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Focusing and Eliminating Distractions
Learn how to identify distractions and focus your team on the most strategically important initiatives for your organization. In a fast paced world, there is no shortage of distractions. Side projects, interesting new ideas, and the crisis of the day can divert resources from key strategic initiatives. In isolation, pursuing these small ideas make sense, but when you put them in the broader context of your strategic initiatives, you get to see exactly how nonstrategic these distractions are. You have to remind people of their priorities. Eliminate these resource-draining distractions. Chasing these ideas prevents your strategy from being executed.
The Question Every CEO Should Ask Before a Global Hire
Before a global hire, look beyond experience. Three practical checks help CEOs assess whether an executive can adapt when familiar approaches stop working well. Today’s post is by Steve McKinney, coauthor of ‘Global Mindset: A Guide for Cross-Cultural Leadership’ with Bryan McKinney. Consider a manufacturing executive who had successfully led a plant with 5,000 employees before taking on a much smaller team in another country. On paper, the move looked straightforward. Why would someone who had managed that much complexity struggle with a smaller team? But the executive’s direct questions produced polite agreement rather than candid discussion. Decisions announced in meetings stalled afterward. The executive pushed harder, interpreting the delay as an execution problem. What he had misread was how people raised concerns and built commitment. That executive was me. The experience shaped a question I have returned to throughout two decades of building global teams and evaluating senior leaders across markets: What evidence tells us this person can adapt when the conditions behind their previous success change? That question belongs alongside every discussion of an executive’s track record. Past results matter. But they tell us what someone achieved in a particular setting, not automatically how that person will perform in the next one. Before a major acquisition, a leadership team examines the assumptions behind the numbers. An executive appointment deserves the same discipline. Beyond asking whether a candidate delivered growth or improved operations, we should ask what made those results possible. Which relationships, decision rights, resources, and working habits supported that success? Which will be different in the new role? This is where I find Proactive Agility useful: anticipating changes in the operating environment and adjusting before they force costly correction. In hiring, the task is not to ask whether a candidate considers themselves adaptable. It is to […]
3 Mistakes to Avoid When Investing Your Leadership Capital
I’ve seen leaders make three common mistakes when investing in their leadership capital. These mistakes hurt both their efficiency and their effectiveness. Do you work a 40 hour week or are you working 24/7? How much effort are you putting into your work? How much stress do you experience from the energy you’re putting in? Your time and energy are finite resources. You can squeeze more time out by taking away from other activities in your life but you can’t do that forever. That time isn’t unlimited. If you squeeze out too much, bad things can happen. I’m speaking from experience here. I’ve had two heart attacks because I was spending too much time and energy with my work. Something needs to change. To reduce the time you spend at work, reduce stress, and improve performance, you need to approach how you spend your time and energy differently. Leadership capital is the time and energy you invest in leading your team. It needs to be invested carefully like any other scarce resource. When’s the last time you assessed where you’re spending your time and energy? Who are you spending it with? How are you spending it? Are you getting the results you want from those investments? These are all questions I want you to consider as you assess how you’re spending the valuable resource of your leadership capital. 3 Leadership Capital Mistakes I’ve seen leaders make three common mistakes when investing in their leadership capital. These mistakes hurt both their efficiency and their effectiveness. The Peanut Butter Approach The first mistake I see is what I call the peanut butter approach. What leaders do is give everyone on their team exactly the same amount of their time and energy. They just spread it around evenly. They do this because it feels fair to everyone. What’s wrong with this approach is not everyone needs the same amount of your time. It’s not fair to those who need less. It feels like micromanagement. It’s not fair to those who need more […]
Hiring Experience Makes All the Difference
The quality of a candidate’s hiring experience significantly impacts an organization’s ability to attract top talent. Today’s post is by Lisette Howlett, author of The Right Hire (CLICK HERE to get your copy). I have had a number of bizarre hiring experiences which, supported by research and leadership experience, have led me to reach a number of conclusions about hiring, namely that it is an often undervalued and overlooked area which can have a profound impact on an organization. Along with many of my generation, my entry to the corporate world was through the fairly traditional graduate selection process. As graduation approached, I bought a suit (mid grey) with my mother’s help, and participated in a number of 1-2 day selection centers held by my target companies. At one, I was asked which area of business I would like to work in and politely said that I did not want to work in marketing. The offer I received was to join the marketing department. To this day I am convinced the selector wrote down the words marketing when I said not marketing and either forgot the X or overlooked it during the placement discussion. This experience taught me the importance of listening, and more importantly, hearing, during an interview. If you do not later take into account, or at least refer to if you decide to ignore it, something important that is raised by a candidate during an interview you damage your credibility as an employer. For top candidates who have a very real choice about where they work, this can make the difference between them accepting your offer or one from your competitor.
Which of the following phrases do you dislike the most?
Our reader poll today asks: Which of the following phrases do you dislike the most? “Let’s circle back on that” – 22% “At the end of the day …” – 7% “Let’s leverage …” – 5% “Let’s put a pin in it” – 19% I hate them all – 35% I have no problem with any of these – 11% What are you actually saying? It seems the vast majority of you dislike buzzwords and vapid phases, and with good reason. While this kind of jargon might sound good, it only serves to confuse listeners/readers and adds nothing to the conversation. Instead of being lazy and using the latest catch phrase, ask yourself what you’re actually trying to say. Some of the phrases are simply a waste of time (like “at the end of the day”) while others can be said more simply or precisely. Instead of saying “let’s put a pin in it” why don’t you say “let’s schedule another discussion on this topic tomorrow at 1PM”? Add precision and clarity to your language at every opportunity. It does more to drive action and not make people frustrated with jargon. – 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!
4 Ways to Invest Your Leadership Capital
There are four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. Depending on your team, you’ll have a different mix of these activities. There are four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. They’re directing work, doing work, delivering work and developing people: Directing work Directing including planning where you translate your vision into individual goals and activities. Prioritizing which is turning individual goals into team priorities. And coordinating using your position to provide broader perspective to the members of your team and help them see how their work fits into that broader picture. Doing work Doing is comprised of deciding where you as the leader have to make decisions that can’t be made by the members of your team. Motivating, inspiring your team members to do difficult things. And clearing, helping your team members overcome the roadblocks they’re going to face. Delivering work Delivering consists of monitoring where you’re tracking team progress against goals and objectives. Correcting where you’re fixing work that wasn’t done right the first time. And repairing where you’re repairing damage when mistakes are made. You’ll have to smooth over some relationships that get damaged when they make those mistakes. Developing people Developing includes training where you’re teaching new skills and building the capabilities of your team members. Coaching where you’re building their confidence and their capabilities by helping them understand how they need to grow. And promoting, advancing your team members’ careers by positioning them for growth. Depending on your team, you’ll have a different mix of these activities but these activities comprise for the most part what’s expected of all good leaders. Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy! 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 […]
Why Leaders Must Know When Something Has Run Its Course
Learn three signs that a process, commitment, or way of working may have run its course. Today’s post is by Marc D. Kirshbaum, author of The Eleven Primal Spaces: Awakening Next-Level Leadership By Reconnecting To What Makes Us Human. Leadership culture has a great deal to say about endurance. We admire the executive who remains calm when things get difficult. The manager who holds a team together through an uncertain stretch. The founder who keeps going when the odds are no longer friendly. There is good reason for that. Resilience and commitment matter. People look to leaders, especially when conditions are hard, to bring steadiness and perspective. Still, there is a point at which endurance can become something else. A leader may continue carrying an initiative because it has been theirs for years. A team may keep a meeting on the calendar because it has always been there. An organization may cling to a process designed for a problem that no longer exists. None of this usually happens because people are careless. More often, it happens because the familiar has a way of becoming invisible. That is where the Tenth Primal Space, Death, enters the leadership conversation. The Space for Death is not about being morbid or dramatic. It is about recognizing that endings are part of responsible leadership. It asks us to see when something has served its purpose, to acknowledge what it gave us, and to decide what needs to happen next. This can be difficult because leaders are often rewarded for holding on. They rescue struggling projects, absorb work that should have been redistributed, preserve traditions long after their original meaning has faded, and postpone decisions that everyone knows are coming. At first, this may look like strength. Sometimes it is. But perseverance and prolonging are not […]
As we close in on Q4, what are your expectations for how this year will turn out for your organization?
Our reader poll today asks: As we close in on Q4, what are your expectations for how this year will turn out for your organization? It will be far better than we expected – 9% It will be better than we expected – 23% It will be about what we expected – 46% It will be worse than we expected – 19% It will be far worse than we expected – 4% More good than bad. Those of you having a better year than expected (32%) edged out the 23% whose year is going worse than expected. That’s somewhat encouraging in a time of economic and social unrest. The question for leaders in both situations is similar – what are you going to do to improve your outcome as the year comes to a close? For those doing better than expected, how can you avoid coasting into the finish line and instead guarantee your better-than-expected performance? For those doing worse than expected, what actions can you take now to change the trajectory of your results. Additionally for both groups, how can you generate more accurate predictions and forecasts for next year? More accurate forecasts help you better allocate resources and manage your operations. It’s worth investing time in seeing where your variances were this year and assessing how you can reduce those variances next year. – 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!