Business Toolkit – Page 37 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

What Living in a War Zone Taught Me About Leadership

February 6, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

In Beirut, Lebanon during 1973, five-year-old Elisa A. Schmitz first learned situational awareness—a leadership lesson she says is key to being visionary.

Today’s guest post is by Elisa Schmitz, author of Become the Fire: Transform Life’s Chaos into Business and Personal Success (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

It was 1973 and I was living in Beirut, Lebanon, when that country was a powder keg before its civil war. I was not quite 5 years old. One day, my siblings and I were on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building, walking with my father toward school. We had recently moved to Beirut, and I was still getting used to the new culture – for example, women dressed head to toe in flowing black, their faces carefully hidden behind fabric – and the unfamiliar language that was so different from the Spanish and English we spoke at home.

Ahead on the sidewalk, two women approached – dressed in that traditional garb – but their eyes kept darting to the rooftops. Then they started to run. I saw the fear in their eyes and felt a chill down my spine. In the next instant, I heard gunshots coming from the rooftops. I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle and a wave of fear crash over me as the snipers shot at a car below.

That chill and that tingling on my neck screamed danger to me, and I knew I was not safe. I felt a grownup hand yank me hard as my dad hauled us back to our apartment. Later that night, shots rang out again. I stayed up all night, thinking that if I was the one to be awake and hear the shots, I could warn everyone. I thought my being aware could help keep us safe.

Being in Beirut triggered my dad to remember the pain of his own childhood, when his family was forced to flee war-torn Yugoslavia. But at the time, all I knew was that my dad was often sad. So, I would sing and dance or tell jokes to try to get him to smile.

Situational Awareness Is Key to Becoming Visionary

Living in a war zone taught me my earliest lessons in how to read the room, how to tune into my senses, how to adapt, how to turn the situation around. Situational awareness, which is key to being visionary.

As the chaos kept coming, it became a pattern in my life. Chaos is like that; it’s rarely just one thing. Whether I was dodging bullets in Beirut or bullies at school, I learned to rely on my situational awareness.

Using my senses, that mind-body connection, I learned to fine-tune my awareness of my surroundings and detect any potential threats – and possibilities. I listened to my body and looked for its cues. If I got a funky feeling in my stomach or the hair on my arms stood up, I paid attention. What was my gut trying to tell me? When I learned to focus on these sensations, I found that they were often preparing me to deal with some impending fire – or something even greater.

That mind-body connection enables you to see opportunity. That’s what it means to be visionary. You feel with intensity, you examine your environment for information, and you see opportunities that others often don’t.

Being Visionary Makes You a Better Leader

Reading the room, tuning into your senses, figuring out what they’re telling you about a situation, trusting your instincts, then acting on them. That’s how being visionary makes you a better leader.

This knowing inside enables you to be the kind of leader who can see around the corner into opportunities, then take action to bring the possibilities to life. The more situationally aware you are, the more visionary you can be. The more visionary you are, the greater your leadership success can be.

Situational awareness was burned into me during those war-torn times, which helped me to become visionary – and a better leader. Here’s how it impacted my career:

Situational awareness helped me envision ways to make life better: first with seeing a need for parenting information; later, with seeing a need for credible content on mobile devices.
That awareness enabled me to see business opportunities: with my first company, iParenting, acquired by Disney; later, with my second company, 30Seconds.com.
Situational awareness spurred me to take action, bringing the visions to life and growing them into media platforms for millions of unique users.

Taking leadership meant that I didn’t sit back and wait for someone else to find solutions to problems I saw. Once I recognized those problems as opportunities, I stepped up to find solutions – myself. The more situationally aware I was, the more visionary I became.

How to Enhance Your Situational Awareness and Become Visionary

You don’t need have to have lived in a war zone to develop situational awareness. Here’s how to enhance your situational awareness so you can become more visionary:

Always survey your environment. Think of ways to enhance your awareness of what’s going on around you – things like tuning into your senses and being more observant.
Think about any challenges in your life where you wish there were solutions. Come up with opportunities you may have to make life better.
Remember times when you may have experienced vision in your life. How have you already envisioned ways to make life better, no matter how big or small?
Look around at your friends and family, your customers, your boss. What do they need? How can you serve them better? Are there tools that would make life better? Write them down.
Don’t just dream about a better world or making a difference. Picture what that looks like and what you can do to bring that vision to life.
Act on the opportunities you see. Come up with actionable ideas – things like starting a side hustle, connecting with someone in the field you’re interested in, volunteering for a cause you’re passionate about.

