Books – Page 55 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

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 be a better storyteller. Check out Paul’s guest blog post here.

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 knowledge to garner action and get results.

3 Keys to Business Success from 80s Hair Bands

October 17, 2012/2 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Communications, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Kristin Woodman, author of 24 Hours of Life and Leadership: The Marine Corps Way (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

I’ve been everywhere
Still I’m standin’ tall
I’ve seen a million faces
And I’ve rocked them all
– Bon Jovi, Wanted Dead or Alive

Driving home with the top down after a long and tiring day at work, the radio is turned to Hair Nation. The day falls away as the chords come over the speakers, and a sense of rebellion has me belting out the lyrics as I drive down the road. I’m immediately taken back to the days of mullets, torn jeans and concert t-shirts.

In my youth, I embraced the loud music, big hair, and crazy antics of 80‘s hair bands in resistance the rules and discipline of my “high and tight” Marine father. Decades later, I’m still a fan.

Love ‘em or not, they were successful. Take a walk down memory lane to learn three things the hair bands reveal about success today, and how you too might rock a million with your products and services…

Be Different

“I’ve seen ‘em come and go, the kind that do it all for the show” – Cinderella, If You Don’t Like It

All the 80‘s hair bands followed a general formula: big hair, tight clothes and power chords. Yet, despite their general commonality, successful bands each had their own distinctive something that set them apart.

For example, Cinderella whipped their guitars around their bodies while playing (which is harder than it looks by the way). While they followed the formula of their peers, they did something no one else did. The guitar trick got them noticed long enough for screaming kids to pay attention to their music.

The bands that enjoyed success followed the formula first, and then differentiated themselves.

This holds true for businesses as well. Even if a company’s product or service is similar to others, focusing on – and celebrating – something different is what it takes to get noticed. And while the bands focused on gimmicks, professionals can focus on unique approaches, features or service.

Have Fun

Read more

Making No Decision is Still Making a Decision

October 8, 2012/9 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, 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 making decisions.

Enough with all the thinking already! Now you need to drive action. Ideas are great but someone has to put them in motion for them to be worthwhile, and deciding to do that is no easy task. Acting on a decision can be terrifying, especially in the case of large-scale change. Your decision may affect a significant number of people, and what if it is the wrong decision? What if things do not go as expected and the resulting outcome negatively impacts you or your organization? You could lose your job. Worse, hundreds of other people could lose theirs. It is hard enough to act on decisions when just facing your own insecurities. Throw the complexities of your organization into the mix and the angst increases exponentially. Politics, lack of resources, uncertainty, doubt, and fear all mess with our minds right when we are on the verge of taking action.

However, I am challenging you to be thought leaders. Being a thought leader requires you to be bold. Your decisions must be clear and forceful. The “thought” part of the equation only gets you halfway to your destination. As my colleague Alan Veeck says “It’s good to have thoughts, but that’s not enough.” Being a true thought leader means you not only agitate for but also lead change. Such leadership requires decisive action on your part.

You probably see it all the time—people and teams suffering from analysis paralysis. They are unable to make a decision and instead their organization languishes in the purgatory of endless Excel models. People fear making decisions. They sometimes believe, erroneously for the most part, they are better off making no decision than making an incorrect one. By not making a decision, they think they cannot be fired or disciplined for being wrong.

Why You Should Always Lead with a Story

October 3, 2012/5 Comments/in Books, Communications, Guest Blogger, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Paul Smith, author of Lead with a Story (CLICK HERE to get your copy). You can learn more about him at the end of the post. Here’s Paul…

A great sales story isn’t just helpful when talking to the buyer. They’re also helpful to you as the leader to turn your entire organization into a revenue-generating machine—whether they’re in the sales department or not. For example, here’s one that teaches a creative way to approach potential customers that relies on the old adage, “Two heads are better than one.”

It’s 10am on your first day off work in six months. You’re just about to watch the whole season of your favorite television program, when the phone rings. It’s a “financial advisor” at some bank, and he wants to know if you’re happy with your investments. The last thing you want right now is to get trapped in a sales call. But you have to admit you’re not happy with your returns. (Is anybody ever?) After two more questions and answers, it’s clear this guy is following his script to the letter. If he’d listened to your answer to the last question he’d already know the answer to this one. While he’s rattling off talking point #4, you’re looking for a way out. After ten minutes, you feel like you’ve been more than generous, and end the call as graciously as you can. He wasted ten minutes and didn’t make a sale. You’re ten minutes behind a 15-episode season.

An hour later, the phone rings again. It’s another financial advisor. (Can you believe it!) He also wants to know if you’re happy with your investments. But before you can explain that you just went through this with one of his competitors, you realize something is different. There isn’t just one voice on the other end of the line. There are two. You just got a phone call from two people! The last time you got a call from two people it was your mom and dad calling to wish you a happy anniversary. But you’ve never gotten a business phone call from two people before. At a minimum, you’re intrigued.

