November 2011 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

End of Year Reviews are a Terrible Idea

November 28, 2011/10 Comments/in Career, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

There’s nothing like returning to work after post-Thanksgiving holiday food comas. The best part is you get to prep for one of the most dysfunctional, time-wasting, intellectually insulting, and leadership-lazy exercises known to mankind: the end of year review.

They’re stupid. Period.

And before you go all “I don’t need to read this – I’m a business leader and HR people are the ones who do performance management” you need to sit down, shut up, and read because if you have that mindset, you’re a huge part of the problem.

How failed is our leadership culture that we have to sit around and wait for HR or executive management to dictate when and in what form we must critique the people on our teams?

How messed up is it that we have to rely on compulsory forms with rating scales to tell people how they’re doing?

How sad is it that we have to hold cross-calibrations to stack rank people and force a performance distribution because our managers lack the ability to look outside their own organization and assess comparable levels of talent and performance?

We’re a management disaster, people!

I’ve written plenty on the dangers of bad feedback, the importance of self-appraisals, the requirement to fix bad performance before it becomes terrible performance, and how awful butt sandwiches taste. Add this post to the list of rants about why our performance management systems are broken and what we as leaders need to do to fix them.

If someone works for us for 365 days, we owe them much more than a once-a-year sit-down to discuss their performance. We owe our organization more than looking at all personnel once every four seasons. If we truly want to get out of the rut of annual performance reviews being as palatable as beet and Brussels sprout casserole, we have to create a new culture around reviewing performance. Here’s how we as leaders can do that:

You Need to Hire a Social Media Expert. Now.

November 23, 2011/4 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Social Media, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest blogger is David Chapman from Webrageous. You can learn more about him and his work at the end of the post.

When the world of social media began to develop only a few years ago, networking online was all about connecting with friends, sharing personal likes and dislikes, finding out about new things to do in our personal lives.

The mocking snorts and disbelieving grunts began we people started to use social networking at work. And fair enough really. Change is always difficult. The world always needs time to readjust. How can being connected to Facebook truly be considered work?

Well, to be totally honest, social networking is work. The time has come in the 2010s to finally put a stop to the fact that some people still look down on social networkers in many ways. It is disappointing that a good number of leaders still fail to realize that investing good money in the recruitment of a professional social networker is worth every cent in this golden age of technology.

Every single business needs an effective social networker and every leader should be prepared to pay a decent salary to employ the best of the best. It takes more than a few posts or tweets here and there to be an effective social networker and the employees slaving away at all hours of the day and night in this newly developing industry deserve economic recognition for their efforts.

So…

Great Lessons You Can Learn from Great Leaders

November 21, 2011/0 Comments/in Books, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

I’ve had the good fortune of meeting some wonderful leaders and thinkers over my years of blogging. Since the launch of my book I’ve met even more. And several of them have been wonderful enough to take the method I preach in One Piece of Paper and apply that method to their own leadership styles.

For your reading enjoyment and enlightenment, I’m sharing those perspectives today. It’s the least I can do to give these folks a shout out for their hard work and for spreading the message of how to make leadership personal again.

For each one, I’ve provided a quick snapshot of the author and a pearl of wisdom pulled from their post about their own perspectives on personal leadership using the leadership maxims method in the book. I encourage you to take the time to read each of their posts. They’re interesting, entertaining, insightful, and helpful. They’ll also help you crystallize your own leadership philosophy.

So here’s the roundup of some of my favorite leadership writers and their perspectives on their own leadership philosophies. Enjoy!

You Should Fix Small Problems Before They’re Big Ones

November 14, 2011/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is an excerpt from my book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership. This excerpt is about a time I screwed up. You can get your copy of the book by clicking here. All that said, here’s an excerpt that covers why it’s better to fix small mistakes than big ones.

If you are committing to a team member’s growth you first have to give them the opportunity and then ensure that they do, in fact, grow. The only way they will learn and develop in those roles is with coaching and feedback.

Giving feedback can be challenging. Many times we nail the easy feedback when we say things like “great job on beating your goal by 37%!” That is not a particularly hard message to deliver. Such feedback is not remotely useful either. There is no action being requested of the recipient.

Your job as the leader is to provide an observation on the recipient’s actions and give them ideas on what they might do better or differently going forward. That is easy to do in a goal-beating situation but what about more difficult conversations? Many of us avoid having them because they are uncomfortable, but when you ignore the problem it festers until those conversations turn into the “very difficult conversations,” then “extremely difficult conversations,” and eventually the “here’s your severance check and pink slip” conversations.

I know my gut instinct is to avoid these discussions at first but I also know it is my responsibility to have that feedback conversation as soon as possible. I have adopted a maxim designed to hold me accountable for doing exactly that. My maxim is “It’s easier to correct course 100 yards into the journey than 100 miles into it.”

How to Build Your Team by Getting Rid of Your People

November 7, 2011/10 Comments/in Career, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

That’s right. You heard me. Want to build your team? Get rid of the people who are on it. Of course I mean to do so in a good way. Become what I call a “net exporter of talent.”

What exactly does that mean? You need to develop your people to the point that they’re ready for new challenges. Build their skills. Make them more valuable to the organization. Grow them and their responsibilities. And once you can stand back and admire the fruits of your labor, send them somewhere else to work. Actually, if you’ve done a good enough job developing them, others will be trying to poach them from your team.

Madness you say? Not so fast my friend. The benefits of becoming a net exporter of talent are many. Before we get into them, let me elaborate on how to become said exporter. First, recognize almost everyone on your team wants to grow. Your obligation as a leader is to provide those opportunities and help people succeed in them (check out “But he’s never done that job.” “I know.”). Once you’ve expanded the skills and scope of your team members, you’re ready to begin.

Start by talking about how great your people are. Let other managers know you’ve got a fantastic A-player on your team. Give your team members opportunities to shine (see “He knows more than I do”). You’re advertising for them. You’re creating new job opportunities for your people. Once others see how great your people are, the ball is in motion. Simply sit back and wait. The next part is interesting.