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Entries by Mike Figliuolo

How charitable is your organization?

March 6, 2014 /0 Comments/in Poll /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: What is the most common way your organization supports charitable causes? – We donate cash and our time: 76% – We give them cash only: 12% – We don’t give to charity as a company: 8% – We donate our time only: 3% It’s encouraging to see 92% of you are helping make your community a better place. For those giving only cash, I encourage you to identify ways to enable your associates to personally get involved and give the gift of their time. It will strengthen your organization’s connection with your community, as well as help your associates feel like they’re making a bigger contribution. Cash is wonderful, but relationships can generate tremendous benefits as well. During times when we’re all feeling the stress of the recession, catastrophes and being disconnected from the people around us, a little personal involvement can go a long way. 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!

Are you up for the challenge of a leadership crucible?

March 5, 2014 /1 Comment/in Career, Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

As leaders, we rarely get the time for self-reflection and development. When we do, we need to ensure the experiences we have can fundamentally alter our trajectories in a positive way. I’ve found that those types of experiences require immersion in a challenging environment because those situations teach us a great deal about ourselves in a very short period of time. Today I’d like to highlight one of those experiences. The instructors I have the privilege of working with are practitioners of what they teach. They bring a healthy dose of the real world to the podium. Speaking of real-world, our instructor Jan Rutherford is leading the Self-Reliant Leadership Crucible expedition this summer. I had a chance to sit down with Jan and his partner for this expedition, Brad Billingsley, to ask the about their venture. Mike: What’s a crucible and how does it define you as a leader? Jan: A crucible is a difficult test or challenge; a place or situation that forces people to change or make difficult decisions. We all face adversity amidst physical, mental, and emotional challenges, and I wrote a book, The Littlest Green Beret, about the adversity I faced becoming a Green Beret at five feet four inches and 114 pounds. That adversity – crucible if you will – made a significant impression on my perspective about what makes a leader. The Self Reliant Leadership Crucible is about bringing the book to life through the practical application of self-awareness; relying on yourself for self-development; having the discipline and ability to endure hardship to strengthen one’s resolve; and achieving a balance between independence and the interdependence to accelerate your personal growth. Mike: What were you hearing from business leaders that made you think people would want to spend seven days backpacking in the Wyoming wilderness?

5 Ways to Revamp Your Leadership Style

March 3, 2014 /0 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is a contribution by Richard McMunn of How2become. No matter what your chosen career field is, without demonstrating leadership skills along with the rest of your talents the chances are that your career will be stagnant. Leadership skills are a must in any career path these days. So how to you know that what you are doing in terms of leadership is working? Once you determine that, what can you do to make it even more effective? Everyone has their own way of doing things and what works well for some people may not work for everyone. That being said, there are some key steps that everyone can take to make their leadership style advance. 1. Analyze Current Style What are you doing right now in terms of leadership? Are you a self-starter? In order to find out exactly what works and what doesn’t, you need to analyze both your personal life and your professional one. You may be wondering what your personal life has to do with who you are at work. It actually means a great deal. If you are happy in your personal life or if you are unhappy, it will carry over into your professional life and influence the way that you think, act and make decisions in your career. 2. Find the Kinks

How closely will you follow your strategic plan this year?

February 27, 2014 /0 Comments/in Leadership, Poll, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How closely do you think you will follow your strategic plan this year? – We’ll generally follow the plan but expect a few major deviations: 76% – We’ll follow it to the letter: 12% – We may do a few things in the plan but generally ignore it: 10% – We don’t follow it at all: 3% Planning matters. When you do face a major deviation from the plan, however, be deliberate and explicit about the choice you are making. Seek to over-communicate that change to your teams. You might completely understand the rationale for the shift, but to your teams it might seem like you are aimless. If you can explain the deviation in terms of the strategic plan and why you need to make the move, you can get the team better engaged rather than leaving them scratching their head. For the 13% of you who ignore the plan I suggest one of two things — either get focused and start following it or stop wasting your time writing it in the first place. Your current approach is wasting energy and effort so at least cut down on those inefficiencies. 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!

