Entries by Mike Figliuolo

Why You Need a Wookiee on Your Team

April 17, 2019 /1 Comment/in , /by

Leaders can learn a few things from Chewbacca the Wookiee. Leaders who have people that are loyal, team players, skilled, and action-oriented will be more successful than leaders with team members without these qualities. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC. GRRNNHHNNNHHNN! WOOKIEE! Every great leader needs their own Wookiee.  They’re extremely useful.  They can carry around robots, knock out stormtroopers, and co-pilot wicked awesome smuggler spaceships.  On top of that, they usually have long, luxurious brown hair (how has Chewbacca not landed a shampoo/conditioner endorsement yet?). Some of you longtime readers have seen this post before, but it was time it be revived from the archives once more, it truly is that good. Read it again. It’s good stuff. New readers – read it. This is one of my favorite posts ever. No, I haven’t lost it.  All leaders need their own Wookiee.  First, allow me to explain the characteristics of Wookiees that leaders will find attractive and helpful, especially for those of you who haven’t jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon in the last couple years.  Second, I’ll explain how you can unleash those Wookiee talents for the good of your team. When you figure out who your Wookiee is, let them know that, in a matter of speaking.  You should share your assessment with them so they understand what you expect from them and how valuable they are to you as a member of your team.  If you want to expand your Star Wars leadership skills beyond managing a Wookiee, you can read this post about what Han Solo can teach you about leadership (a real flashback for any of you who’ve been with around since the beginning). There are five things you’re looking for in your Wookiee:

Two Keys to Getting Tough Decisions Executed Well

April 10, 2019 /0 Comments/in , , /by

Large decisions carry plenty of execution risk. To increase the chances that your decisions are executed the way you want them to be, focus on clearly explaining the decision and actively managing change. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC. If you want to make a successful decision, communicate the rationale for the decision to the broader organization. Lay out the context you’re making the decision in. Tell people what the decision was and why it was made. Explain the goals for making the decision. Tell people how you’re going to monitor execution. And also that you’re willing to make new decisions as you get more information. Perhaps even tell them what some of the contingency plans are. Explaining the Decision The better people understand why you made the decision, the less they’re going to second guess it and the more they’re going to support it. Their support is critical to reducing execution risks in making the decision. It helps you get the decision out and executed quickly because they’re bought into it and there are not going to be obstacles. For example, at one company I worked for, we did a large layoff and those are always difficult decisions. Most of the time, layoffs are kept quiet and people don’t know they’re coming. This CEO did it differently. He laid out a complete presentation that explained the rationale for the layoff. He explained the strategic implications and the market dynamics that were driving this change. He also explained what might happen if we didn’t act. People didn’t necessarily like this decision. Their friends were going to be laid off. Some of these people were going to be laid off. But they understood the strategic rationale for making the decision and they supported and executed the […]

The Secret Method for Getting Your Recommendations Approved

April 3, 2019 /0 Comments/in , , /by

Getting to “yes” is one of the biggest challenges you’ll face on a daily basis. Whether you’re making a case for more budget, more people, more time, or approval of an idea, you’ll need to communicate in a clear and compelling way. Here’s the secret method for doing just that. Today’s post is by Mike Figiuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS. “We’re sorry but your recommendation wasn’t approved.” We’ve all heard those words; it’s a sentence that slaughters your hopes and crushes your confidence. Getting ideas or projects approved and securing the resources needed to implement them is one of the greatest challenges business leaders face. With multiple stakeholders, constrained budgets, and competing agendas, it’s difficult to cut through the clutter and garner the required support. I’ve been teaching folks this method for years as part of our Structured Thought & Communications Course (and if you’d like me to come teach you and your team, I’d be delighted to do so – just contact me and we can discuss the program). After teaching the method for over a decade, I finally put pen to paper to make it available as a book. The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved was published a few years ago and has helped business professionals, across multiple industries, create successful pitches for all their business needs.  If you’ve ever been a participant in our Structured Thought & Communications Course, the book is a wonderful complement to what you learned in class. The Elegant Pitch provides a simple, proven process to go from idea to approval more quickly and effectively than ever before. This is the same method used by elite strategy consulting firms such as McKinsey & Co. and Bain Consulting. But you don’t have to be a high-priced […]

Leadership Lessons from Tragedies, Near-Misses, Hardships, and Mistakes

February 13, 2019 /0 Comments/in , , /by

Great leaders learn from even the worst situations – perhaps especially the worst. Find out what some great leaders learned from holding a man’s hand as he took his dying breath at work, a falling crate smashing to bits on the factory floor a few feet from visitors, a painstaking walk across the entire country of Spain, and a lost driver’s license that threatened to derail an entire 2-day business trip. Today’s post is by Paul Smith, thoughtLEADERS principal and bestselling author of Lead With a Story and  Sell With a Story. Here’s an easy way to learn some new leadership skills – in easy-to-digest podcasts you can listen to at your convenience. These podcasts are based on interviews with 100 executives, leaders, authors, and experts at dozens of companies around the world. Each episode brings you an important leadership lesson through a single compelling story. Does customer service this amazing ever happen at your company? If so, would you even know it? Probably the most outrageously positive customer service story I’ve ever heard. Maybe too good. You decide. Then ask yourself these five questions… Compensating Behavior: A Leader’s Guide to Finding Problems You Don’t Know You Have The most dangerous problems are the ones you don’t know you have. Here’s a creative way to find them. Two Leadership Lessons from an American Author’s Walk across Spain

Is Your Executive Team Stressed? Then Move!

January 30, 2019 /0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Our brains are under constant assault from stressors. To reduce the amount of stress you feel and to improve your resilience, move. Move around physically. Exercise. Walk while on conference calls. Move. Movement has huge benefits in terms of stress reduction and resilience. Today’s post is by Jon Wortmann, thoughtLEADERS principal and author of Hijacked by Your Brain. He’s our primary instructor for our Building Leadership Resilience course. A data breach impacting millions. A failure of your core systems due to too much volume leaving users stranded. Two key executives leaving without successors in place. If you are a leader, imagining each of the aforementioned, true, situations, is enough to double your heart rate. And it should. Thinking about attacks, major human errors, and poor planning triggers the region of your brain that causes stress. Your amygdala, which I call your alarm, is a tiny, almond shaped region in the middle, left, and right sides of your brain. Bears have alarms. So do iguanas. Our ancestors a thousand years ago did too. Animals and old-timers needed their alarms to stay safe. To avoid danger, they had to be able to run and hide from nastier creatures or avoid the wrong food or water. Our problem today is that too many moments in life feel like a Sabre-tooth tiger approaching, as we sit safely in our offices, drive comfortably in our cars, and have full fridges of healthy, nutritious food (in addition to cake, wine, and cheese). That’s why you and your execs are stressed. Their alarms are on all the time. The risk from hackers has never been higher. Our technology is more powerful and more complicated than ever, and only continues to become more so of each. Our teams are made of independent, smart colleagues who will take a […]

Can Resilience Differentiate You as a Leader?

January 23, 2019 /2 Comments/in , /by

Resilience is the ability to maintain flexibility and focus when dealing with massive change. Leaders who possess this skill can differentiate themselves and lead their teams more effectively. Today’s post is by thougthtLEADERS principal Maureen Metcalf. In times of uncertainty, resilience is one of the most important skills for us to have. I define it as “the ability to remain flexible and focused when facing change.” As leaders, we are facing a higher level of volatility across the business environment than we previously faced. In the U.S., we are still dealing with a major political change. This transition exposed division that was not previously evident on the surface in families, offices and communities. Such division can be healthy if addressed with a spirit of curiosity and grace. Yet, how can that happen when we view our previously trusted colleagues and even family members as “the other,” or worse? While the political environment is the most obvious example right now, we are also seeing unprecedented volatility in financial markets and uncertainty in many sectors such as healthcare. Some of this is caused by politics, some by technology, and some caused by the fact that we live in a world that is much more interconnected than it used to be. We are dealing with situations we’ve never seen before. There is no return to the prior level of control so as leaders, we need to learn to be more agile. Take Bill, a university director, responsible for physical and technology security. He came into work on a normal Monday morning, got his coffee, and started to plan his week. At 9:10 his world was interrupted. A young student drove off the road and onto a sidewalk trying to hit other students. The student emerged from his car and began attacking others. It was […]