Entries by Ryan Shaw

Personal Empowerment and Why It Matters

July 13, 2020 /0 Comments/in , , , /by

Blanca De La Rosa discusses how people can take control of their careers through personal empowerment. Today’s post is by Blanca De La Rosa, author of Empower Yourself for an Amazing Career (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Are you in control of your life and your career? Is your life what you imagined it would be? Or have you somehow allowed yourself to be deterred from your chosen path? Did you know that nothing changes unless you change it? No matter what you seek, it can only happen if you do something about it. Take charge of your personal power. To be empowered you must know what you want for your life and why. Personal empowerment is a collection of beliefs, actions and skills all working together to help you achieve your goals and it begins with two things: self-awareness and a positive mindset.

How does your company handle times of extreme challenge?

July 9, 2020 /0 Comments/in , , , /by

Our reader poll today asks: How does your company handle times of extreme challenge? We hunker down and don’t do anything different until things calm down. 16% We play defensively but take on small new initiatives with low risk. 37% We aggressively seek new opportunities and invest behind them. 48% Seizing the moment: While the poll is split on those playing offense and those playing defense, the implications are pretty clear. For those acting defensively, you need to factor in how other market participants will behave when calculating your stance. If you’re not factoring in the aggressive 48% into your expectations, your defensive stance might cost you more than you anticipate. Strategy isn’t just about your actions – it’s about your actions in relation to other players in the market. You might find your defensive strategy puts you further behind your more aggressive competition and when you come out of that defensive stance ready to compete aggressively again, you may have a lot of catch-up to play. While being defensive is certainly understandable, you could be creating many more risks than you believe you are. Conduct a rigorous market assessment before choosing a stance. 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 Develop Resiliency During Times of Stress

July 8, 2020 /0 Comments/in , , /by

Finding ways to be resilient during difficult times is a key factor in what makes a strong leader. Today’s post is by Maureen Metcalf, a thoughtLEADERS principal. Resilience is a key factor in leadership success during times of stress. Our ability to manage our own energy and thinking have a significant impact on our ability to deliver personally and on our ability to inspire our followers. By building our resilience and creating a culture where others are expected to build theirs, we can make a significant impact on driving and sustaining our success as individuals and as organizations. Jon and Maureen start with defining resilience then move to the critical aspects of personal resilience. They include a focus on how brains and bodies react to stress and practices that will reduce the impact events have on leaders. discuss their areas of expertise in brain functioning. This interview includes a discussion of specific tools that allow leaders to build more resilient brains and reduce emotional reactivity. These tools help leaders manage feelings thereby also reducing stress. Equipped with these tools, leaders need to build practices.

The Shocking Trait That Undermines Your Leadership Credibility

July 6, 2020 /2 Comments/in , , , /by

Credibility is the foundation of effective leadership. Today’s post is by Alain Hunkins, author of Cracking the Leadership Code (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Clint is the co-founder of a software company that’s experienced rapid growth over the past three years.  He’s smart, outgoing, and great in front of customers.  In fact, Clint is the sales team’s go-to to close big accounts.  The sales team has nicknamed him Midas, because everything he touches turns to gold. On top of all that, Clint’s a genuinely nice guy. However, for all of his strengths, Clint has a tragic flaw.  He’s consistently late for meetings.  Ten, twenty, thirty minutes late is par for the course with Clint, and sometime more.  Clint is also the master of coming up with reasons why he’s late—this customer meeting went long, that operational issue needed his time, the traffic from the airport was atrocious. However, as much as Clint tries to explain each instance away, his team’s not having it anymore.  Clint’s invisibility is having a visible impact on engagement and morale—from the top straight on down.  Whether he realizes it or not, Clint’s been shooting his credibility in the foot.  It’s hurting his leadership and having an impact on the company. If you want to be a great leader, and have those you lead perform at their best, the onus is on you to create an effective leader-follower relationship. You set the tone. You lay the groundwork of connection for what that relationship will become. The first step on that journey is establishing your credibility.

How Smart Leaders Get Their Teams to Exceptional Results

July 1, 2020 /0 Comments/in , , , /by

In this episode of Innovating Leadership Maureen Metcalf, thoughtLEADERS Principal, interviews Victor Prince, a fellow thoughtLEADERS Principal, about guiding leaders to exceptional results. In today’s interview, Victor talks about the power of applying the “Leadership Matrix” -the box- to team management. He will describe what exactly the Leadership Matrix is, how it works, and how it will help you get the best out of yourself and your team. Victor, through all of this, will also answer a few of the below questions: Who should read Lead Inside the Box? What problem does it help them solve and how do you help people solve that problem? He will walk us through the different parts of the Leadership Matrix, explain the four boxes and how to utilize this tool to allocate leadership time by the various groups.  Victor provides great insights about how this structure helps managers and leaders think through what employees need using a framework to categorize where they are right now. This tool can also help shift people to become more productive. Stay tuned for more of these leadership discussions between Maureen and Victor, along with a few other team members from thoughtLEADERS, being featured on the Innovating Leadership podcast.

Leadership the AirBnb Way

June 29, 2020 /0 Comments/in , , , /by

Sometimes the best leaders are the ones at the back of the pack, helping to drive everything forward and sometimes they are out front, and other times it benefits to be both, just like AirBnb. Today’s post is by Joseph Michelli, author of The AirBnb Way (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Around 2007, Simon Cooper was the CEO of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, where I was working with their senior leadership team. Simon and I were exploring how Ritz-Carlton could adapt to meet the needs of changing luxury travelers without losing the company’s legacy customer base. Simon offered an example of the challenges faced by the luxury hotel company in 2008, “I had a guest complain to me that he saw one of our bartenders serve a young guest a bottle of beer without a glass. When I looked into it, I informed the complaining guest that the service was a result of the young guest having asked for his beer to be served that way a day before. That is the challenge … to customize the experience to the guest, ensuring that traditional and new-generation guests are each treated respectfully in accord with their wishes.” In that same year, two men in San Francisco (Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia) were facing a very different accommodation challenge. They were trying to make rent for their apartment after a third roommate moved out. Since Brian and Joe had recently graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and given that a design conference was coming to San Francisco, the roommates decided to create a make-shift website targeted to conference attendees. They planned to place three air mattresses in the spare room and offer breakfast (in the form of uncooked pop tarts) for $80 per night, per guest, for the duration […]