Repeatedly asking yourself “why?” is an effective tool to get to the root cause of your problems and gain insights on how to solve them.
One of the most effective critical thinking tools I’ve ever come across is the five whys. When I was a young analyst as a consultant, I was at a client engagement, and I was responsible for doing a lot of analysis. One morning I did a bunch of analysis around some things that my client was purchasing. And when I went to lunch with my project manager, he said, “What have you been doing today?”
And I said, “Well, I was doing the analysis on this one category of spend.”
And he said, “Okay, what’d you learn?”
I said, “Well, I think this is happening.”
And he said, “Okay, well why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Well, why is that happening? Why do you think that’s happening?”
I said, “I don’t know, maybe it’s this.”
And he said, “Okay, well why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“Well, why would that be happening?”
And I stopped and I thought, and I said, “Well, it might be this.”
And he said, “Well, why?” And I said, “Oh my gosh, what’s with the whys?”
And he said, “Mike, our job is to come to insights for our client. We can’t be satisfied with that first answer. We need to ask why and really understand cause. And by the time you ask the fourth or the fifth why, that’s where the real insight is. That’s why it’s the five whys.”
And I took that away from that day, and any time I was working on analysis from that point forward, I would ask why. Why am I seeing the numbers do this? And why is that happening? And why is that happening? Asking those five whys will lead you to insight.
Let me offer an example. Let’s say you’re working with a senior executive, and that senior executive says, “Hey, our stock price just plummeted.” “Okay, well why, why did that happen?” “Well, we missed our earnings.”
1. “Okay, well, why did that happen?”
“Well, because we were discounting our prices too much.”
2. “Okay, well, why were we doing that?”
“Well, because we wanted to retain our customers, so we were offering bigger discounts.”
3. “Okay, well, why are we trying to retain customers with discounts?”
“Well, because we want to grow market share.”
4. “Okay, well, why do we want to grow market share?”
“Well, because that’s what the incentive plan is tied to for all our managers and business unit presidents. The bigger the share, the bigger the bonus they get.”
5. “Well, what happens if we change the incentive plan?”
If we had just stopped at, “Hey, the stock price fell, and it’s because we missed earnings because we were discounting,” there’s no real insight there. When we keep asking why and peeling it back, we can identify what that true root cause is. Then we can solve it, then we can have an impact on the organization. The fifth why is where that real insight resides.
As you look at a problem you’re dealing with, when you see that issue, ask yourself why it’s happening, and ask why again, and again, and again. And by the time you get to that fourth or fifth why, hopefully a new insight will pop out and you’ll be able to start solving the real problem that will have a true impact on the organization.
Want to learn more about critical thinking? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to lead more effectively. 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 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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20250203-Number-5.jpg?fit=1920%2C1920&ssl=119201920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-02-05 06:35:422025-02-03 23:10:02Use the 5 Whys of Critical Thinking
Today’s post is by Anil Singhal, author of “The 5% Rule of Leadership: Using Lean Decision-Making to Drive Trust, Ownership, and Team Productivity.”
We live in an age of corporate layoffs. Whenever companies encounter a setback, the inevitable go-to move is to cut overhead. A challenging stock market, a significant customer loss, the retirement of an aging product line? Lay off employees. Wall Street analysts love to see it – staff cutbacks can mean a short-term boost in your stock price.
In the tech sector, getting ahead is often characterized by perpetual job-hopping in search of a better deal or a higher-level title on one’s resume. Staying at one employer for a few years is usually the exception rather than the rule.
But what if it is possible to build a company with an operating philosophy of never having layoffs and creating a work environment so rewarding that even people who leave to pursue a new job, often as not, come back?
I will make a pragmatic case not just against layoffs but for a commitment to hanging on to your employees in good times and bad. I’m basing it on my experience of running a company for thirty years, from founding to more than one billion dollars in sales without having a major layoff… and keeping my best employees for decades—and that’s through some of the toughest times the tech sector has experienced.
No one would ever call me a saint or a moral philosopher – and I’m not going to make the case that not creating the dislocation and pain of lay-offs is the right thing to do (though it is) or blithely acquiescing to the chaos of “endless employee turnover is inevitable” (it isn’t). But I am a pretty good businessperson if a bit of a maverick. The contrary side of my nature has kept me from going along with the accepted way of running a company, including using layoffs or accepting endless employee departures as a standard business tool.
