Mike Figliuolo – Page 81 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

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Entries by Mike Figliuolo

How Creating a Value Roadmap can Lead to Sustainable Success

March 14, 2012 /3 Comments/in Books, Communications, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Sales, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Thomas Butta, Founder and CEO of 21 Weeks. You can read more about him at the end of the post. Here’s Thomas: Do you remember the popular book, Dress for Success? It sold millions of copies based on a simple concept: If you want to get ahead you need to look the part. And that starts with what you wear. Wardrobes were updated everywhere. Dress for Success was itself a resounding success because it nailed the fundamentals. Its basic premise made sense — appearances matter. And, it was easy to execute. So, the individual had a playbook, albeit one book in the broader scheme of things, on how to increase their odds of success. Cool. What about the organization? Is there an equivalent playbook for driving success for the organization as a whole? Is there something fundamental that can be executed across the organization that would also accelerate momentum, value and sustainable success? I would argue, yes, but it’s not what graces most reading lists. Certainly, there is good thinking about the effectiveness of culture, the importance of community, and the benefits of branding. There are also new ideas about more efficient organizational structures and models. All are worth investigating and deploying. But, none of this work gets to the root cause of why organizations are not as successful as they can be. Organizations are not achieving their full potential because organizations do not align for success. For all the talk of one corporate culture, one community, and one brand, we continue to see departments operating within their own agendas, goals and motivations. While some success is being achieved as a result of innovative products, smart selling, and brilliant marketing, an organization will not be as successful as it can be without integrating all three of […]

How You can Stay in Touch with Your Team’s Reality

March 12, 2012 /2 Comments/in Books, 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 staying in touch with the daily reality your team faces. When I was in the army we used to follow a leadership principle that stated “employ your unit in accordance with its capabilities.” That principle was important because you did not want to make the mistake of sending five soldiers carrying rifles out on the battlefield to defeat twenty tanks. Translating this principle to the civilian world, you do not want to ask your people to perform work of which they are incapable. Doing so can frustrate them and leave them demoralized when they fail at the assigned task. The only way you can truly appreciate what your team is or is not capable of is to see it first-hand or, better yet, do it yourself. When you understand what your people do on a daily basis you know how much you can reasonably ask of them. That knowledge of their work also enhances your credibility and their respect for you. Have you ever had the experience where your boss or someone else senior to you asked you to do something that you knew, given the realities of your business and your organization was impossible? It’s frustrating, isn’t it? “If he only had a clue” is likely one of the first thoughts that crosses your mind in those situations. Next you probably elaborate on the stupidity of the request with thoughts like “I can’t believe he asked for that. We will never be able to get that done in the time he has given us. Doesn’t he know anything about what we go through?” I will bet you a dime […]

How Leaders Communicate to Influence, Inspire and Achieve Results

March 7, 2012 /2 Comments/in Books, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest post is by Kevin Murray, author of The Language of Leaders and Chairman of Bell Pottinger – one of the UK’s leading PR agencies. Here’s Kevin: In three decades of working with Chairmen and CEOs, I honestly cannot recall one who I would have deemed to be stupid. They were all clever people. Yet, when faced with the challenge of change, or a crisis, many succeeded and some failed. Those who failed usually lost their jobs. I have been a communications adviser to leaders since 1980, working both inside global corporates, and as a consultant. Increasingly, I became intrigued by that X-factor that enabled the winners to succeed. I had my suspicions, but I wanted to validate them, so I went out to 60 chairmen and CEOs to ask them what they had learned about leadership communications during their long and challenging careers. What they said surprised me. I had expected to hear about how important it was to develop your speaking skills and to be a great orator. Far from it, these leaders spoke about something different – they spoke about the need to be an inspiring communicator. To be inspiring, however, was not the same as being a great orator. To be inspiring, you had to learn how to be a better listener, you had fundamentally to understand what was in the hearts and minds of the people in your audience, and you had to speak with passion and authenticity. You could stumble and stutter over your words, but if people saw you speaking to the things you truly believed, and felt that you truly understood them and respected their views, you were far more likely to make the vital connection that would attract them to your vision. Further research showed me that global HR leaders […]

Take off the Kid Gloves to Resolve Disputes

March 5, 2012 /7 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Entrepreneur, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

You’re too nice. That’s why you’re getting your butt kicked. Competitors. Bosses. Peers. High performers on your team. Customers. They all know you have a glass jaw and all they have to do is throw a sucker punch to lay you out on the canvas. More often than not, you likely dust yourself off, say “good punch!” and move on with life having suffered a small defeat. After a while, that approach is taxing and you build a personal brand of being a pushover. Once that happens, you become the favorite target of everyone who wants to gain an advantage. If you want to change that dynamic, you have to change your approach. Every once in a while you need to throw a hay-maker of a punch right in the face of your opponent. I’m not talking about a defensive counter-punch here. I’m talking about a rear-back, throw everything you’ve got and try to drive their nose out the back of their head kind of punch. The kind of punch they never, ever forget. The kind of punch people talk about as the stuff of legend. To clarify – I’m speaking metaphorically. No workplace violence, please. I’m talking about going ballistic in a meeting. Or instead of simply threatening to talk to an attorney, serve a legal demand notice or file suit. You might choose to fire someone or tell a customer you’re no longer serving them. Perhaps it’s tendering your resignation. *That’s* the kind of punch I’m talking about here.

