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Entries by Mike Figliuolo

The Importance of Hiring for Outcomes

October 19, 2015 /0 Comments/in Books, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

By identifying your organization’s critical outcomes, you can find star performers who can consistently produce the desired results for your organization. Today’s post is by Greg Long and Butler Newman, coauthors of The New Game Changers: Driving Performance by Focusing on What Matters (CLICK HERE to get your copy). On June 17, Mike Figliuolo wrote about the three secrets to hiring stars for your high-performing team. In that post he advocated hiring based on skills rather than experience. We agree. To put it in other words, to build high-performing teams, you need to select people with the skills to produce at a high level. That’s the working definition of stars: people who can consistently produce the desired results that further an organization’s goals. To dig just a little deeper into this topic, allow us to highlight one of the practical challenges you are likely to face: how to identify the specific skills you need in those stars. We’ve found that identifying the right skills and knowledge needed for someone to succeed is not nearly as easy as one would think. To meet that challenge, we must first understand the concept of outcomes. Not business outcomes, but job outcomes. We define job outcomes as those things that an individual performer produces that the organization values. The idea of things is important because things are left behind as the result of the work someone does. For example, building on the financial position Mike discussed, a job outcome may be a valuation of a company being considered for acquisition. Or it may be a comparative analysis of different office equipment leases. Both require specific financial skills but different skills from each other. Knowing what you want people to produce makes it easier to decide what skills they require to produce it. In our […]

How well do you set aside time to do things for yourself?

October 15, 2015 /0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Leadership, Poll /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How well do you set aside time to do things for yourself? – Very well — I regularly carve out time for myself: 15.56% – Well — I carve out some time but could do more: 38.77% – Not well — I don’t often carve out time for myself: 30.12% – Poorly — I rarely set aside time for myself: 15.56% If not you, then who? Almost half of you confess to not doing well taking care of yourself by carving out time for you. If you’re not taking care of yourself, it’s doubtful anyone else is. There are some easy ways to carve out time for yourself. It’s simply a question of having the discipline to do it. For those of you who are doing it well, I ask you to go the next step and make sure your team members are taking care of themselves too. Getting that message from their leader should give them the push they need to carve out that time and make sure they have some balance. Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below! – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

How to Keep from Being Thrown Under the Bus

October 14, 2015 /1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications /by Mike Figliuolo

Office politics suck but they’re a fact of life. The risk you face is someone “throwing you under the bus” to protect themselves politically. There are steps you can take to reduce the risk of this happening to you. Office politics can be nasty. People have their own agendas and, unfortunately, those agendas aren’t always above board. There will be times when a boss, a stakeholder, or a peer gets themselves in a jam. Rather than facing the consequences of their errors, they’ll look to “throw someone under the bus” to take the fall for them. Sometimes that person being sacrificed is you. When you get thrown under the bus and blamed for problems caused by someone else’s incompetence, you risk receiving poor reviews, losing promotion opportunities, or even being fired. No, it’s not fair and yes it’s ugly. You can either ignore these possibilities and be intellectually pure by saying “this is a logical organization and our culture wouldn’t tolerate that type of behavior” or you can protect yourself. If you take the former approach, you might be making those comments from the unemployment line. So let’s focus on protecting yourself. Know Who’s Doing the Throwing There are a lot of folks out there who could look to throw you under the bus. Your boss (or their boss), a peer, a project team leader/member, and a senior stakeholder in another department are all candidates to shove you into oncoming traffic. They all face risks if things they’re working on don’t go well. Many of them could have new advancement opportunities created if you weren’t around. Anyone who stands to personally gain if you fail or anyone who can deflect blame in your direction is a candidate for throwing you under the bus. Once you know who these folks are, […]

Do you give your team specific guidance or broad guidelines?

October 8, 2015 /2 Comments/in Communications, Leadership, Poll /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: Do you give your team specific guidance or broad guidelines? – I give them very specific guidance: 28.67% – I give them broad guidelines and let them figure it out: 71.33% Set direction and set them loose. We hear a lot about “empowerment” but almost a third of us aren’t doing it.Setting guidelines for your team members and then letting them take action has tremendous benefits. They feel in control, they learn (many times by making mistakes), they feel trusted, and they come up with their own creative solutions you might have missed. The big reason we give specific guidance is we fear failure. If we control their behaviors then we control the risks is the thinking. Unfortunately that rarely plays out as it should. Take some risk. Be bold and set direction then walk away. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results. Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below! – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

How to Deal With Someone Taking Credit for Your Work

October 7, 2015 /3 Comments/in Books, Communications, Social Media /by Mike Figliuolo

