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Entries by Mike Figliuolo

How Your Enemies Can Make You Better

December 3, 2012 /11 Comments/in Career, Communications /by Mike Figliuolo

We all have enemies. For most of us, they’re a drain on our energy, focus, and time. But if you approach your enemies differently, they can make you much better and stronger than you already are. Allow me to illustrate. I hate Navy. I’m sick of them winning the Army-Navy football game for the last (I’m not gonna say it) years. The next time we play them is this coming Saturday and I really hope the anger and pain of all our losses over the last several years lights the fire of the Army team’s belly and helps them come out with a victory. Oh and how sweet a victory would be! I’m sure the team and the program as a whole has done a great deal of soul searching over the last few years. I’m sure they’ve learned a few things about how to productively channel that anger into healthy endeavors. Perhaps you can learn a few things as well from the process of dealing with an enemy, directing your anger, and coming out on top. We all have enemies. Some of us have a lot of them. But when we spend our time and energy focused on attacking them and counterattacking their inevitable strikes back, I’d submit we’re the ones losing. In getting us to attack, our enemy has taken us away from productive pursuits. They’ve hung a dark cloud over our days. They’ve drained us of some energy that would be better served elsewhere. They’ve also made us appear hot-headed and little in the whole process. Even if we win the fight, we lose – on multiple fronts. There’s a better way to approach this.

6 Concrete Ways to Improve Business Communication

November 28, 2012 /1 Comment/in Communications, Guest Blogger /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest post is by Jessica Edmonson of Bisk Education. More on her at the end of the post. Here’s Jessica… By its very nature, strategic communication is intentional and productive. So, as with any other initiative vital to your business, distractions are its biggest enemy. Here are a few tips I’ve learned throughout the years for filtering out the noise as a way to get down to the business of exchanging ideas and spreading a message: 1. Eliminate Distractions Perhaps it isn’t possible to rid yourself of distractions completely. Still, you can certainly dial them down. Whether you are chatting with an employee in your office, talking on the phone with a customer or drafting an all-office memo, give communication the focus it deserves. Put the cell phone on vibrate and disable email notification dings. You might even consider unplugging completely so that there is no temptation to multitask or check your Facebook and Twitter account when you should be giving your full attention to the task at hand. 2. Cut to the Chase Corporate speak is so commonplace that it has become a source of comedy: “We need to maximize potential synergies to achieve a paradigm shift that will move us toward comprehensively increasing our bottom line.” This turgid and largely useless rhetoric is easily spotted and usually met with frustration. Direct, concise communication is a breath of fresh air. It’s a more efficient way of getting your point across and can put the recipient at ease. 3. Anticipate Audience Needs

12 Great Leadership Gifts

November 25, 2012 /4 Comments/in Books, Career, Communications, Entrepreneur, Innovation, Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

IT’S CYBER MONDAY PEOPLE! THE WHOLE INTERNET IS ON SALE TODAY FOR 93% OFF! Okay. Maybe not 93% but there are tons of deals to be had. Holiday time is just around the corner and my guess is now that you’ve recovered from your turkey and football-induced food coma, you’re realizing you had better get cracking on getting holiday gifts for your boss, your team members, your customers, and every other professional in your network. In the spirit of the twelve days of Christmas, I made a little shopping list for you. So in the hopes of saving you time, energy and effort scouring the web for the perfect gift options, I’ve compiled the below list of great gift ideas for those special people. The vast majority are books and most of those books have been featured here on the thoughtLEADERS Blog in the past year so I’ve also linked to the relevant blog post. So without further ado, I give to you 12 great gift ideas for the leaders in your life: 1. One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership I would be a complete idiot not to have my own book as the first on the list. That said, I think it’s a great gift for any leader or aspiring leader in your life. It’ll help them better articulate who they are and who they want to be as leaders. It’s straightforward, entertaining, and – most importantly – pragmatic and practical. 2. Lead With a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives that Captivate, Convince, and Inspire Paul Smith discusses the power of storytelling and how you can be a stronger leader by using that method to communicate. The book is chock full of great stories and clear, simple techniques you can use to […]