What I’ve learned over the decades is that there is always some external force beyond a company’s control that can be blamed for its inability to hold on to employees – especially valuable, veteran employees. But if that is the case, why do many admired companies manage to keep their employees for decades, during good times and bad, in cutthroat industries, without losing them or forcing them into layoffs? How did these companies manage to transform employee retention into their own growth engine? Into an asset as important as their products or their customer base?
Here is the rarely admitted truth: keeping your employees is always an internal problem, not an external one. You choose to indulge in layoffs, or you acquiesce to losing key employees. Neither is inevitable. Further, regarding retention, if you are currently worrying about losing your best employees to your competitors, you already have a severe problem.
Why? Because your worry is disguised by knowing that you may not be creating the best work environment for your people.
Companies that enjoy high employee morale don’t worry about retention. They know they have it. If your employees are happy—and, more importantly, feel empowered with control over their livelihood—they aren’t going anywhere. That’s how retention becomes its own engine: if you are doing everything right for your employees, they aren’t sending out resumes.
Consider the alternative. By the time you realize that a valued employee is preparing to leave, it is essentially impossible to convince that person to stay, short of buying them off or promoting them. All that does is award the most brazen with advancement and teach everyone else that this is the route for higher pay. A great company is built on fairness, not upon unequal application or who has the loudest voice.
If you do not exhibit trust in your employees and convince them that you are treating them fairly every day in every corner of your company, with every single action, you will never be able to truly deal with the challenge of retention. Employees do not quit because circumstances have temporarily changed for the worse. They quit because they’ve long since decided that they will quit if they face one more setback. And by then, their unhappiness will have infected those employees around them.
Fairness has two components. First, it is the employee’s (not management’s) perception of being treated fairly. That comes from establishing rules of action and executing them evenly—not rewarding some (superstars, veterans over newcomers, or those who are the loudest) at the expense of others. Second, it is personal liberty. Everyone wants control over their life, and when they sense they have lost that control, they search for a way out.
Absolute fairness means giving every employee the same opportunity to succeed.
When employee departures rise to an unusual level, companies blame external forces. But that is rarely the case. Beyond average turnover from personal life changes, many employee exits are likely a measure of how fairly a company treats its employees. People stay where they are valued.
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 couple of emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog delivered to your inbox every week!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20250203-Resignation-Letter.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=112801920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-02-03 08:02:512025-02-03 02:09:35Retention is an Asset
Our reader poll today asks: How satisfied are you with growth and advancement opportunities within your organization?
Extremely: plenty of growth and advancement available 9.56%
Very: there’s a good selection of advancement opportunities 13.38%
Somewhat: there are a few opportunities but there could be more 30.57%
Not very: advancement is hard to come by 30.57%
Not at all: there is no path to growth or advancement here 15.92%
Where’s the growth? 47% of you reported you’re pretty dissatisfied with the growth opportunities in your organization. And if we add the other 31% who are only somewhat satisfied, we’re at a whopping 78% of people who don’t like their growth prospects. Guess what? Your team members would probably respond the same way! If they’re not happy, they’ll find their growth elsewhere. That may come in the form of taking another job with another company, starting a side hustle, or simply checking out and not giving you their best efforts. What are you doing to create growth opportunities for them? Are you clearly explaining their career path and managing expectations for advancement? Are you cross training them? Getting them educational and training opportunities? Having them take on mentoring roles? If you don’t help them grow, they’ll find someone else who will.
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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/20140203-EKG-Pulse-Graph-with-Glowing-Blue-Line-Narrow.jpg?fit=833%2C258&ssl=1258833Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-30 13:00:342025-01-29 01:18:08How satisfied are you with growth and advancement opportunities within your organization?
There are four major areas you need to assess when judging your team members’ results.
Beyond how you’re spending your leadership capital, you need to assess the results your team members deliver. There are four major areas you need to assess.
Assess the quantity of their results compared to what’s expected. Also look at the quality of their final work, again versus what you expect. Consider how timely the work they deliver is versus expected deadlines. Last, evaluate intangible results related to how they conduct themselves, to what degree do they improve morale on their immediate team, and to what extent do they improve relationships with external stakeholders.
This assessment includes objective observations like quantity relative to a goal, as well as subjective assessments like how well they build relationships. Knowing the results your people are delivering tells you what you get for your leadership capital investments in them.
Quantity of results
The first thing to look at when assessing team member results is the quantity of work they’re getting done. What’s the quantity of their results compared to what you expect of them?
