High Performance Leadership

It can be easy to get discouraged. Problems assail us at every corner. Complications trip us up just when we think we're making progress. Conflict ties us in knots. There's another side to that: each problem carries the potential for much better circumstances. Left alone, things tend to move toward a lower state. But intervention, brought out by the need to solve a problem, can create much better conditions. As long as we don't wait for things to get better. As long as we get busy making them better ourselves. We are each in charge of making it true that the best is yet to come. It takes clear thinking and action. What do you think? What will you do today to make something better? -- Douglas Brent Smith

You're a smart, intuitive person. Do you know everything? Of course not. Individually we are powerful, creative people capable of solving puzzling problems with great skill and speed. But not all problems, and not always alone. Our brilliance, our genius, our gifts are multiplied in collaboration with others. Working together we can develop new solutions. We can create better futures. We can fix the troubling aspects of our current world. Two people know what one person cannot. Teams can explore and develop with a faster and deeper capacity reaching outward into an organization's unlimited potential. Centered leaders tap that potential. Discover your gifts. Build your team. Develop your capacity. Optimize your results. It all starts with connecting people with a purpose and using our best clarity, courage, creativity and compassion in the service of something greater than ourselves. One person, one conversation, one project at a time. -- Douglas Brent Sm...

It sounds like a rude question. Certainly, tone of voice matters considerably, especially when the question comes from a leader. Can you remain centered, with the interests of your people at the top of your mind as you ask this important leadership question? What's your problem. Is it not the job of a leader to help people to solve problems? To achieve their goals? A centered leader asks "What's your problem" with the intent of helping. Not that any leader can solve every problem. But given the time, intention, and useful processes any leader can help. What problem will you help to solve today? -- Douglas Brent Smith

What do you think is more important -- the brilliant star who outshines everyone else on your team and comes up with revolutionary ideas? Or, developing a team consensus that drives change coherently and quickly? Easy, right. A team needs both. Too often we center so much attention on one or the other that the false choice falters. Too much attention on brilliance at the expense of harmony and our team falls to pieces. Too much attention on harmony by ignoring the voices of discord, creativity, and brilliance and our team muddles thru a slow plod toward obsolescence. That's another reason we need leadership. Centered leaders realize that consensus often outranks brilliance but does not replace it. Brilliance sometimes outperforms consensus but does not overrule it. Keeping our balance of clarity, courage, creativity and compassion we find (and help others find) the need to address, the tool to play, the card to match. Support each member of your team, and e...

Can you solve all of your problems? By yourself? Mature, confident leaders develop useful processes and strategies for solving problems. Sometimes, though we need help. Sometimes an ally, a friend, a partner is the only answer for a complicated issue. Few of us can solve all of our own problems without help. Centered leaders get the help they need. Who do you know who can help you with a tough problem that you've been struggling with or ignoring? -- Douglas Brent Smith

Does the way you solve a problem differ from the way you figure out what the problem is? Sometimes we are so deep into a problem that we can no longer see the causes. What is right in front of us is so familiar that it seems perfectly normal and normally perfect. It's not, of course. That's one of the reasons that it is a problem. But, it's probably not the main reason (or even in the top three reasons). To see clearly the exact causes of a problem takes a certain amount of detachment. Sometimes we can affect this detachment on our own, and sometimes we are so close to the problem that we cannot detach ourselves from the results. Problems can be clarified by those with no stake in the results but are best solved by those who do. It's easy to see that someone has a drinking problem but hard to stop if you're that person. It's easy to see a broken customer service process but hard to stop doing what you have been trying to do to make that demanding...

Trainers, professors and teachers are well familiar with the question: "will there be a test?". Students are concerned about if their learning will be evaluated and how it will effect their lives. What a question behind the question: will this learning effect my life? When it comes to facilitating learning, it may be the primary question. Why spend time on a topic if it has little impact on you? Why learn what you don't need and can't use? Unless, of course, you are going to be tested. Yes, we are going to be tested. Everything that we learn matters. How we apply it matters. What we do next, who we share it with, how we use it to avoid mistakes, how we use our learning to solve problems and achieve our goals. It all matters. Yes, there will be a test. Maybe today, maybe a week from now, maybe years into the future, but yes there will be a test. Here's the good news: Life is an open book exam. We can keep learning until we get it righ...