Using Guidelines to Make Better Decisions

February 26, 2014 /0 Comments/in Books, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

We need guidance during challenging times. We need something to keep us within healthy and productive boundaries. We are human and make mistakes. Having personal guidelines that we live our lives by will remind us how we want to behave and keeps us safe and on track. This does not have to be a detailed list of do’s and don’ts. A laundry list of rules and regulations is not practical. Instead, a judgment-based approach that can be broadly applied to any situation is much more flexible, manageable, and applicable. Every situation is different and each decision we face will have a variety of new and unpredictable factors involved. But if we have judgment-based guidelines to govern our conduct, we can apply them to any situation we face instead of having to frantically search a list of do’s and don’ts only to find that particular situation is not covered. The simpler the guidelines, the more powerful they can be. I learned how powerful simple guidelines can be while I was a cadet at West Point. In our regulations book we had over 180 different infractions that we could be written up and disciplined for. They were overly specific. They ranged from “Having lights on after lights out” to “Underage drinking” to “Laundry folded improperly.” If there was something we could possibly do wrong, there was a disciplinary code for it.

How to Identify and Utilize Matrix Thinkers

February 24, 2014 /0 Comments/in Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Holly Regan. Winning teams need a balanced mix of talented players, placed in roles that best utilize each of their strengths. Software Advice recently published a series of articles identifying the personalities of four types of top performers, their strengths and weaknesses and the jobs in which they excel. One personality type that shines through as a potential leader is The Matrix Thinker. Who Is a Matrix Thinker? Matrix Thinkers are creative, visionary problem-solvers. Famous Matrix Thinkers include Albert Einstein, John Lennon and Steve Jobs: innovators who changed history. These unique individuals don’t think in a straight line, like most people (a leads to b leads to c); instead, they think more like a cube (a leads to m leads to z leads to c). They are constantly absorbing information, and their ability to make connections among concepts that seem unrelated often leads them to revolutionary new ideas and solutions. Sometimes, however, their thought process just confuses people. Being a Matrix Thinker is largely determined by genetics: it’s about 75 percent nature and 25 percent nurture. However, it’s important to note that maturity is an independent characteristic. A more mature Matrix Thinker can learn to overcome some of the innate difficulties that may plague a more poorly-functioning person of this personality type. Strengths of the Matrix Thinker Highly-functioning Matrix Thinkers are able to synthesize all the information they’re taking in from their environment. They can think clearly and communicate their ideas to others. And even if their desks look messy and disorganized, they likely have a system in place for making sense of it all. Some of the qualities that make Matrix Thinkers great include:

How well do you nurture your network?

February 20, 2014 /1 Comment/in Career, Poll /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How well do you cultivate and maintain the relationships in your professional network? – I respond to check-ins from others but don’t reach out much on my own: 46% – I regularly reach out to people to check in and see what they’re up to: 44% – I reach out only when I’m looking for a job: 6% – I reach out when I can connect two of my connections: 4% One of the greatest assets you have is your network. In a world where job change is more frequent, business partnerships are more distributed and communication tools are ubiquitous, there’s no excuse not to actively manage your network. For the 6% of you who only reach out when you’re looking for a job, realize that it comes across poorly that the only time you’re interested in connecting with someone is when you need something. For the 44% who are actively managing the network, you know it doesn’t take much effort to stay connected with people, and I’ll venture to guess you’ve seen some great relationships grow and opportunities arise as a direct result of those connections. Start connecting today, folks. You’ll be glad you did. 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!

The Critical Importance of Giving Prompt Feedback

February 19, 2014 /1 Comment/in Books, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

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 the importance of giving people the feedback they need to hear as soon as they need to hear it. 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 (principle or rule of conduct) to ensure I’m giving people the feedback they need is “It’s easier to correct course 100 yards into the journey than 100 miles into it.” The maxim […]