Let’s compare what meeting versus falling short of expectations could look like. The quantity of work delivered should be equal in work load to their peers. You don’t want someone who’s responsible for a little bit of work when you’re asking everyone else on the team to do a lot of work. You want that work complexity to be comparable to that of their peers, and their work should meet or exceed goals that you set for them. The quantity of work shouldn’t be smaller in workload than their peers or lower complexity versus their peers, and it certainly shouldn’t fall short of the goals you’ve set.
Think of someone you’ve led who delivered a high quantity of results. What differentiated them? How did you measure them? How about someone who delivered few results? How did you measure them? How did you set their expected goals? Make sure your people are turning out the amount of work you expect. Measuring the quantity of their results is exactly how you do that.
Quality of results
Quality is an important aspect of someone’s results. You don’t want your team members making a bad trade-off between quantity and quality. To prevent that, you need to monitor the quality of their work versus what you expect. When assessing quality, consider whether their work meets quality expectations versus the expectations you’ve set for their peers.
Take a look at if their work gets good feedback from customers or business partners. Do other people seek out their help and expertise? Does their work add to your team’s reputation? If they’re delivering low quality work, their work is below expectations versus the expectations you’ve set for their peers. They may get no or even bad feedback from your customers. Other people may avoid working with this person, and the quality of their work detracts from your team’s reputation.
At one point in my career I had a quality issue. I was a consultant, and the other consultant on my team was a very high performer. She turned out great work. The thing is, both of us had similar quality expectations. When my project manager looked at my work versus her work, it was pretty clear my work was below expectations versus the expectations of my peer. I was getting some bad feedback from our clients on the quality of my work. Other people avoided working with me. I had a couple of client team members who went to my colleague instead of coming to me. I know the quality of my work definitely detracted from the reputation of our team. It was pretty easy to look at my work and say it was low quality.
Is there someone you’ve led who delivered high-quality results? What made their result high quality? What impact did they have on the team? How were they viewed by your customers or other stakeholders? Have you ever worked with someone who delivered low quality work? What was that like? You need to get high quality results from your team members to justify the leadership capital investments you make in them.
Timeliness of results
Work needs to be delivered when it’s promised. Timeliness is a major evaluation criteria for your team members’ results. How timely is the work your team members deliver versus the expected deadline? When assessing timeliness, consider is this team member held to the same expectations as their peers in terms of deadlines? Does this person meet expectations and deadlines? Do they negotiate realistic deadlines with you? And do they get good feedback from their stakeholders on the timeliness of their results?
Or do you have a situation where they are held to lower expectations then their peers? Where they miss expectations and deadlines? Where they’re constantly renegotiating deadlines with you? Or, where they’re getting no feedback or even bad feedback from your stakeholders about when their deliverables come in? Do your people get their work done on time and as promised? What’s it like when people consistently meet deadlines, or better yet, complete their work before the deadline? What’ve you experienced when people miss deadlines?
It doesn’t matter how much work you do or how high the quality of that work is, if you don’t get it done on time. Timeliness needs to be a major consideration when evaluating your team members’ results.
Build team morale
When looking at how your team members generate the results, the first intangible thing to consider is the person’s impact on team morale. To what degree does this person improve morale on their immediate team?
We’ve all worked with that person who generated great results, but they were a nightmare to work with. Intangibles matter. To assess their impact on morale, ask yourself, is this person optimistic? Do they lift team morale? Do people seek out working with them? Is the person thoughtful and helpful? Do they generate good team energy? Or, are they pessimistic, and they deflate team morale? Do people avoid working with them? Are they selfish and disruptive? Do they drain the team’s energy?
I know one organization that looked at people’s results, both in terms of the what they delivered and how they delivered them. If you delivered awesome results but you were a jerk when you did it, you ended up with a low rating. It was important that you were building team morale as you delivered your results. While morale isn’t necessarily something that goes on people’s annual goals, it is a result of people’s actions. You invest time developing and coaching your people to behave in a certain way. For you to get a return on that investment, you’ll hopefully see them building morale on the immediate team.
If you focus on morale building as a result, they will, too. In doing so, you’ll focus appropriate energy on building morale, and they’re going to build the morale of the overall team.
Strengthen external relationships
It’s not enough for your team members to just build morale within your team. Team members should build and strengthen stakeholder relationships outside your team too.