You get through the first two questions and something else is different. Read more

How to Turn Eureka Moments into Big Ideas

September 5, 2012/5 Comments/in Books, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Chris Grivas – co-author of THE INNOVATIVE TEAM: Unleashing Creative Potential For Breakthrough Results (CLICK HERE to get your copy). You can learn more about him at the end of the post. Here’s Chris…

Eureka moments are Pitt/Berry/Jolie/Clooney sexy – there’s no point in denying that. That moment when Edison’s filament lights, when Jobs conceives the iPhone – it’s thrilling. Yet often the key to innovation lies not in the big idea, but in discovering a new way to look at the problem.

Example: Billy Beane, General Manager for Oakland A’s (played, as it happens, by Brad Pitt in “Moneyball”), was facing an economic brick wall. After losing his best players to free agency, he needs to build a winning team with less money than his competition.

Today’s financial climate means we in business need to find innovative ways how to do more with less, to attract and retain the people who can do the job, and to put a team together that can produce exceptional results. In my book, “The Innovative Team,” a team has to take their work up a notch or three when a key client threatens to walk. Like Billy Beane, they started by redefining the problem. What is the core issue at stake?

For Beane, the question changed from “How do we replace our best players?” to “How can we win more games?” For our team, it changed from “What recommendations should we make to our client?” to “What can we show our client to help her think differently?”

Research into creativity and innovation shows that the four-step process we all take toward solving problems is common across cultures and throughout history. Those four steps are:

Listening Can Make You a Better Leader

September 4, 2012/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

I guess I’m on a listening kick lately given I recently wrote about why you should listen twice as much as you talk. Today I’m going to invite you to do some more listening (because I really don’t feel like typing).

I recently spoke with William Arruda at Personal Branding TV about listening, life, dogs, Frisbee, and other important leadership skills. The interview was a blast and William brought out some great points about how you can build your own personal brand based on your personal leadership philosophy.

I invite you to grab your coffee, kick up your feet, and listen to William and me talk about leadership and personal branding. You can download the audio interview by CLICKING HERE.

Speaking of listening, I’m excited to announce that One Piece of Paper is now available as an audiobook from Audible.com! Now instead of reading it you can simply listen to it. You can even get it for a huge discount! Click on over to Audible to learn more and download your copy now.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

– If you want to learn how to create your own set of leadership maxims that ensure you behave the right way in any situation, grab a copy of my book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership or download the audiobook version at Audible.com.

Photo: Microphone by Staffan Vilcans

The Power of Less Talking and More Listening

August 27, 2012/0 Comments/in Books, Communications /by Mike Figliuolo

I learned a great lesson from an extremely smart executive when I was starting my career in consulting. It boiled down to “shut up and listen.” The following excerpt from my book, One Piece of Paper, relates the story and I’ve offered a few lessons you can draw from my stupidity.

Speaking of listening, I’m excited to announce that One Piece of Paper is now available as an audiobook from Audible.com! Now instead of reading it you can simply listen to it. You can even get it for a huge discount! Click on over to Audible to learn more and download your copy now. Now onto the story…

As with all my maxims, both of these have personal stories behind them. This maxim was taught to me by the partner in charge of a consulting project I was assigned to. He was my boss’ boss.

We were at dinner with the senior leadership team from a new and important client. This was one of my first consulting projects and I wanted to make a good impression. I was still a little insecure in my role and my abilities as a consultant. I felt a strong need to impress the client executives.

As we ate, the clients asked me about my background. When I started telling army stories they expressed a genuine interest. The more interested they got, the more stories I told. By the time we finished eating they had heard about all my military exploits.

After dinner, the consulting partner running the project asked me how I thought dinner went. I said it was a wonderful meal and the clients seemed like fantastic people. Of course I would think that – they politely sat there and listened to my life’s story. The partner then asked me what I learned about the client over the course of the meal. Read more

What Zappos Can Teach You About Competing and Winning

July 25, 2012/2 Comments/in Books, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Strategy, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

It’s an honor and a privilege to bring you some thoughts from bestselling author Dr. Joseph Michelli (author of The Zappos Experience and The Starbucks Experience) on how to reduce the risk of becoming a commodity. Enough of me… here’s Joseph.

Every business is at risk of becoming a commodity. So how is it that some travel agents still thrive after the advent of Priceline and Travelocity? Why do some companies maintain premium pricing while similar businesses have to resort to discounting to attract price sensitive consumers? And the most important question of all, how can YOU assure that YOUR business doesn’t fall into the commodization trap?

