Drinking from a Fire Hydrant

Our age is not of the meditative man, it's a sprinting and shoving age with daily antidotes that spring into being and leap out from the newest counters.


- Norman Cousins



I've been told that attending one of my workshops, or just listening to me in general, can be a bit like drinking from a fire hydrant. Friend and colleague Bryan Anderson was out looking at commercial property (he's a Realtor) and took this picture. In the spirit of the drinking fountain's more directed flow, here's a re-cap of recent postings -

A Few Traits of a Great Leader
  • Judgment
  • Justice
  • Decisiveness
  • Dependability
  • Tact
  • Integrity
Great Loan Officers as Great Team Builders
  • Great Loan Officers know that Great Loan Officers have Great Teams
  • Great Loan Officers strive to be Level 5 Team Builders
  • Great Loan Officers work for companies that support Great Team Builders
  • Great Loan Officers know the key sales and marketing person is the one delivering their product or service and any given moment
  • Great Loan Officers know that good customer service is the sign of a good hire (and vice versa)
  • Great Loan Officers work hard at all Top 10 Characteristics of a Great Team Builder
  • Great Loan Officers are passionate about being a Great Team Builder
Top 11 Characteristics of a Great Teambuilder
  • Express a very clear vision and expectations
  • One set of rules for everyone, including themselves
  • Hire the right people, put them in the right place and train continuously
  • Delegate and enable others to develop and deliver results
  • Build trust through robust evaluation and correction
  • Enhances relationships by seeking clarity through what and how questions
  • Team members give open and honest feed-back with everyone
  • Hold themselves accountable and blames no one including themselves for failures
  • Uses various resources to uncover blind spots
  • Pushes themselves and their team to constantly get better
  • Catches team members in random acts of doing well
Missing or Broken Links in Leadership
  • Developing good followers
  • Constantly looking for blind spots
  • Failure to getting better; not learning or learning and not getting better
Pingings - Evaluation and Corrections
  • Pay attention
  • Ask questions, listen to answers
  • Be purposeful; have a mission and a plan
  • Don't be ignorant to what you're hearing and seeing
Personalities Matter
  • Conflicts can be a learning event
  • Conflicts are going to happen
  • Understanding personalities with others can make a difference in how you handle conflict
  • Conflict can be nothing more than misunderstandings due to personality differences
  • Personalities are shaped in part to generational differences
  • Taking a personality assessment can show you your temperament traits
  • Getting trained in how those temperament traits interact in different situations is valuable
Still a lot to drink, but all important and coming at you whether your purposefully swallowing or not. Be meditative about these subjects and purposeful about your getting better.

To that end....

Danny L. Smith

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