Assess the extent to which this person improves relationships with stakeholders like business partners and clients. Take a look at the following to see if they’re doing it well. They should be getting good feedback from these external parties. They should be seen as a trusted advisor to represent you and your team. People should be asking to work with this person and they should build your team’s relationship goodwill. If they’re not doing this well, you’re probably going to hear bad or no feedback about this individual from these external parties. They won’t be seen as a trusted ambassador of your team. People might avoid working with this person. And over time, they’re going to drain your team’s relationship goodwill.
I coached one executive who had a member of his team who was not doing this well. She was causing all sorts of problems with their external partners and clients. She was pushing back on deliverables. She wasn’t following the prioritization that they had already agreed to. She was even talking about people behind their backs, and they found out about it. Over time, she was poisoning the relationship with these external stakeholders, and the leader I was coaching had to spend a lot of time rebuilding those relationships. High performers do more than just deliver the basic quality, quantity, and time-based results. They strengthen your team’s reputation. Make this intangible a key consideration as you assess their results.
People who perform poorly in this arena will cause you to spend excessive leadership capital repairing the damage they do. Those who build relationships well are going to save you a lot of time and energy.
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 lead more effectively. 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 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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250129-Data-on-Laptop.jpg?fit=1920%2C1390&ssl=113901920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-29 06:30:332025-01-29 01:48:314 Ways to Assess Your Team Members’ Results
Our reader poll today asks: When evaluating a new supplier, what is your favorite resource available for assessing whether or not to use them?
Text-based website 14.44%
Video explanations of their offerings 6.96%
Hardcopy catalogs and marketing materials 6.95%
Third-party review sites 40.64%
Something else 31.01%
Pay attention to reviews. A hefty 41% of respondents said they assess new suppliers by looking at third-party reviews (and I’m betting the “something else” is reference checks or referrals). No matter how great you tell people you are, they’re more interested in hearing it from other people and not having it come from you. Be proactive about asking for reviews. Ask for testimonials on third-party sites. If someone is a big fan of your work, ask them to serve as a reference whenever you need one. Even offer to draft key bullet points you’d like them to emphasize. Have those points correspond to the points of differentiation you share when you’re selling. Sitting back and hoping people leave you reviews will leave you with no reviews (or only bad ones as people are motivated to share their anger publicly but rarely think about sharing their great experiences). Actively manage your external reputation where it matters.
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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/20140203-EKG-Pulse-Graph-with-Glowing-Blue-Line-Narrow.jpg?fit=833%2C258&ssl=1258833Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-23 13:00:292025-01-21 18:59:21When evaluating a new supplier, what is your favorite resource available for assessing whether or not to use them?
The better you understand who’s consuming your leadership capital and how they’re consuming it, the easier it will be to change their behavior and yours as you work to become a more effective leader.
Assessing who’s consuming your leadership capital helps you understand how and where you’re spending your time and energy. To conduct this assessment, list out the 12 activities under the four major ways you spend leadership capital: directing, doing, delivering, and developing.
For each person on your team, ask yourself if you’re investing more time and energy in this person than you should for that particular activity. This is a subjective call. For situations where the answer is yes, you’re spending more time and energy than you should, put a yes in the box and give it a score of one. For times where it feels like you’re investing an appropriate amount of time and energy, answer no, and that gets a zero. If the total is seven or higher, this person is a high consumer of your leadership capital. Below seven makes them a low consumer of leadership capital.
Let’s look at an example. Let’s say Jim is on my team and I’m going to look at at Jim across all of the leadership capital consumption activities.
Directing
In terms of directing, I’m spending an appropriate amount of time planning and prioritizing his work, so I answer no to both of those questions. However, in terms of coordinating, I’m doing a lot more coordination than I should. I’m making too many introductions for him and he’s asking me to be in the middle of a lot of those activities, so I would say yes, I’m investing more time and energy than I should in coordinating activities.
Doing
In terms of doing, I don’t have any problems with Jim making decisions, so I answer no. But I find myself constantly motivating him and clearing obstacles for him, and these are obstacles he should be able to clear on his own. I answer yes to both motivating and clearing. On delivering the work, I’m investing a lot of time and energy in Jim, way more than I should. I’m constantly having to monitor his work and his tasks. I’m correcting work all the time and I find myself a lot of times repairing damage after he’s caused it. I would answer yes to all three of those areas.
Developing
On developing, I’m spending a lot of time training Jim on tasks he should already know. I also have to invest a disproportionate amount of time in coaching him.
Promoting
Now in terms of promoting him, I’m not having to put in too much activity there, so I answer yes to training and coaching and no to promoting. When I add up all those scores, I get a score of eight. Jim is a high consumer of my leadership capital. These are subjective ratings based upon my assessment of how Jim should be performing, given his skills, tenure, and background.