8 Tough Team Meeting Questions

February 29, 2012 /2 Comments/in Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest post is by Sean Glaze, an expert in team-building and coaching. You can read more about him at the end of the post. Here’s Sean… You probably take your car in for an oil change every 3,000 to 5,000 miles. While at the garage, a good mechanic will take that opportunity to perform an inspection on the major systems in your vehicle to keep you on the road and traveling safely. And if you are smart, you go to the doctor every year or so for a wellness check-up to ensure your health is maintained. When you are working with a team of people, though, it is likely that you have not invested time in gauging the perceptions of your group to ensure the team is functioning as well as it might. Not everyone feels comfortable bringing up or asking questions that may bring issues to the forefront of your team meeting conversations, but they can be a powerful tool for identifying problems that may be lurking beneath the surface of your group interactions and sabotaging your overall productivity or success. If you keep sweeping problems under the rug, eventually you are bound to trip over them. A refusal to acknowledge issues does not make them disappear. So, as a leader, it is in your best interests to offer your people the opportunity to identify possible tough team issues that need to be addressed – and the best way to draw out that information is by asking insightful and tough questions at your next team meeting.

Why Leaders Should be Human Crapshields

February 27, 2012 /6 Comments/in Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Here’s a wayback post from the archives. It’s one of my all-time favorites and it always resonates with leaders whenever I share it. It’s always helpful to trot it out of retirement from time to time and remind leaders their job is to be enablers of their teams. Here’s how you can be a human crapshield: “So what exactly do you do around here Mike?” The question was posited by the snarkiest of my direct reports during my staff meeting (a subject I’ll opine on some time in the future). My job was to direct “the business.” Theirs was to run their respective business units. “Well, I set direction for you guys, set aggressive goals, coach, recruit, and mentor team members. Most importantly though, I act as a Human Crapshield for you guys.” Puzzled looks all around. “A Human Crapshield? Give me a break.” “Look – you really never want to know the volume of crap I shield you guys from so you can focus on your job rather than dealing with the crap.” “Yeah, I’m sure the crap is unbearable. Sounds to me like you’re justifying your role as useless corporate overhead.” Ouch. I’d hate to know what it would be like if my team members didn’t like me… Middle managers and junior executives often find themselves in a pickle. They’re no longer the front-line “doers” nor are they the high up muckety mucks who make the big decisions and the big bucks. They find themselves in the purgatory between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in an uncomfortably undefined role. Yes, they’re responsible for all the items I list above (and then some) but the one role they might be unaware of and underestimate the importance of is the role of Human Crapshield. A Human Crapshield? What exactly does […]

Corporate Leaders are Abandoning Ship

February 22, 2012 /4 Comments/in Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest post is from Bob Herbold, the former Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft Corporation and author of What’s Holding You Back: 10 Bold Steps that Define Gutsy Leaders (CLICK HERE to buy your copy). You can read more about Bob at the end of this post. We read a lot last month about the shameful leadership of Francesco Schettino, the Costa Concordia cruise ship captain who steered his vessel into risky, uncharted waters and then abandoned ship when it ran aground. The saga continued to play out last week when a group of survivors filed a hefty lawsuit claiming gross negligence and fraud. The defendants “acted in a severely reckless and willful, wanton manner, with complete disregard for the safety, lives and well-being of the plaintiffs,” said Marc Bern, a lawyer representing the passengers. I’ve spent all of my life working in industry, first at Procter & Gamble, then as COO at Microsoft, and for the last ten years as a consultant. Along the way, I’ve met hundreds of high-level business leaders and I’m here to tell you, this captain’s behavior mirrors failures I’ve witnessed on a first-hand basis far too often over the course of my career. Let’s take a look at three major leadership gaffs on the part of the ship’s captain and a few corporate examples that I find equally embarrassing:

The Real Difference Between Management and Leadership

February 20, 2012 /16 Comments/in Books, 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 difference between management and leadership. I would love to hear your thoughts on how the two are different so please share your ideas in the comments at the end of the post. You are a leader. Management and leadership are not the same thing. The difference is simple: you manage things; you lead people. Admiral Grace Murray Hopper coined this elegant, clear distinction. Yet there is still a lot of confusion on this point. Management is task-focused. It is short term. It is a series of checklists and to do’s that ensure the work gets done. It is taking actions to hit a budget number or deliver a project on time. Management is how we execute tasks to achieve a specific desired outcome. Said simply, it is the movement of personnel, materiel, and tasks with an exact set of measurable results in mind. Managing things consumes a large portion of our time. It requires forms, reports, meetings, analyses, and documentation. If left unchecked, such tasks will consume every available moment in the day. Sometimes it seems all we do is work on tasks related to managing the organization. When that happens we can easily mistake management for leadership. The logic underpinning that confusion goes like this:

A Simple Formula for Business Success

February 15, 2012 /5 Comments/in Communications, Customer Service, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by John Spence – author of Awesomely Simple – Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas into Action. He’s going to take hundreds of thousands of pages of information and boil it down into a simple formula for business success. Seriously. Here’s John… As global markets become increasingly more competitive and financial turmoil worldwide continues to put pressure on nearly every type of business, I have had more and more organizations approach me to assist them in finding ways to be more competitive and successful in today’s economy. Although there is absolutely no “one size fits all” solution, to me the absolute most powerful strategy is to make sure that the core elements of your business are running so incredibly well that your customers absolutely love doing business with you and are eager to tell their friends, family and colleagues about your products and services. All the marketing tricks, ads and social media efforts in the world simply cannot overcome poor quality or lackluster customer service. That is why for the past 19 years my career has focused exclusively on studying the fundamental elements of business success. Traveling worldwide at upwards of 200 days a year, I have worked shoulder to shoulder with some of the best (and worst) business leaders of our generation. I’ve also maintained a strict regimen of reading a minimum of 100 business books a year since 1989. In preparation for writing my book Awesomely Simple, I compiled all of my research and reading down to a single page that I called my “Strategy Map.” This single piece of paper represented more than 175,000 pages of reading on business excellence and an additional 5,000 pages of interview notes and survey results from my work as a consultant and trainer. I then took all of […]

Entrepreneurship – the Tech is the Easy Part

February 13, 2012 /5 Comments/in Entrepreneur, Innovation, Leadership, Sales, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Tech is easy. Execution is what matters. There. I said it. Why is it that so many entrepreneurs believe the tech is the be-all, end-all? Where did the notion come from that if you have nothing more than a killer application, website, algorithm, or any other combo of 01001010101110110 that you can build a multibillion dollar company? (I probably just dropped an f-bomb with that combo of digits). Wrong. It’s about executing, people (note the comma in this sentence is *very* important). Sure, you need good tech. It must solve a problem. But once it’s built, you have to execute. That’s a whole different skill set than writing code and drawing wiring diagrams. Think about how many awesome technologies went the way of the dodo because the company simply failed to execute. Lots of them. So how can you get better at execution? Here are a few thoughts:

A Personal Interview with a Great Leader

February 8, 2012 /3 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

The people in my professional network are awesome. Occasionally one of them is gracious enough to let me grill them on the subject of leadership. John Petrucci is one of those guys. He’s one of the most down-to-earth people you’ll ever meet and that’s part of what makes him an exemplary leader. You can read all about his accomplishments at the end of the post. Here’s my conversation with John about leadership. All of us can learn a thing or five from him! Mike Figliuolo: What’s the most rewarding part of leading people? John Petrucci: The most rewarding part is derived from supporting them. Supporting associates gives them the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential. To know folks you support have grown to be better, more productive associates, citizens and human beings is tremendously satisfying to a leader. When someone asks me what my greatest professional accomplishment has been, I always respond with the name of an agent I supported while an agency manager at Allstate. I was able to help her see what she could become, and then was privileged to watch her become that person. It doesn’t get any better than that. Mike: What’s the biggest mistake you see leaders make and how can they avoid it or recover from it?

The Real Reasons You Didn’t Get the Job

February 6, 2012 /8 Comments/in Career /by Mike Figliuolo

Interviewing for a new job is an exercise in humiliation, fear, and confusion. Whether you’re interviewing for a job at a new company or just changing roles at your present employer, the process is nauseating. You do everything you can to put your best foot forward. You get your suit pressed. You make your hair look nice. You remove spelling errors from your resume (you *do* do that, don’t you?), and you pop some Altoids before interviewing. You meet with a dozen or so great people who act like they’d love to have you as their colleague. At the end of the process, you’re super duper excited to get that offer for the new role. Then the call comes. Rejected. Then they tell you the “reasons” you didn’t get the role but you can’t help but question them… “Oh we thought you were great but we’ve changed the role requirements.” “You were a perfect fit and we had a hard choice between two great candidates” “You’re overqualified for the role and we didn’t want you to be bored.” “Your urinalysis came back positive for weed and PCP.” (okay… so this one is kinda legit) Wanna know the real reasons you didn’t get the role? Here they are.