How You Can Become a Listening STAR

November 21, 2012 /1 Comment/in Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest post is written by Brian Ahearn. Brian’s one of the most knowledgeable guys I know on the subject of influencing people (which is why he’s been a guest here before). Brian’s blog, Influence PEOPLE, is followed by people in more than 180 countries. You can learn more about Brian at the end of this post. Enjoy! My wife Jane is an excellent golfer, a poster child for hard work and practice. Many years ago she said, “I’m tired of people saying I have potential. I want good scores!” She started taking lessons, practiced consistently at the driving range and saw her scores drop from 105-110 to the low 80s and occasionally a score in the high 70s! She exemplifies a truism in life – you don’t get good at something by merely learning about it. At some point you have to “do the stuff.” Over the last few years I’ve conducted many sales workshops where people practice different skill sets. One such workshop was on active listening skills. Good listening skills are just as important for leaders as they are for salespeople. Excellent leaders recognize the more information they have the better the solutions they can come up with. One important way leaders get their information is by actively listening. I’ll share five pointers to help you become listening “STARS.” Listening is an active skill so you need to do several things if you want to excel. Listening skills are not things you can’t do. For example, I often tell workshop attendees I can’t dunk a basketball. Never could and it’s not likely at 48 years old, standing just 5’9 tall, that I ever will. Jumping high enough to dunk a basketball is a skill I don’t have and can’t acquire no matter how hard I work. If […]

Solve Your Customer’s Problem if You Want the Sale

November 19, 2012 /0 Comments/in Communications, Entrepreneur, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Everyone has goals these days. The one that causes more disconnects than any other is a sales goal. It’s a number to hit (either units or dollars or both – the better ones are actually measured in profit dollars rather than revenue dollars). They’re problematic because by their very nature they get a salesperson to focus on their needs (hitting their goal) versus the needs of the customer (finding a solution to a problem). The best salespeople truly use a consultative selling approach. The others? Well, they’re just annoying. They throw around phrases in their sales rooms like “Okay guys! It’s time to get your checkup from the neck up! It’s go time! Everyone start smilin’ and dialin’!” Excuse me. I just barfed in my mouth a little… I’ve had offers posed by both types of salespeople and I too have sold (sometimes like a huckster in my misguided youth but more consultatively as I’ve learned better). Allow me to offer some scenarios. I was in the market for a software solution. Nothing major – just some basic functionality that would help me grow my business. I needed cheap (not a lot of budget dollars available), fast (I was trying to grow quickly), and easy (our technology department did not have a bevy of available resources to throw at this). I spoke with a few providers. One of them had a very cool solution. It had bells. It had whistles. If you pushed the right combination of buttons it would make you a frappuccino. It was expensive. Very expensive but somewhat justifiably so given all the features. I explained our challenges to the salesman.

How to Benefit from the Psychology Behind Facebook Brand Following

November 14, 2012 /0 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Sales, Social Media /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Craig Robinson of Qwaya.com. Here’s Craig… The odds are great that you have certain preferences when it comes to purchasing products. Let’s say that you’re walking through the grocery store aisle and you really have a hankering for some chips. Now, if you’re a Doritos fan, you’re probably going to choose a bag of Doritos over a bag of competitor’s tortilla chips. And it’s not that they might not taste as good, or that they’re more expensive, etc. It’s because, psychologically, you are more familiar with the Doritos. Now relate this to Facebook and people following brands. Someone seeing you and your competitor is thinking the same thing you might think about those chips in the above hypothetical. If they feel comfortable with your competitor, they’re going to go with your competitor – unless, of course, you can entice them away. A more colorful ad; a two-for-one special – you can think of different ways to break the psychology involved in brand following. However, you first have to understand the psychology behind it all. The Communications Model The communications model plays a great deal in how users receive ad material and thus react to it. The communications model is broken down into five parts:

5 Answers to 5 Key Entrepreneurial Questions

November 12, 2012 /2 Comments/in Entrepreneur, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Entrepreneurs have a ton of questions. Sometimes it’s hard to find straight answers to them. To close that gap, below I’ve shared five of the most common questions I hear from entrepreneurs. I’ve also shared my thoughts on some direct answers to those questions. So whether you’re thinking about starting a business, already run a business, or help advise people who are doing either of those two things, I advise you to check out these questions and ponder the answers. And if you’re wondering what’s up with the monkey, I simply thought it was funny. I mean, really – who wears wide pinstripes these days? 1. When do I talk to the venture capitalists? Five years from now. Seriously, entrepreneurs need to get an understanding of the funding ladder. Typically it starts with your own cash. Then friends and family. Then angel investors. Then hopefully cash from the operations of your business. And eventually seek out venture money. Along the way you should also be seeking out non-dilutive capital like loans, grants, etc. Spend some time getting smart on how money is raised, deployed, and the equity/ownership implications of each choice. Venture capital is much farther down the line for your business than many folks think. 2. I’m a first-time entrepreneur. When should I launch my business? You shouldn’t. I highly suggest getting some experience both in corporate environments as well as with other entrepreneurial ventures. You don’t know what you don’t know. Spending some time in an existing startup or young company will be a wonderful education on what to do, what not to do, and will also help you assess your personal fit with the entrepreneurial lifestyle. It’s not for everyone! If you spend some time in corporate, you’ll learn how big companies make decisions, how they work […]

How Creativizing Can Unlock Innovation

November 7, 2012 /1 Comment/in Guest Blogger, Innovation /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest post is by Jeff DeGraff – author of Innovation You (CLICK HERE to get your copy). You can learn more about him at the end of the post. When I was in second grade, I wanted to be a knight for Halloween. My father, fond of quoting Teddy Roosevelt – “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are” – and never one to throw scraps of any kind away, was eager to help with a homemade get-up. In this case, he took on old plastic bucket, cut a slotted visor and adorned the whole thing with shiny aluminum foil. An old feather duster became a regal red plume. He fashioned a sword from a piece of floor molding that he spray painted gunmetal grey so it looked like a forged blade. My armor was a silver tanning blanket cut up and reconfigured through the miracle of duct tape. By the next morning, I was as chivalrous and gallant as Lancelot himself as I paraded through the halls of my elementary school to the attentive stares of the jealous rabble. My Dad was a perpetual creativizer. Like so many people with this skill, he was a thoughtful and innovative maker of small moves and little miracles. He could improvise on the spot in the most improbable of situations. On one family camping trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan our car broke down just when we had run out of food, gas and money. What followed was some of his finest work and of more significance to our safety than a crafty costume would ever be. We hitchhiked to the dump to find parts. We went fishing for dinner. We traded food staples with the other campers. We bartered services with gas station owners. One day […]

The Difference Between Talkers and Doers

November 5, 2012 /8 Comments/in Entrepreneur, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

I love The Boondock Saints movies (the first two are awesome and I can’t wait for the third one to come out). They’re about two Irish brothers who are the baddest vigilantes you’ve ever seen (anyone who says a prayer in Latin before putting a cap in someone is elevated in the vigilante-dom pantheon). One of their friends and sidekicks, Rocco, shares some words of wisdom at the opening of Boondock Saints II: “There’s two kinds of people in this world when you boil it all down. You got your talkers and you got your doers. Most people are just talkers. All they got is talk. But when all is said and done, it’s the doers who change this world. And when they do that, they change us, and that’s why we never forget them. So which one are you? Do you just talk about it, or do you stand up and do something about it? Because believe you me, all the rest of it is just coffee house bull$4!+.” – Rocco (that’s him to the left) Every time I watch that movie (which is pretty often) I ask myself – am I a talker or a doer? I invite you to ask yourself the same question. It’s easy to be a talker. “I’m going to build an awesome company” or “I’m going to give him a piece of my mind” or “I’m going to write a blog and turn it into a book.” All those things sound great. They all seem feasible. For the most part though, most of them will never happen. Why do I say that? I’ll tell you why. It all boils down to three things.

How to do a Better Job of Reading the Room

October 31, 2012 /2 Comments/in Books, Communications, Guest Blogger /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest post is by David Kantor, Ph.D, author of Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders (CLICK HERE to get your copy now). You can learn all about him at the end of the post. “Be self-aware!” “Don’t get stuck wearing one hat!” “See yourself how your team sees you!” “Convey a narrative purpose!” “Be an active listener!” So often are leaders told this by coaches, how-to sites, their husbands and wives, and co-workers. It is all good advice, but it merely scratches at the surface. I’ve found throughout my career that leaders and coaches overlook the underlying thread connecting that manual on “aligning people” and the article on “modeling behaviors you want to see”: the simple truth that communication belies work among groups. What if leaders, coaches, consultants, managers, and family members had the ultimate encyclopedia on speech—a resource that broke conversations down into a soup of visible intentions and judgments, and also outputted the proper words for one to say in order to be heard, to make others feel heard, to break a standstill, to create an environment of collaboration, to create a sense of purpose? I believe it is possible, and I would go further to say any change in leadership, whether to “be authentic” or “be transparent,” must come from the bottom-up, from the discourse itself. While this opinion may seem reminiscent of those long-forgotten critical theory college courses, Derridean, Habermasean, an academic fad concerned with the linguistic turn—it is inarguable that leaders with a wider repertoire of communication can navigate these leadership problems more naturally and with greater ease. That is, along with a stronger skill set in communication—both verbal and non-verbal, on transmitting and receiving ends, among selves and the self, and regarding impersonal and personal subjects—comes leadership intuition and the […]

What a Horrible Web Rapper can Teach You about Personal Development

October 29, 2012 /2 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Business Toolkit, Career, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

I am the baddest of them all If you ain’t ’bout money, then I don’t mess with y’all Y’all think I don’t get girls, cause I ain’t very tall If she see my stacks, I bet you that she calls! – Krispy Kreme, The Baddest (2012) All of us want to be happy and fulfilled in our careers. We want to achieve the pinnacle of success and enjoy ourselves while we do it. If you really want to reach that goal, you can learn a few things from the baddest Internet rapper ever: Krispy Kreme. First, allow me to introduce Krispy: You’ve gotta give it up for the kid. He rocks (and what can I say about Moneymaker Mike?). Now, once you stop cracking up, I’m going to share a few things you can learn about your own development by following in Krispy’s footsteps.

Plain Language is The Antidote to Grandiosity

October 24, 2012 /5 Comments/in Communications, Guest Blogger /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Rod Sweet (a real, live editor!). Editors get a special kind of headache when reading a press release infected by grandiosity. They have to read it because there may be a story in there, but it hurts, and at the earliest opportunity they spike it and rest their eyes by reading the phone book. Editors get paid to try, but customers don’t. My thesaurus offers the following for “grandiose”: affected, extravagant, highfalutin, ostentatious, pretentious. I would add: “fatal for reader connection.” Here’s an example: “Projects selected for the Good Design is Good Business award clearly demonstrate how thoughtful architecture, cohesive collaborations, and sustainable resource management benefit a client’s bottom line, productivity levels, and preparedness for the future. EYP’s commitment to design excellence and understanding real-world challenges is abundantly evident in the GE Headquarters project. The firm’s close collaboration with the client resulted in a successful business enterprise that enhances productivity, facilitates sustainable operations, and that provides an aspiring work environment for GE employees.” Nobody talks like this! For some reason, businesses that sell to other businesses are more prone to grandiosity in their written content. Businesses that sell to end users, like Google, Facebook, Netflix and big online retailers, make sure what they write connects. Even their corporate news releases are easy to understand. The cure for grandiosity is to stop transmitting and start communicating. Companies trapped in transmit mode are beguiled by what they have to say about themselves and write for an audience comprising, chiefly: