High Performance Leadership

How do you react to surprises? Centered leaders use each emerging situation productively, lovingly, and open to learning. What do you do under stress? How does the idea "you can always respond with love" resonate with you? What can you do to respond with love today? -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership

Everything is connected. Creativity helps us to find how those connections can make us more productive. See things anew. Finds details out of context. Alternate details and flip the expectations. New connections exist everywhere, waiting to be discovered. Discover them. Mix. Match. Combine. Deconstruct. Merge. See, touch, hear and play with new connections. Work like a painter to mix the colors from the pallet of your own design. Develop every ounce of creativity you can and build from there. How will you explore and exploit new connections today? -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

The essential question is "How can I help?" This is a question for everyone, and especially for leaders. In your vision, in your purpose, in your mission, in your goals, how can you help to make this a better world -- not just for yourself but for everyone at no cost to anyone? It's an ethical and moral standard that has been beyond the reach of most leaders but that is critically important in an evolving world. How can you help make this a better world, for everyone at no cost to anyone? That doesn't mean no cost in money, time or effort. Of course those expenses must be made. What it means is that as a leader never exploiting anyone in order to advance your agenda. Because not only is exploitation ethically shaky, it inevitably produces side effects that negate your progress. What will you do today to answer the essential question? -- Doug Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

Centered leaders make every conversation meaningful, open, and honest to collaborate on success. Effective collaboration requires deeper conversations. With tight budgets, moving deadlines, and new challenges every day, leaders who make the best use of their interpersonal relationships do so by creating conversations that contain shared meaning. The fastest route to shared meaning includes openness (no hidden agendas) and a radical kind of honesty with no room for deception. Once people have established comfortable, assertive foundations built on curiosity and respect, collaboration flows quickly and powerfully toward achieving goals. Isn't that what you as a leader truly want? What can you do today to create meaningful, open, and honest conversations? Who do you need to have a deep conversation with today? -- 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

The best way to understand and motivate your employees is to spend more time with them. As a leader, your employees are always watching. They've watching to see what you do. Do you walk your talk? Do you live your values? And, most importantly, do you care about your employees? There is a myth about parenting called quality time and some managers try the same tactic with their employees. Here's the reality: there is no substitute for real time. Quantity time. You can't cram all of your relationship into bite sized pieces and expect it to amount to much more than a bite. Do you want to communicate to your employees that you truly care about their goals, their careers, and their lives? Do you want your employees to be highly motivated and energized? Spend lots of time with each of them. There simply is no substitute. How much time have you spent with individual employees today? Who on your team have you been ignoring? What can you do to spend more time with them? When will yo...

Any rule that is stupid enough will be widely broken. As a leader, are you careful about the rules you set? Leaders are often tempted to establish control where they see chaos. "What these people need are some strict rules..." The problem is, how would you feel about living with rules set by someone else that totaly restricted your flexibility at doing your job? Sure, rules are necessary. How you arrive at those rules though is critical. Are you involving your people? Are you allowing for change? Are you building in flexibility? Are your rules in harmony with your vision and your values? I remember a great line from an old TV show starring Ed Asner, "Lou Grant". He once said "I don't have a lot of rules because then I just have to enforce them..." which sums up the problem with rules. Lou Grant was a role model for the classic tough boss, but what we came to know as an audience was that he also had a heart of gold. He was using his heart when h...