You should conduct this assessment for all your team members. When you go to populate the leadership matrix, these scores will be one of the major inputs into that analysis. The better you understand who’s consuming your leadership capital and how they’re consuming it, the easier it will be to change their behavior and yours as you work to become a more effective leader.
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 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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250121-Tiny-Clock.jpg?fit=1920%2C1281&ssl=112811920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-22 06:30:492025-01-21 19:11:03Are You Spending Your Time and Energy the Right Way as a Leader?
Our reader poll today asks: How well do you understand the laws and regulations that govern how your business operates?
Extremely well 20.92%
Very well 44.49%
Well 26.23%
Not well 6.46%
Not at all well 1.90%
Staying on Top of Regulations. 65% of you report having a very solid handle on the laws and regulations that apply to your business. If you’re in the 35% that identifies otherwise, consider studying up on laws and regulations. Whether they’re tax, accounting, safety, government reporting, intellectual property, or security laws and regulations, they’re important to understand and comply with. They also change quite frequently and there are often substantial penalties associated with non-compliance. While they’re not necessarily the most fun topics to delve into, the outsized impact they can have on you and your organization merits their attention. Find experts in the field and consult them. Identify sources of information updates and check in on them regularly. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of a law or regulation when the authorities come around.
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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/20140203-EKG-Pulse-Graph-with-Glowing-Blue-Line-Narrow.jpg?fit=833%2C258&ssl=1258833Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-16 13:00:512025-01-14 20:05:07How well do you understand the laws and regulations that govern how your business operates?
A major responsibility of all leaders is building the next generation of leaders. Your development activities are the means to that end.
One of the four major activities that will consume your leadership capital is developing your people. Developing your team means you’re training them, coaching them and promoting them to help them advance their careers. Here are some keys to doing a great job of developing your people.
Training
In terms of training, you should be training them on new skills. You should be helping them apply what they learn in training to their day-to-day job. You should also be identifying skill gaps that these individuals have. Training should not be about training them on expected skills. You shouldn’t be doing a lot of retraining, and you should not be identifying specific training activities for them.
Coaching
Coaching is about coaching them to overcome new challenges. Coaching them to have high impact on whatever tasks they’re doing, and coaching does require critical feedback at the moment it’s warranted. Coaching should not be routine. It shouldn’t be a security blanket for the members of your team. And you shouldn’t be following up constantly on tasks that you’ve given them.
Promoting
Promoting activities fall in two buckets for me. First, promoting people and helping them get that next role, but also promoting their work across the organization. Promoting should be about giving people career advice. It should be about sponsoring their career plan, and making introductions to critical stakeholders in other parts of the organization. Promoting should not be you as the leader sitting down and writing that career plan. It shouldn’t be about you having ownership for that individual following that career plan. And promoting should not be about you building those relationships. You should make the introduction and step back.
I worked with one leader who did a great job of coaching. I was a consultant at the time, and I had a project that didn’t go very well. I didn’t do a good job. On my next project, she was my project manager. She and I sat down and said, “Mike, you need to fix these things.” We laid out what those new challenges were for me. We identified high-impact deliverables that I could focus on during the project. She also provided specific and frequent feedback at the point of need. The result was, I did a much better job on that project and I improved my skills overall as a consultant.
A major responsibility of all leaders is building the next generation of leaders. Your development activities are the means to that end.
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 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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250114-Two-Women-Talking-by-a-Window.jpg?fit=1920%2C1282&ssl=112821920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-15 06:30:292025-01-14 20:18:593 Ways to Develop Your People
Reflective journaling gives you an honest look into the mirror, and such authentic awareness not only encourages you to make the right decision, but to do so in a timely manner.
Today’s post is by Dr. Sam Adeyemi, author of the upcoming book, “SHIFTS: 6 Steps to Transform Your Mindset and Elevate Your Leadership”
Did you write down your New Year’s resolution? If so, you’re 10 times more likely to keep it.
If you wrote down one idea and typed out another, which do you think would really stick? You guessed it.
Writing things out with our own hands holds a special place in our hearts — and minds. In fact, I bet many of you reading this right now received a brand new journal or diary as a holiday present. If not, I bet you thought about buying one as a gift. A new year signifies renewal, and keeping a journal always feels like a healthy and rewarding way to begin a new chapter or start a new journey.
And our assumptions are absolutely correct. Studies of psychotherapy practices have proven time and time again that self-writing can be transformative. What’s more, these benefits aren’t confined to acute medical situations. In the business world, “constructive self-talk” is directly linked with effective leadership and an increase in overall creativity, making journaling an essential tool for the most successful executives.
But why? What is it about keeping a journal — simply writing things down — that can turn the tide for even the most struggling executives? I’ve spent decades advising successful business leaders around the world, and there are four clear-cut reasons I tell all of them to start journaling right away.
1. Journaling provides clarity when dealing with the present.
Do you remember those “You Are Here” maps that used to mark the entrances of shopping malls across America? After a few steps inside, you were immediately confronted by a two-tone, two-dimensional map with a giant star labeled “You Are Here.” If you had just arrived at the mall for the first time — as was often the case — these maps were at least momentarily useless. Without any real context, you couldn’t really make sense of what was in front of you, and the “You Are Here” felt almost like a mockery to those who had no idea where “here” actually was.
If you want to know where you’re headed, you need to know where you are. If you want to know where you are, you need to know where you’ve been. Executives need a clear, high-level look at every situation that extends into the future and back to the past. They don’t simply need to know “We Are Here.” They also need to know “We Were There” and “We Will Be Here,” and they might even need to draw a line that unites all three.
Journaling makes this possible. It reinforces your recollection, promotes more comprehensive cognitive processing, and triggers more brain activity across the board — all while taking less time than typing things into a phone or computer. Essentially, journaling draws you a better map for navigating your metaphorical mall. A map in three dimensions with crystal clear context.
2. Journaling promotes mental well-being.
For many business leaders, mental health and personal well-being are at an all-time low. More than three-quarters of all US workers reported significant work-related distress in the last year, and over half of all managers say they feel “burned out” at the end of any given workday.
These heightened levels of stress not only threaten your organization’s working culture as a whole, but they also undercut the effectiveness of your leadership. Absent any healthy outlets for their distress, nearly 70% of executives say burnout is affecting their ability to make critical decisions. Since these high-level decisions greatly influence every aspect of the organization, it is imperative they are made from a place of clarity and personal safety.
Expressive and reflective journaling is one way to get there. Self-writing can help individuals cope with stressful events and soothe their own latent anxiety. These mental health outcomes could be transformative for most modern executives. Even leaders in neuroscience are sounding the trumpet about the big benefits of leadership journaling.
3. Journaling naturally supports more comprehensive CPD.
Have you ever heard of the term “phototropism”? To be honest, neither had I until somewhat recently. Phototropism is the scientific name for the process by which plants naturally bend toward sunlight, and it’s a big part of their survival mechanisms.
Likewise, continuing professional development (CPD) is essential to the survival of any organization. Studies in both education and medicine revealed an almost-immediate performance dropoff when CPD was neglected by an individual or team. Conversely, routine journaling documents personal growth and makes CPD a very public part of the organization’s working culture.
So, who needs to step up? The professional development practices of an organization’s leadership have a direct impact on CPD as a whole. As such, the most successful executives put CPD at the top of their personal list of priorities. All leadership journaling should include detailed CPD records, including successes, failures, and reported benefits. Such a paper trail sets the tone and makes any formal CPD auditing process seamless and straightforward.
4. Journaling replaces reactive leadership with proactive leadership.
In Back to the Future II, Marty McFly unleashes a universe of problems when he steals a sports almanac from 2015. The almanac eventually finds its way back to 1985 in the hands of his nemesis, Biff Tannen, and the consequences are disastrous. Marty steals the almanac knowing how high the risks are for something terrible to happen. So why does he do it? Because the book holds knowledge about the future, and there are few things more tempting than your own crystal ball.
Routine journaling isn’t a time machine, and it isn’t going to help you place a bet on the next World Series. That said, it does offer something almost equally valuable to the modern executive: the ability to be more proactive in one’s leadership. Reflective journaling gives you an honest look into the mirror, and such authentic awareness not only encourages you to make the right decision, but to do so in a timely manner.
Atlanta-based Dr. Sam Adeyemi (SAY: Ah Day yeh me) is CEO of Sam Adeyemi, GLC, Inc. and founder and executive director of Daystar Leadership Academy (DLA). More than 52,000 alumni have graduated from DLA programs, and more than 3 million CEOs and high performing individuals follow him on top social media sites. He is the author of “Dear Leader: Your Flagship Guide to Successful Leadership.” His upcoming book, “SHIFTS: 6 Steps to Transform Your Mindset and Elevate Your Leadership” (Wiley, Feb 2025), is now available for preorder. Dr. Sam holds a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership from Virginia’s Regent University, and is a member of the International Leadership Association. He and his wife, Nike (say Nee keh) have three children. Learn more at SamAdeyemi.com.
