Build your skills! Take our eLearning courses on TITAN!
World-class eLearning courses with videos, exercises, downloads, and a certificate of completion. Get started today!
You’ve Been Pwned!
/4 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle /by Mike FigliuoloGiven this is a short 4th of July week and I’m sure you (like me) don’t want to use too many brain cells, I figure we’ll keep it light and have some fun. Then again, fun is what it’s all about, isn’t it? So many times we while away the days being the consummate professional. We read professional journals. We write professional messages. We hold professional meetings. We wear professional clothes. Sometimes we push the limits and read SEMI-professional blogs like this one (which is a wonderful little guilty pleasure). Unfortunately this professionalism bleeds over into everything we do. Professionalism eventually becomes the ultimate buzzkill. And once that happens, life sucks. Allow me to illustrate. My son’s school has a huge outdoor games at the end of the year. There’s a picnic, games, blow-up climbing thingies, etc. Parents are invited. Here’s the first rub – it occurs during the day therefore a lot of parents don’t attend due to work. For some, that’s a reasonable reason to miss the event. For others who have flexibility, it was a lame excuse.
5 Resume Myths Debunked
/2 Comments/in Career /by Mike FigliuoloJudging from the thousands of books and hundreds of thousands of websites on the topic, you’d think the resume is the be-all, end-all of human existence. Thousands of pages written about one or two simple pages of text. There are books, websites, training courses, DVDs and how-to guides on the subject ad nauseum. Here’s the dirty little secret – a lot of it is snake oil. Indulge me while I debunkify a la Mythbusters. Strap yourself in – I’m about to challenge “reality” which just might cause a quantum shift in the wasted-time-polishing-a-resume/job availability continuum… 1. Your resume alone can land you a job. Wrong. Too many people spend so much time and effort on their paper because they believe it is the magical key to the six figure job offer. It doesn’t get you the job. It gets you a phone call and serves as a conversation piece during interviews. If you submit your resume and get a phone call, you’ve succeeded. You’ve cut through the clutter and grabbed their attention. They’re interested in spending time getting to know you. I’ve never heard of someone landing a job with nothing but a resume (and if you have, I’d submit said hiring company is terrible at candidate diligence).
The Learning Opportunity
/0 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike FigliuoloEd Ruggero, author of The Leader’s Compass, returned the guest blog favor (click here to read Ed’s post on this blog) and has published my post about some of my screw ups as a young tank platoon leader. To read about tanks, swamps, ammo fires and butt chewings (and yes, there are some good leadership lessons in there), check out my post on Ed’s blog: MyLeadersCompass.com. – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
3 Simple Steps for Driving Your Audience to Action
/0 Comments/in Communications, Guest Blogger /by Mike FigliuoloBrian Clark, the founder of Copyblogger, has been gracious enough to have me as a guest blogger. The article is about how you can communicate and persuade more effectively through better audience connections. Those connections are built by starting with the audience and working backwards. To read about Hobbes, WIFY, and pushing buttons, check out my post on Copyblogger. Copyblogger has over 37,000 subscribers and over 100,000 unique monthly site visitors. The Guardian named Copyblogger one of the world’s 50 most powerful blogs. Advertising Age ranks Copyblogger as a top 5 blog about marketing. Technorati says Copyblogger is one of the 50 most popular blogs in the world, and a top 20 favorite among readers. The editors of Performancing honored Copyblogger founder and editor Brian Clark by naming him the most influential blogger of 2007, and he came in at number 30 among the 50 most influential bloggers compiled by top blogger Leo Babauta. In other words, Copyblogger is a pretty reputable place to get published. I’m grateful to Brian for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts with his readers. – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC Photo: Number 3 by Richard Whitaker
Hey Mr. Smartypants!