Workaholic? 2 Easy Ways to Stop Working So Hard

February 17, 2014 /6 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Liz Scully. I work too hard, and I’m guessing if you’re an entrepreneur, you do too. Many of my coaching clients are the same and I help them with manage their time and set realistic goals. Sometimes it’s easier to help other people fix a problem than do it yourself. But I knew I had to change things in my own company when I noticed several of my staff showing deep workaholic tendencies. I was having a production meeting with our fabulous copywriter, who works part time from South Africa. She’d just finished a massive project and was sounding very burned out. She wasn’t as sharp as usual and was having trouble stringing sentences together—she was even speaking much more quietly and slowly than usual. And she was conducting our call propped up in bed, not a good sign. I nearly worked myself to death I understand how you can love your job so much you overdo it. I worked so hard in my previous career in film that I had to have surgery due to overwork. Afterwards, I went straight out and worked twice as hard to cover the medical bills—typical workaholic behavior. Three years later I ended up right back in hospital for more surgery. I’d very nearly worked myself to death. Not once, but twice. You can’t call me a quick learner. That second brush with mortality did mean I learned eventually and it’s why I now help people work on their passions sensibly, with breaks and most definitely not lying in the bed so tired they could weep. So, I told my colleague to take the day off—two if needed. She was polite, but she resisted, just as I would have done when I was in full workaholic mode. How often I […]

Is your organization wasting its money?

February 13, 2014 /4 Comments/in Poll /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How strongly do your organization’s leaders support training for their teams? – We mandate training, attend it ourselves and support it afterward: 39% – We send people and sometimes expect them to use what they learn: 27% – People have to fight to get trained and they get little support: 20% – We don’t send people to any sort of training: 7% – We send people but model the exact opposite behaviors we expect: 6% Sending someone to training but not attending yourself or expecting your people to use the tools they’re trained on is a waste of time. It sends the wrong message. If you truly believe “people are our most important resource,” then when you invest in them you need to demonstrate that you’re serious about the investment. If you’re going to invest in your people, cultivate that investment with the support of your time, attention, and encouragement. 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 Instantly Lose Credibility Like a Guru Ninja

February 12, 2014 /3 Comments/in Career, Communications, Entrepreneur, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Titles matter. A lot. So do email addresses and signature blocks. As unfortunate and as shallow as it is, people make a first impression snap decision about you and your business in an instant. If that instant includes your title it can make or break your business opportunity. Yes, CxO, Vice President, Director, Manager, Analyst, and other vanilla titles are boring. They’re not edgy. They don’t have panache. That said, they quickly convey a certain level of skill and experience that the majority of the business population can interpret. Your contact isn’t left scratching their head wondering what the heck you do. Then there’s the other end of the title spectrum: Guru, Ninja, Overlord, Grand Poobah, Super Hero. They sound wicked awesome. They get people’s attention. But you have to realize not all attention is good. On top of that, these titles are usually paired with a cool signature block quote or catch phrase and they have sweet email addresses too. Unfortunately all of these things can undermine your credibility and cost you business. Here are a few of the biggest mistakes I see people make when it comes to the arena of titles and personal branding:

A 5 Step Procedure for Effectively Disciplining Employees

February 10, 2014 /2 Comments/in Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Allison Rice of Amsterdam Printing. There is nothing more rewarding for a manager than rewarding employees for a job well done. Whether it’s handing out well-deserved compliments that you know will make your employees feel satisfied, telling them how they contributed to the success of an initiative or a project, or even giving workers a bonus or some other kind of tangible reward, where appropriate – these are the kind of moments that make everyone feel good. On the flip side, there is often nothing harder than figuring out how to discipline a worker under your supervision when they have done something wrong. If this is done badly, it can sour the working relationship and have lasting negative effects on the employee’s productivity and willingness to accept direction. It is important to make this as much of a learning experience as possible, where the employee recognizes that they made a mistake and is motivated to improve. If you are too harsh, too quickly, they are likely to become resentful and insubordinate instead. Here are some tips for how to go about communicating with an employee who is going down the wrong path: 1) Start out by explaining clearly and objectively what the behavior is that the employee needs to correct. Are they regularly coming in late to work? Are they spending too much time surfing the internet? Are they failing to follow instructions or communicate effectively with their co-workers? It is particularly important that you highlight any relevant company policies that they may be violating, or explain how their behavior is incompatible with the company’s mission statement or philosophy.