When someone else takes credit for your work, there are four steps you must take: seek clarification, request it be fixed, get mad, then get over it. We’ve all had that experience where we work really hard on something and instead of getting recognized for our contribution, we have to sit there and choke back bile when someone else takes credit for the work. It’s infuriating to think about how hard you worked and how much effort you put into a project only to see some other glory-hound or charlatan pass all that effort off as their own. I’ve dealt with it many times. I’ve found copies of my articles and blog posts on other websites only to find they weren’t attributed to me. They were passed off as someone else’s work. It’s maddening. There’s a feeling of helplessness that comes along with that situation. So what can you do when you’re in this situation? What do you do when someone else passes your work off as their own? How do you handle it when someone else takes credit for work you did? Here are a few thoughts: Seek Clarification It could be an accident. You might be wrong in thinking someone is taking credit for your work. They might have sung your praises before you walked in the room to find them presenting your deck. They may have written a nice email giving you full credit but all you heard was “I received this presentation from (NOT YOU) and it’s great.” Clarify first. Just ask. If you are wrong and the person gave you credit, thank them politely for promoting your work. Request (Nicely) a Correction If it’s clear they did pass of your work as theirs or they took credit for your idea, ask them (in private) if […]

How to Resist The Power of the Ding

October 5, 2015 /1 Comment/in Balanced Lifestyle, Career, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Our electronic devices ding at us all day long. It feels impossible to resist. But if you can fight the urge to check it, you’ll be happier in the long run. Today’s post is by Deirdre Maloney, author of Bogus Balance: Your Journey to Real Work/ Life Bliss. (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Well there is just a whole lot to love about technology, yes? Those emails, those texts, those phone calls… they play a key role in our ability to get our work done. They help us stay in touch. They help us get the answer we need to virtually any question… immediately. Of course, there’s a downside about our tech as well. It can distract us, break our focus, turn our good intentions to finish a project or have a meaningful conversation upside down. And then what happens? We feel behind, we feel stressed out, we feel disconnected from those who are actually around us. It can happen in a single moment – right when the unexpected ding signaling an incoming message hits our inbox or phone. The Truth about the Ding The ding has a whole lot of power over us. All too often we find ourselves jumping with a somewhat adrenaline-like start the second we hear it. And there’s a reason for it – a reason we put everything else down to see what it is and who’s behind it. Now we claim the reason is because we may need to handle something immediately. We claim the reason is because it allows us to keep our inboxes manageable. We claim the reason is because that’s what’s expected of us these days. And to be fair, some of these reasons are true – some of the time. But there’s another reason that ding keeps us hopping […]

How well does your organization treat clients or customers?

October 1, 2015 /1 Comment/in Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Poll, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How well does your organization treat clients or customers? – Extremely well — we take great care of them: 35.17% – Very well — we treat them better than most other companies: 34.88% – Well — we do a decent job but could improve a bit: 25% – Not well — we could treat them much better: 3.49% – Poorly — I’m surprised we even still have customers: 1.45% Treat them well or someone else will. It doesn’t take much to lose a customer and we all know how hard it is to acquire them. If your organization isn’t in the top two categories in this poll, you’re creating a large risk to your business. As leaders, we’re responsible for identifying where we’re coming up short in our treatment of customers and quickly fixing those issues. Client service can be very simple to understand but difficult to execute. It all boils down to defining client service principles you should never violate. Make sure you do both as you set the tone for your team to care for one of your most valuable assets. Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below! – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

9 Reasons You Should Write All the Time

September 30, 2015 /2 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

Writing is a powerful habit that can improve your performance in several ways. It also makes you smarter, more relaxed, and more disciplined. Here are 9 reasons you should build a writing habit of your own. I write. A lot. Emails. Blog posts. Books. More books. Articles. Tweets. I’m surprised I don’t have full-on carpal tunnel syndrome. Writing is draining, laborious, frustrating, and tiring. You should write too. What?!?! Mike, you just said a whole bunch of negative things about writing. Why are you telling me to write too? There are 9 great reasons you should write regardless of your role or occupation. 1. Writing improves your vocabulary. When I write, I tend to be precise with my words. When I don’t know what a word means but it sounded cool when I heard it, I look it up. When I use new words in written form, it solidifies their meaning and use in my vocabulary. I’m then more comfortable using those words in conversation. That enables me to express my ideas more clearly and intelligently than I could with a limited vocabulary. 2. Writing clarifies your ideas. When you write about a concept, the vague becomes clear. Writing forces you to take the generalities and amorphous or ambiguous thoughts in your head and put structure to them. It solidifies ideas. It generates new insights and understanding of your thoughts thereby making them more concrete concepts that can be acted upon. 3. Writing alleviates stress. When I write, I set aside all the stressors that are typically swirling in my mind. Believe me, there are plenty of them. My writing pushes those thoughts aside – albeit temporarily – while I focus on the topic at hand. That timeout from my stressors gives my nervous system a break from being overloaded. […]