/4 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Training /by Mike FigliuoloYou’re not as smart as you think you are. Seriously. I mean, you’re bright and literate but you’re really not as smart as you think. Neither am I. See, the thing is, as soon as you start walking around with your smartypants on, you expose yourself to the risk of career irrelevance. The world changes. Every day. The risk of thinking you’re smart is that you think you don’t need to learn anything new or change. Once that happens, you’ve doomed yourself to irrelevance just like the amazing car phone (remember those?). Smart people know a lot. Heck – some of them think they know everything (sort of like Lumbergh). They won’t tell you that because it’s boorish but trust me, they think it even at some subliminal level. You know it’s true. Because of that, they’re loathe to learn something new because by definition it means they don’t know everything. It’s easier to know it all by refusing to admit there’s anything new to know. By now, Mr. or Mrs. Smartypants has stopped reading because they know the lesson or suggestion is coming and well, gee… they already know it all so there’s no point in them continuing with the rest of the post. If you’re not a smartypants, keep reading.
Short Term Loss, Long Term Customer(s)
/3 Comments/in Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Training /by Mike FigliuoloIt happened again. Not once, not twice… but three times in one week. No, I didn’t get more speeding tickets. I had three outstanding customer service experiences. So I’m on my way to a client engagement one morning. Of course, the hotel (which was fantastic – a newly renovated Hilton in Pittsburgh. I highly recommend it) did not account for my coffee drinking preferences. There were only two of the little LaVazza coffee packets (I need about six to get going – it’s a nasty habit). I downed them but it still wasn’t enough. I strolled over to the client site and stopped by the nondescript little coffee shop in the lobby. No, believe it or not it wasn’t a Starbucks despite their ubiquity. This place is called Buon Giorno and it’s located in the lobby of the ABSC building in downtown Pittsburgh (near North Shore Center by PNC Park). I looked over the fresh pastries and bagels but I was on a mission – coffee. The young lady behind the counter greeted me with a warm hello in between a lively discussion in a foreign Eastern European language I didn’t understand. She was arguing with someone unseen behind the back counter. I opened my wallet to do a cash check and saw nothing but blackness and old receipts. My eldest daughter had hit the BOD without me knowing it (Bank Of Dad). No cash whatsoever but I’m sure she enjoyed her trip to the mall. I asked the lady “do you take plastic?” You know what the answer was. My quest for caffeine screeched to a thundering halt.
New Book Recommendation – The New Gold Standard
/2 Comments/in About Us, Books, Customer Service /by Mike FigliuoloHeads up all of you who love to better understand customer service as well as those of you who love to read! Dr. Joseph Michelli (author of The Starbucks Experience) has released his newest book on The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. The book is called The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. I actually had the privilege of attending the same training session at the Ritz-Carlton as Dr. Michelli did when he was doing his research. I’m even quoted in the book (you have to read it to see what I had to say)! As all of you know, I’m pretty big on customer service, so this book is a must read from where I sit. I know you’ll value the insights he provides because I was there when he was gathering them. The Ritz-Carlton is a unique place we can all learn something from. Rather than me trying to explain what you’ll be getting out of the book, I’d rather let the professionals do it so here goes: Discover the secrets of world-class leadership!
Achieving Focus – Guest Blogger
/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike FigliuoloI’m thrilled to bring you Ed Ruggero as a guest blogger this week. You’ll find some background on Ed at the end of the post. I hope you enjoy his thoughts as much as I do. Here’s Ed: Recently I watched some paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division train for deployment to Iraq. At one training site engineers had constructed a roofless house with thick walls—plywood covering stacked tires—some fifteen feet high and topped with a catwalk for observers. Working in groups of five, the paratroopers gathered by the entrance in tight formations, chest to back, each man keenly aware of everyone’s location. On a signal from the leader—usually the second man in line—the point man battered open the first door and the team rushed in. They moved quickly and methodically from room to room, rifles shoulder high, firing disciplined bursts of three rounds at life-sized targets positioned inside. Often the muzzles of their weapons were just a foot away from a buddy. The first man in had to trust that the second man would immediately cover the other side of the room—the blind spot. Any one of them acting carelessly might have shot a buddy in the back. So, of necessity, the paratroopers’ movements were well-choreographed—quick and deadly. When I told my wife about the exercise, she asked if I’d ever trained with live ammunition during my time in the Army, and I said I had. “What was that like?” she wanted to know. “Well, working with live ammunition flying all over the place tends to focus your thinking,” I said.