The recent recession has only reinforced the economic truth that brands that “wow” customers – thrive and survive! Conversely, brands that simply satisfy consumers are at the risk of extinction! While the lessons, I’m sharing here could’ve just as easily been drawn from my books about Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, the Pike Place Fish Market, or the UCLA Health System, I’ll offer insights and tools courtesy of Zappos (The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage and WOW).

Zappos is an online retailer who defied the odds and built an Internet empire, initially as a virtual shoe store and now expanding its inventory well beyond shoes alone. Zappos has always charged top dollar for its products and has succeeded primarily because they innovated an experience that consistently exceeds the expectations of customers, vendors, and people who simply encounter the brand.

To help you appreciate how Zappos might serve as a provocative benchmark for your customer experience, let me cover the 5 principles outlined in The Zappos Experience:

How Leaders Can See the Future

June 4, 2012/4 Comments/in Books, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

The following is an excerpt from my book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (you can get your copy here). This post will help you be more visionary and force yourself to look into the future.

Your team looks to you for new ideas, inspiration, and indicators of how you want to approach change. If you personally never challenge the status quo, you cannot expect them to bring you a bevy of new ideas to help you achieve your vision.

You must first force yourself to regularly question the way things are, so you can break through the “that’s the way we’ve always done it” barrier to create something new. This kind of questioning will help you identify new opportunities or threats before it is too late to do something about them. Vision is great, but action is what gets you there, and for action to occur, you must first identify the opportunities and ideas on which to act.

Many leaders become complacent about looking into the future. They believe they know what lies ahead for their organization. They stop focusing on the future because it seems clear what is in store for them, and they believe that the best use of their energy is to drive current operations. These leaders would do well to heed the sage words of Paul Saffo: “Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.”

Great leaders consistently look beyond clarity into the uncomfortable ambiguity ahead. They embrace their responsibility to find new ideas that prepare their organization to win in uncertain future environments. Failure to look beyond those short distances will lead you to miss the opportunities and crises that inevitably await.

Do not expect to have all the answers. You will not create all the ideas by yourself. Your team, peers, customers, boss, and other affected stakeholders in your organization will help you identify new opportunities and generate new ideas. Your role in leading the thinking is leading the team to have the right conversation in the first place.

How Innovation can Improve Your Leadership

May 30, 2012/3 Comments/in Books, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Maureen Metcalf – a thoughtLEADERS instructor and author of The Innovative Leadership Fieldbook (which was the winner of Best Business Reference Book and a finalist in Best Business Book in the 2012 International Book Awards). You can learn more about her at the end of this post. Here’s Maureen:

As leaders, we innovate to improve our products and technology. We now have designer dogs and designer foods – we are surrounded by innovation. We can become overwhelmed with the number of innovations to the point that a simple trip to the store to buy “tennis shoes” no longer means going to the shoe aisle – now we go to a sporting goods store and have an entire section the size of a small shopping mall.

So, as you lead in the world of dramatic ongoing change an innovation, how do you manage the pace and the complexity? How do you maintain your effectiveness as a leader?

Let’s look at Bill, the CIO of a large company. He was at the top of his game when he took a job five years ago. He was recruited and enticed to leave his former company. Fast forward to today, he is now struggling to maintain his job. He is a fallen super hero. No more cape and attitude. Now he needs to rebuild the edge he lost.

He was so focused on doing the job and doing it well that he stopped developing. He was highly dedicated to the success of his company but overlooked the fact that doing the job is not enough. He needed to continue to develop his leadership skills.

If you are a world class athlete, you would not work out until you won the Olympics then stop working out until the next Olympics trials then be surprised that you “lost your edge.” Why as a leader would you expect to be the top of your game without continued focus? Test yourself to see if you have lost your edge:

The Key to Real Relationships with Your Team

May 29, 2012/2 Comments/in Books, Career, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

This warrants being said again.

Your team doesn’t trust you.

Honestly. They don’t.

Trust is key to effective working relationships; yet, as you climb the corporate ladder, trust seems harder to earn and easier to lose.

What causes a team to not trust their leader? You. Yes, you. You’re unpredictable and your team doesn’t know what to expect from you. But, these are fixable problems.

Trust is about an ability to rely upon or expect a predictable outcome. When you act in ways your team doesn’t expect, it erodes trust and makes them wonder what you’re going to do next. The root of all your trust issues lies in not clearly setting expectations of your behavior in the first place (and if you don’t think you have a trust issue with your team, take this quick 5 minute assessment to see how you stack up).

If you can clearly lay out how your people can expect you to behave in a variety of situations, they’ll have a basic expectation upon which to build a foundation of trust. These expectations, however, cannot simply be broad, buzzword-filled platitudes.

When you set expectations, they have to be personal and meaningful enough to you that they guide your behavior in a variety of situations. I refer to these guiding principles as “leadership maxims” which are rules of behavior or conduct. The collection of all your leadership maxims becomes your personal leadership philosophy.