It's been on my to-do list for months (at least!) but it's finally moving from to-do to done. That's right -- the 1st issue of Highlighting High Performance is ready for delivery.

Please, hold the applause.

Those of you who only read my feed haven't seen the sidebar item about my newsletter, so here's what I'm talking about -

Highlighting High Performance is the monthly email newletter for anyone who wants to excel.

Each issue features a variety of tools, tips and techniques designed to help you achieve high performance in whatever you do.

I'll be hitting the send button on December 1st, so you still have time to sign up to receive the inaugural issue. And I'll even make it easy for you to sign up while it's still fresh on your mind -

The leadership and team building principles used in the military are not that much different from those used in the civilian world. For example, I was recently re-reading a list of tips for non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and a number of them struck me as applicable to leaders in organizations of all types. All I had to do was replace the military-specific references (soldiers, NCO's) with more universal terms (team members, leaders) and I was struck by how the tips were descriptive of successful leaders in all walks of life.

Here, then, are five ways to know if you're doing it right:

• If you are doing it right, you constantly question whether you have done your best.
• If you are doing it right, your soldiers trust you unquestioningly.
• If you are doing it right, soldiers--to include soldiers from other teams, squads, platoons, etc.--see you out for counsel and advice.
• If you are doing it right, other NCOs seek you out for the same.
• If you are doing it right, you spend part of your limited free time finding answers to prolems that do not yet exist.

So what do you think--are you doing it right?

(The original article, Are You Doing it Right by Staff Sergeant Alan J. Marinoff, first appeared in NCO Update Volume 9 Number 3, May/June 2000, published by The Association of the United States Army)

Bob Sutton's latest post ties in nicely with my previous post regarding good leaders and great leaders. In it, he highlights 2 indicators that you may be a bad boss (as first put forth by Leigh Buchanan). Of the 2, I was especially struck by this one:

Employees do not volunteer for the boss’s pet projects. It could be because the idea is bad, and they are afraid to say that. Or the idea may be good, but they are petrified of what will happen if they let the boss down. Or since it is the boss’s pet project, he will probably work on it as well. “Which means more time spent ...gulp ...with you.”

How many teams have you been a member of that suffered from that very issue? And the more important question - are you the person that causes that reaction? If your answer to the second question is yes it is well past time that you work on your "plays well with others" skills.

Leadership and team building are, before anything else, about relationships. If you can't build and maintain positive relationships with those you work with you will ultimately fail as a leader and your team will fail as well. That's not to say that you have a BFF* relationship with your teammates. But at a minimum you do have to develop a trusting and professional relationship that will allow you to work together on a regular basis.

Good bosses know and practice this simple fact. Bad bosses, not so much.

* For those of you who have managed to avoid the affliction known as text messaging, BFF = Best Friend Forever

Ever wonder about what sets great leaders apart from good leaders? Here's a starter list of ten differences that I've noticed over the years:

Good leaders have memorized a list of positive leadership characteristics
Great leaders have internalized the list.

Good leaders never lose their mission focus
Great leaders never lose their people focus

Good leaders understand the challenges faced by their team
Great leaders experience the challenges faced by their team

Good leaders talk about values and vision
Great leaders demonstrate values and vision

Good leaders meet expectations
Great leaders exceed expectations

Good leaders communicate well
Great leaders have mastered the art of communication

Good leaders accept change as inevitable
Great leaders embrace change as opportunity

Good leaders see the glass as half full
Great leaders recognize that the glass is the wrong size

Good leaders direct
Great leaders facilitate

Good leaders understand their industry
Great leaders understand their people

As I said, it's only a starter list. What differences can you come up with?

Why do leaders fail? Bill Caskey at The Leadership Institute recently posted an excerpt from a Hogan Assessment Systems report (note: pdf file) that listed 10 reasons that leaders fail. The top reason?

The “most frequent cause for derailment was insensitivity to others. Under stress, the derailed managers became abrasive and intimidating.” Indeed, every derailed manager in this sample had relationship problems.

What about you? Do you treat those around you with respect and sensitivity or will you be the next leader who fails?

Ever since the anthrax scares that followed the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the United States Government has been trying to devise a system to rapidly treat a large number of people in the event of a large-scale anthrax attack. I'm surprised it took this long, but it looks like a clever - and, in hindsight, rather obvious - solution is coming, thanks to the United States Postal Service:

WASHINGTON (AP) - If there ever is another anthrax attack, the letter carrier may deliver your antibiotics. Federal health officials are beginning a project in Minneapolis-St. Paul to let letter carriers stockpile a personal supply of emergency antibiotics so they are protected and ready to deliver aid to the rest of the city at a moment's notice.

"These letter carriers are being asked to put their lives on the line to help their communities," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Wednesday. By ensurng they are protected first, "the carriers can be ready on short notice to take to the streets."

The project aims to overcome a big hurdle of emergency planning. The government has much drugs stockpiled in case of future bioterrorism, but few ways to get them quickly to panicked citizens. Leavitt noted that if someone possibly has inhaled anthrax, the chances of survival are best if antibiotic treatment begins within 48 hours.

The U.S. Postal Service came forward, he said. "They have people who every day walk to every house."

Those carriers could provide "a front-end quick strike," added William Raub, Leavitt's senior science counselor.

But could letter carriers successfully deliver medications to a great number of homes during an emergency, when the carriers might be mobbed? Would they be willing?

To address the first issue, test projects in Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston over the past two years paired letter carriers with police officers on holidays. Carriers volunteered to do double routes, delivering empty pill bottles along with a "This is a Test" flier explaining what was happening. In Philadelphia, 50 carriers reached about 53,000 households in eight hours, Raub said.

This outside-the-box thinking demonstrates that at least somewhere in the USPS there are individuals and teams who are willing and able to consider a problem and develop innovative solutions. Can you say the same about your organization?