3 Ways Reading Boosts Your Business

September 28, 2015 /2 Comments/in Books, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Many leaders dedicate little time to reading. But consistent and broad reading can truly help you differentiate your business. Going from “good” to “great” can be as simple as building a regular reading habit. Today’s post is by Dr. Liz Alexander. The statistics weren’t unexpected, just shocking. When Mike Figliuolo posed the question, “How much professional reading do you do each month?” to the 200,000 readers of SmartBrief on Leadership, less than 4% said they read more than five books a month. Some 60% admitted they barely read anything, if at all. Which group are you in? If it’s the majority, maybe you think you haven’t time to read when you’re running a business. Or being assigned all those boring textbooks in college put you off and you never got back into the habit. Whatever the reason, you’re missing out by not reading more. I mean, it could just be coincidence that the 3rd richest person on the planet, Warren Buffett, spends 80% of his day reading. Maybe Steve Jobs didn’t become brilliantly innovative just because he absorbed everything from Autobiography of a Yogi to King Lear. Perhaps there’s no connection between Jeff Bullas’ consistent ranking as the world’s #1 Content Marketing Influencer and the fact that he spends at least two hours every day perusing others’ online articles and blogs. But I doubt it. Here are three ways I’ve seen my clients and my own business go from strength to strength by reading more. Which might be useful to you?

How well do you give difficult feedback?

September 24, 2015 /0 Comments/in Communications, Leadership, Poll /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How well do you give difficult feedback? Extremely — I have no problems doing so: 10.57% Moderately — sometimes it’s hard but I get it done: 60.86% Somewhat — I don’t always do a great job with it: 19.77% Not very — I frequently struggle doing so: 7.63% Not at all — I’m terrible at giving difficult feedback: 1.17% Tough Feedback is Tough. It’s never easy to give difficult feedback. People don’t like receiving it and we as leaders don’t enjoy sharing perceived “bad news.” Try changing your thinking on delivering feedback. It’s actually about delivering a tough message, which requires you to have a very specific mindset to deliver it well. Accept that burden and step up to it. If you’re more worried about being liked than you are improving performance, you’re doing a disservice to yourself, the organization, and your team member. Be tactful, fact-based, and direct. It will be over more quickly and everyone can then focus on improving performance. Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below! – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

How You Can Spend Less Time and be a More Effective Leader

September 23, 2015 /0 Comments/in Books, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Time is your most precious resource. If you’re not mindful about how you invest it in your team members, you won’t be happy with the “returns” you get. Being more effective requires you to look at your time in a new light. Do leaders work or do they sit back and supervise others? Where you stand on that issue depends upon where you sit in the leader versus led relationship. From the bottom up, leading doesn’t appear to involve much work. The “real” work happens at the bottom of the organization chart – on the front lines. The higher you go in the hierarchy, you’ll see less “real” work and more talk about real work. If you’ve led people, however, you have a different perspective. Once you’ve been in a leadership role, you realize leadership doesn’t magically happen. A leader’s work can be thought of as a range of “leadership services” provided to team members. Providing these services takes time and energy. The same way organizations don’t have unlimited financial capital to invest, leaders don’t have unlimited time and energy to invest in leading their teams. That dynamic requires leaders to be deliberate in their approach to allocating this limited “leadership capital.” Methods for Allocating Leadership Capital Because leadership capital is finite, leaders must invest it intelligently. Unfortunately, however, leaders spend their scarce financial capital much more carefully than they do their precious leadership capital. Because the financial capital budgeting process is competitive, a great deal of thought is put into decisions about how to allocate funds. Compared to the budgeting process, the way that leaders decide how to invest their time and energy in their teams can seem arbitrary. Some leaders spread it evenly across their team members to achieve equality. By using this approach, leaders can avoid being […]

The Brighter Way to Solve Problems

September 21, 2015 /0 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

The light bulb solution: How noticing and addressing a problem at the appropriate time can increase your organization’s efficiency. Today’s post is by Ally Edwards of DATIS. Obstacles are inevitable in both the workplace and in daily life. The way that people approach and manage situations can reveal a lot about their character and work ethic. In the workplace, many common challenges arise from issues surrounding communication, technology, and management styles. These challenges, no matter how small, can create a consistent buildup of frustration in the work environment and in employees individually. Therefore, it is always important to stop, breathe, and think through the situation thoroughly, before reacting emotionally. If you often find it hard to control your emotions in difficult situations, consider this light bulb scenario. Once a light bulb begins to burn out, the flickering light makes the situation hard to ignore. The next step is to replace the light bulb; but a multitude of questions arise such as: What type of light bulb should I replace it with? Is there a better light bulb I could use? Is there a cheaper option? Lastly, the most critical part of replacing the light bulb is choosing the best time to do so. For instance, it would not be advisable to replace a light bulb while the light switch is on or at night when no other light sources can help complete the task. Even though a light bulb is a tangible item, the process of replacing a bulb is very relatable to fixing problems in the workplace. Here is how to apply the light bulb solution method to problems that you may encounter on a daily basis: