High Performance Leadership

Can you solve your biggest problem without facing the pain it produces? The only motivation we need to solve a problem is to recognize the cost of not solving it. Leaving it alone gives us what we've got and that is seldom enough. To move toward growth, to achieve our goals, we must find a way around or through the things that block us, the things that cause us grief, our problems. Very often the solution is imbedded in the description of that pain. Getting to work late makes the boss angry. The pain is the boss's anger, but the cause is getting to work late. The fix? Get to work on time. What's the solution to that? There is a world of possibilities. When I procrastinate my projects run late and then my deadlines back-up causing me stress. I don't like that kind of stress. It's a kind of emotional pain. How do I fix that? Maybe not procrastinate on those projects and solve that problem. The solution isn't always so obvious, but it's there. The pain ...

What do you do when you don't like the answer to your question? What if the answers to your problem aren't arising as fast as you'd like? One of my mentors, and someone I still enjoy working with, Andrew Oxley likes to say "If you don't like the answer to a question, ask a better question." That's a powerful way to improve communication. To get better communication results - the results you are looking for, ask better questions. Stay curious. Probe with kindness. If you can't find the answer, ask a different question. The answer is likely in there. We never need accept failure as final. Keep curious, keep asking, reframe instead of blaming, and our patience will pay off. What questions do you need to ask? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success Doug Smith Training: How to achieve your goals

Is your team learning fast enough? Is your team learning deep enough? Is your team putting into practice the lessons they should be learning from the feedback that is available? Building your team operates on may levels and in many disciplines and one of the most important is in their learning. Constant change requires  constant learning. What are you doing as a high performance leader to facilitate that learning? Are they getting the training they need? Do you install learning-focused processes into your meetings? Do you make use of feedback to find what works and identify the opportunities for improvement and growth? That's all part of building a high performance team. That's all part of getting your projects done on time, in budget, and to your quality standards. That's all part of achieving your goals. Things get better when we learn how to make them better and put our learning into action. How are you building your team today? -- Doug Smith Interested...

Do you  believe that anything is possible? I'm careful about going that far - I know for certain that I will never play basketball in the NBA or play bass with the Beatles no matter how much I want to or believe it. Belief does have limits. For many people those limits are far more restrictive than they need to be. Despite our limitations, the world (the universe!) is filled with wonderful, exciting, curious possibilities. We could (and should!) spend our lives exploring those possibilities. Not in regretting what is no longer possible - in discovering what is. One of my favorite books is The Art of Possibility - Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. It's a great guide in how to see the possibilities and potential in people, processes, places, performance with an attitude that welcomes success. Imagine that - an attitude you can carry with yourself in every endeavor and every interaction that invites success. New ...

How do you feel when you do your best? Do you feel stronger, more creative, more in charge, more successful? I do - when I do my best. That takes extra effort. That takes constant focus. That takes an occasional (well, OK, sometime a frequent) redirect of energy and attention to move in the direction of my best. But, it's worth it. There are many ways to achieve success and they all require you to do your best. Why not accept that as a guideline and apply it wholesale to what we do? -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success

Do you have a tendency toward perfection? I'm all about quality. As a basically analytical personality I strive constantly for perfection. The trouble I run into is that it isn't usually necessary to achieve perfection. Insisting on re-doing and revising repeatedly in pursuit of perfection can keep me from finishing something important. I've learned to be careful about perfection. My acting coach, Brian McCulley has a favorite expression "Done is better than perfect". Maybe not always - but usually. I've learned to move forward. To keep doing. And to finish. Things can usually be revised later, but it pays to get them done. In many of my workshops I ask my participants to invent a game. The game has only two criteria for success: it much help us learn something about the workshop content, and it must be fun. It does not need to perfect. There isn't really any way the games they invent could be perfect. But they are fun, and they produce learn...

Do you have it all figured out? Last week I had a couple of people in one of my workshops who thought they had it all figured out. There was nothing left to learn. There were no tips or tricks or tools or techniques that could make their lives better. It was what it was and that's all there was to it. I feel sorry for them. They have doomed themselves to a life of overwhelm. Smug in their suffering they get to continue to suffer, like some technician stuck in the hellish hole of routine disaster. It doesn't have to be that way. It isn't that way at all. High performance leaders continue to learn. If you care about achieving your goals, you keep learning. New ways of doing things. New ways of improving your personal productivity. New ways of adjusting your perspective to a view that matters and helps. There's never been a perfect model for education but that's never prevented people from learning. Build your own model if you need to. Find one that works. But ...