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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250112-Journal.jpg?fit=1920%2C1442&ssl=114421920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-13 08:02:572025-01-12 00:02:39Dear Diary, Make Me a Better Leader: 4 Reasons You Should Start Journaling in 2025
Keep these three leadership roles in mind when helping your team members deliver their work.
One of the four major activities that will consume your leadership capital is helping your team deliver their work. A leader’s role in delivering the work requires them to monitor progress, correct work that needs fixed, and repair work that was done incorrectly. Consider these approaches to ensure your team is delivering the work.
Monitoring Work
In terms of monitoring, it should be goal focused. Your monitoring should be by exception, and hopefully when you’re doing monitoring, it should be confidence building for the members of your team. Monitoring should not be tasked focused at the individual task level. It shouldn’t be a total review of all the tasks your team members are working on. And hopefully, your monitoring is not stress-inducing for the members of the team.
Correcting Work
Correcting activities should be occasional. You should be dealing with first-time mistakes. You should be the final check on the deliverable. Correcting should not be every day. You shouldn’t be correcting the same mistakes over and over, and you definitely should not be the first check of your team member’s work. They should be doing that themselves.
Repairing Work
In terms of repairing, hopefully it’s infrequent. The repairs are done at a small-scale and your team members should be alerting you to the need to repair something. Repairing should not be frequent. It shouldn’t be large-scale issues that you’re trying to fix, and your team members should not be hiding those issues from you.
I know one leader who wasn’t doing monitoring well. He had a total review of all the tasks in his division. He used to have a 10-hour long monthly meeting with all of his direct reports. In that meeting, every single direct report went through every task they were working on. And this leader dug into every task, trying to monitor their activity on all of them. Eventually, the team got so frustrated with this approach that they left. Many of them sought jobs in other divisions or even other companies. His monitoring activities were not calibrated to the level he should have been operating at.
Delivering the work is about ensuring your team is doing high quality work that meets the commitments you’ve set out with your stakeholders.
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 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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250107-Man-and-Woman-Pointing-at-Computer.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=112801920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-08 06:30:112025-01-07 22:23:033 Ways to Help Your Team Deliver Their Work
Being a flexible and dynamic presenter is a skill that not many people have. If you’re able to master it, you’ll be noticed and appreciated, which will enhance your reputation and career.
Today’s post is by Mike Schiller, author of High Impact At Low Decibels: How Anxiety-Filled Introverts (And Others) Can Thrive In The Workplace.
“What do you mean I only have 10 minutes to give my presentation? I was scheduled for 30!” How many times have you found yourself in that situation? As frustrating (and unfair) as it is for the presenter, it’s part of life in the business world, where meetings run late and plans change. The way you handle it can have an impact on your career, as a reputation enhancer or as a career derailer.
Years ago, my two peers and I were scheduled to give a presentation to our primary stakeholders. We were each supposed to present on a different topic and had 45 minutes total, meaning we each had 15 minutes to talk. I was going third, and you can probably predict what happened. The first two speakers went long. By the time I got up there, we were out of time. So, what did I do? Did I shorten my presentation? No. Did I acknowledge that we were out of time and just skip doing my presentation? No. I delivered my entire presentation as planned. I mean, that’s how I had practiced it. What else could I do? And I took every question from the audience. I mean, they had questions – wouldn’t it be rude not to take them? But by taking this approach, I got us, and therefore the customers’ meeting, even further behind.
After it was over, I felt terrible. I knew I hadn’t handled it well. I went to my boss’s office the next morning and asked if my career was over. He said that it wasn’t but was glad I asked. He then proceeded to give me some guidance and advice: “You had the opportunity to be a hero and you didn’t take it. Your two peers put you in a tough spot and everyone in that room knew they had put you in a tough spot. But instead of taking the opportunity to be a hero and keep the meeting from falling behind, you delivered your entire presentation. You tried to talk fast. That never works. And then you took every question from the audience. It’s always the speaker’s responsibility to control the audience and the flow of questions. You could have gotten up there and said ‘We’re out of time, so I’m not going to go through my slides, but here are the three key points I wanted you to take away from my presentation. I’ll be available during the break and will be happy to answer any questions you might have.’ You would have gotten the meeting back on track and everyone in the room would have appreciated it.”
