Leadership and Decision Making – A Personal Interview
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No Comments
Categories: Books, Leadership
So for the first time ever, I’m including a recorded interview as today’s blog post. I was recently interviewed by Yongho Shin on the subjects of leadership, the U.S. Army, decision making, and other leadership topics. The interview is about 30 minutes long and should be a good listen during your morning coffee.
Yongho Shin is a peak performance advisor and former member of the official TEDx Team of TED Conferences who has attracted audiences of over 35,000 people in seminars and over 225,000 through online events and programs. He regularly interviews the world’s top experts on peak performance and living your best life. You can learn more about Yongho and listen to other interviews he’s conducted on his website.
Also, please leave your thoughts in the comments below if you’d like more of these audio and video posts. Happy to post more things like this as they come about but I want to make sure it’s something you readers want. Let me know what you think.
So for your listening enjoyment, here’s my interview with Yongho. Click the microphone to listen.
Mike Figliuolo interview by Yongho Shin
- If you want to learn more about leadership and decision making, grab yourself a copy of One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership. There are plenty of suggestions in there for how you can be a more decisive leader. CLICK HERE to get your copy.
Great Leaders Live Balanced Lives
Posted on January 30, 2012 | 5 Comments
Categories: Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Leadership
The following is an excerpt from One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (you can get your copy here). This post focuses on having a balanced life and the importance of keeping things in perspective. If you’re burned out, you’re worthless. Here’s an example of how I keep myself in balance and the obvious question to you is “how do you keep yourself in balance?”
It is easy to get wrapped up in your work. If you have chosen your profession well, you are darn good at what you do and take a great deal of satisfaction away from doing it well. Unfortunately it is easy to forget that there are other people out there who want some of your time. Your family and friends need your attention. There are also other passions worth pursuing outside the office. Taking part in activities you enjoy will keep you centered and add meaning and fulfillment to your life.
Unless you have a mechanism to tear yourself away from the office you might find yourself trapped in the mindset of “I’ll do (insert enjoyable thing here) this weekend when I’m off work” or “I’ll do that when I retire” or “I’ll get to that someday.” Someone who reads my blog shared a great maxim on this point: “Someday is not a day of the week.” We would all do well to keep this in mind and act accordingly.
My great-grandfather adopted a quote as his maxim to remind him to live life. He always said “Enjoy life now because you’ll be a long time dead.” He did not coin the phrase but he used it frequently. The saying has made its way through a few generations of my family as something we say on a semi-regular basis. Regardless of how it is phrased, the key point is we must have balance in our lives which entails living our lives while there is still breath in our lungs.
Without a frequent reminder to do what you truly enjoy and have passion for, you might not notice your life slipping by.
Get Out of B.E.D. And Alter Your Outcomes
Posted on January 26, 2012 | 4 Comments
Categories: Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Project Management
Today’s post is by Marty Stanley, author of Get Out of B.E.D. and the newest member of the thoughtLEADERS team.
“We got it done, but it was ugly,” the manager said, shaking his head in disbelief. Miscommunications, lack of communication, an inexperienced team leader and management on vacation resulted in cost over-runs exceeding $50,000, delayed implementation and loss of customer respect and confidence. The manager lamented that this was not an unusual experience. It happened more often than he wanted to admit.
We’ve all experienced these “ugly” scenarios at one time or another. But it seems that there’s a breeding ground for ugly outcomes in many organizations. People are going a hundred miles an hour, multi-tasking and taking on more as a result of reduced staffs. People are trying to cope with downsized environments and a sluggish economy. The demands and expectations are high and resources and clear communication are often scarce. A lot of things can slip through the cracks in this kind of culture.
Being in B.E.D. is the Breeding Ground
An environment like this can become toxic and counter productive. When a workplace is in B.E.D. (Blame, Excuses and Denial), people often react impulsively with each misstep, and more mistakes happen. Mistakes are like rabbits… they multiply! No wonder things turn out “ugly.”
How Leaders Can Overcome Resistance to Change
Posted on January 23, 2012 | 9 Comments
Categories: Communications, Leadership
Nobody likes change (other than David Bowie… “ch-ch-ch-changes!” Good luck getting that song out of your head). I know if you do anything that changes my routine in the morning, my whole day is whacked.
We hate change. Heck, most of us hate getting change at the grocery store because all those coins just weigh down our pockets and purses.
As a leader, though, your job is to get others to want to change.
Getting other leaders to open up to change is hard. You have to help them understand what’s in it for them, because invariably you are changing something in their very comfortable lives. They are not going to like you when you do that. They are going to resist and find every reason to point out that your conclusions and recommendations for change are wrong.
