frontrangeleadership.com

How does your team manage conflict? One big challenge of high performance leadership is managing conflict within a team. Highly ambitious teams will generate more than their share of conflict. How you manage that as the leader, and how the team manages it collaboratively, will largely determine how innovative your results become. It's tempting in a conflict to fix the "other side" when it may be our side that needs unfixing. Our solution may be flawed. Our ideas may be incomplete. Our answers may be rooted in distortion. We may need to unfix what we think is fixed. Because if it truly is fixed, it could be stuck in place. Frozen. Not moving. That's no place to be to optimize your results. That's no place to be to grow. And that's no place to be to build your best team. Build a better team. Find the parts that seem fixed but need unfixing. You'll like the results. -- Douglas Brent Smith Contact me today about bringing in our one-day workshop B...