This was profoundly good advice and something I used to shape my preparation process for the rest of my career. I was determined to never make the mistakes I made in that meeting again. If you present at many meetings, you will find yourself in this situation, especially if you’re toward the end of the agenda. People are terrible at sticking to their time slots. And it annoys everyone in the room. You WILL be put in the position where your time slot gets squeezed, which means you WILL have the opportunity to be a hero.
After this incident, I was always the guy who stuck to his time slot. If you give me 20 minutes, I’ll be done in 20 minutes. If you give me 20 minutes and the meeting is running 5 minutes behind, I’ll be done in 15 minutes.
There were three keys to making this change to my presentation style.
First and foremost is advance preparation. When preparing for a presentation, I think ahead of time about what I’ll do if I only have 10 minutes, if I only have 5 minutes, and if I only have 1 minute. That exercise helps me think through the key points of my presentation, which puts me in a position to be dynamic and pivot “on the fly” if necessary. Caveat: while many presentations are ‘informational’ in nature and can be shortened and summarized, there are others that are intended to lead the room in reaching a decision, which might not be practical in 5 minutes. But by thinking it through in advance, I can determine the minimum amount of time I need and be prepared to say something along the lines of “We’re not going to have time to arrive at a decision, so I’ll cover the highlights and follow up offline (or set up a follow-up meeting or what-have-you).”
Second, if it’s my turn to speak and the meeting is running late, I’ll directly address it with whoever’s in charge of the meeting, asking if they still want me to wrap up per the original schedule or if there’s flexibility. That allows for expectations to be set up front and reduces opportunities for frustration on the part of the audience.
A third tactic is to have a way to see the time. You can’t stick to your time if you don’t know what time it is. When I arrive at the presentation location, I quickly look for a clock on the wall that I can see while I’m presenting. If there isn’t one, I’ll put my watch on the podium or table before I start speaking. Looking at a watch on your wrist while you’re presenting is distracting to the audience and isn’t a good look. It makes it seem like you’d rather be somewhere else. It’s much less noticeable to glance down at a watch that’s on a nearby surface. The same concept applies if you want to use a timer or clock on your phone. Don’t pull your phone out of your pocket and look at it while you’re presenting. Place your phone somewhere where you can occasionally glance at it.
This skill of being a flexible and dynamic presenter is one that not many people have. If you’re able to master it, you’ll be noticed and appreciated, which will enhance your reputation and career.
Mike Schiller, author of High Impact At Low Decibels: How Anxiety-Filled Introverts (And Others) Can Thrive In The Workplace, has more than 30 years of experience at Fortune 500 companies and most recently was vice president and chief information security officer at Texas Instruments. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University and is currently president of Onward Consulting, specializing in information security and audit consulting. Schiller is an anxiety-filled introvert and enjoys helping others with similar challenges succeed.
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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250106-Presentation.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=112801920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-06 08:02:282025-01-06 02:30:30The Flexible Presenter: Preparing For The Inevitable Time Squeeze
Our reader poll today asks: Which of the following is the biggest mistake you see new leaders make?
They become too assertive too quickly without pausing to learn first 45.07%
They take an authoritarian approach to decision-making 8.89%
They act like everything must be done how they would do it 10.85%
They micromanage instead of setting direction and getting out of the way 27.96%
They act too passively and don’t inspire their teams 7.23%
Be quiet and step back. 84% of you report the biggest mistakes new leaders tend to make is being too involved in their team’s work. Whether that’s being assertive without understanding, micromanaging, or dictating the way things need to be done, these behaviors demotivate the team and frustrate their ability to be empowered. A new leader should pause, be quiet, listen and learn when they take on a new role. Unless something is glaringly wrong, resist the urge to change things. Be quiet and learn – your team does things the way they do for a reason. Understand their circumstances and those reasons. When you do see improvement opportunities, ask your team how they’d like to solve the problem then get out of their way and let them do it. Instead of “looking down” at the work the team does, “look up” to bigger issues and longer-term challenges. That’s your job. You no longer drive the bus – you read the map and set the course.
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!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/20140203-EKG-Pulse-Graph-with-Glowing-Blue-Line-Narrow.jpg?fit=833%2C258&ssl=1258833Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2025-01-02 13:00:592025-01-01 22:55:56Which of the following is the biggest mistake you see new leaders make?