If you want change to happen, you have got to help others understand that change is in their best interest. Show them you are trying to drive metrics they care about (I will dive into an example here in a minute). Help them understand that they stand to benefit from the changes you are recommending.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
A Better Way to Communicate
Posted on January 19, 2012 | 5 Comments
Categories: Books, Communications, Guest Blogger
Today’s post is by bestselling author Seth Kahan. It’s an excerpt from his book Getting Change Right: How Leaders Transform Organizations from the Inside Out. You can learn more about him and his book at the end of the post.
In 1996 I was working on my first large-scale change initiative at the World Bank. I was part of the small team that won international recognition for the World Bank’s Knowledge Management (KM) effort. Working on this program was like driving on a racetrack that was changing its course while you steer: the course and the environment were always changing, but we made incredible progress.
In two years we went from an unfunded idea in a back room to $60 million in annual allocations, from no resources or incentives to every staff member receiving two weeks to dedicate to KM as well as having a component of their annual evaluation dedicated to it, from no recognition to international awards.
To make this happen we had to answer questions like these:
- How do you penetrate the conflicting demands and mental clutter that are part of everyday business life in the twenty-first century?
- How do you penetrate the assorted messages the media constantly bombard everyone with?
- After you have gotten through this confusion, how do you get people’s attention?
- Once you have their attention, what do you do with it to get people engaged, involved, and contributing?
- How do you coordinate this activity when you have no formal authority?
We were able to answer these questions, and we were highly successful as a result. But, it took a major reframe of the way we communicate. To illustrate, let’s first look at the prevailing misunderstanding of how communication works, and then I will show you a much better way to think about it.
4 Keys for Successful Project Leadership
Posted on January 16, 2012 | 11 Comments
Categories: Leadership, Project Management
We always talk about project management but rarely discuss project leadership. There’s a difference.
Leaders play a critical role in setting the conditions for a team to successfully manage a project. If you focus on the following four key roles you can play on a project as the project leader you’ll dramatically improve the odds of project success. More important, you’ll create a culture where your team members trust you and know you’re doing everything you can to help them succeed.
In creating the right culture, you’ll boost morale, reduce turnover, improve productivity, and generally have a team that wins more often (and not in the Charlie Sheen “winning” way…). So here goes – here are four things you need to focus on as a leader to create an environment for project success.
12 Most Consequential Books for a New Leader
Posted on January 11, 2012 | 34 Comments
Categories: Books, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership
Today’s post is by David Dye – COO of Colorado UpLift. You can learn more about him at the end of the post. And check out #11…
You may have heard that leaders take responsibility for their own growth, but with thousands of leadership and management books to choose from, where do you begin? You want resources that help you today, that you can immediately apply, and that build a strong foundation for your future leadership development.
To help you get started, I’ve put together a list of the 12 most consequential books for a new leader:
1. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
The book in the #1 slot doesn’t even have leadership in the title? No, but it does feature a skill so rare and yet so vitally critical to effective leadership that it fully deserves to be at the top of the list. Effective leaders are able to build relationships while discussing the most difficult subjects and Crucial Conversations by Patterson, et al helps you do exactly that.
2. The Leadership Challenge
Kouzes and Posner make the case that leadership is influence and that effective leadership relies on your credibility. What sets The Leadership Challenge apart is its focus on five leadership practices through which you grow your influence and credibility. These five practices are easily understood and can be learned by anyone willing to do the work.
If You Want to be More Productive Just Do Less Work
Posted on January 9, 2012 | 2 Comments
Categories: Balanced Lifestyle, Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management
You work too hard. You do too much.
Want to be more productive? Just do less work.
I know you’re probably scratching your head right now wondering how to not get fired by taking this recommendation. The truth is you’ll probably be on your way to a promotion if you pull this off correctly.
Here’s how it works: we work on a lot of stupid crap that no one is ever going to look at let alone use. Being more productive all boils down to not doing said stupid crap.
What kind of stupid crap am I talking about? How about those bajillion Excel reports you and your team generate every month? Those “latest best estimates” that are time stamped by the hour to let folks know which version you’re working from. Those weekly or monthly status updates that are 68 pages of the equivalent of PowerPoint water boarding. How about the 9,000 cc emails you send or receive every month? That stupid crap.
“Oh no! We can’t stop cranking those things out! They’re ever so valuable! And 80% of my job responsibilities center around turning out such value added deliverables that create synergies across the enterprise!”
Barf.
Let’s really evaluate this “work” you do and create a plan to stop doing it.