However you choose to enhance your situational awareness, just keep at it. As you do, your vision will grow, making you a more successful leader.

Elisa A. Schmitz is an award-winning Latina entrepreneur and journalist. She is the founder and CEO of 30Seconds.com, a digital media platform, and the founder of iParenting which was acquired by the Walt Disney Company. She has been a newspaper columnist, magazine editor, radio and video host, and creator of content and marketing programs for various Fortune 500 companies. She lives in the Chicago area.

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4 Essentials Every Challenger Brand Must Cultivate

February 1, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Successful challenger brands know where they stand, who they are, and how prepared they are to go to battle. They identify disruptive strategies, make distinctive promises and statements, and create and use a voice that’s unique to them.

Today’s post is by Mike Sullivan and Michael Tuggle, authors of The Voice of the Underdog: How Challenger Brands Create Distinction by Thinking Culture First (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

For those unfamiliar, challenger brands are those brands in second place, third place, seventh place, all chasing the category leader. Challengers are smaller, scrappier, and most often are brands where ambitions run high, but resources run low. Challengers cannot outspend their competition, so they outthink them instead. They start with a focused business strategy and look for opportunities to disrupt. Challenger brands don’t win by finding ways to play the game better. They win by changing it.

For every successful challenger brand, there are great examples of how they disrupted the status quo. When airlines started charging $25 a bag, Southwest Airlines said bags fly free. When fast food restaurants struggled to get orders right in the drive-thru, Chick-Fil-A built double drive-thrus and staffed them with smiling, helpful, appreciate people who took, checked, and double checked the accuracy of your order with a “my pleasure” at the end. When Blockbuster insisted people loved their neighborhood video rental store and would never go anywhere else, Netflix said we’ll see about that.

Disruption is the calling card for successful challenger brands. Take for example Franzia wines, and their beloved Charles Shaw Chardonnay affectionately known at Trader Joe’s and beyond as “Two Buck Chuck.” At the 2007 California Fair Wine Competition, Charles Shaw’s $2 Chardonnay beat out 350 other chardonnays in a blind taste test — some priced as high as $55 a bottle. So what did Franzia do to the price after winning the most prestigious wine competition in North America? Nothing. Two Buck Chuck stayed at $2 a bottle. When asked why, Charles Shaw winemaker Fred Franzia replied, “We choose to sell good quality wine for $2 a bottle because we think it’s a fair price. We think the other people are charging too much.” Disruption epitomized.

What every challenger brand needs

For challenger brands to lean into disruption and take on their stronger competitors, here are four essentials:

A challenger strategy– To win, challenger brands have to devise a marketing strategy that challenges category conventions and doesn’t simply imitate the moves of the leader or other successful category competitors. Apple didn’t try to out-IBM IBM. Burger King can’t out-McDonald’s McDonald’s. Challenger brands never win by mimicking the category leaders. They win by challenging category convention and attracting the consumers drawn to that disruption.

Leadership teams for authentic challenger brands evaluate the competitive landscape with an eye toward changing something fundamental about the way they approach the business. In doing so, they create a new and distinctive competitive advantage. When this is accomplished successfully, it creates a new and clear path for a unique marketing strategy. Franzia could have marketed his Charles Shaw Chardonnay the way the category competitors did, but he would have missed a significant opportunity for category distinction.

Challenger promises– Challenger brands must also make brand promises that aren’t easily duplicated by competitors. The promise must be solidly grounded in realdifferences created by the company’s state of mind — something it does best or is striving earnestly to do best. The key for success is that the promise must be authentic. It can’t simply be manufactured through advertising.

The authentic difference for the Charles Shaw brand isn’t that it’s an award-winning Chardonnay. The distinction is the company’s ability to sell it profitably for $2 a bottle, and its willingness — even desire — to do so. In a category driven by price breaks and promotions, Chick-Fil-A embraces neither. It promises and delivers exceptional products and service, and believes it’s worth the cost. Its customers agree and, as a result, in 2021 its stores averaged $5.9 million in sales doing business six days a week.

Challenger statements– Challenger brands must be willing to make clear and compelling statements about what they are and what they’re not, who they’re for and who they’re not for. Famous challenger brands such as Red Bull, Southwest Airlines, and Motel 6 are very specific about what they have to offer and who they’re for. They’re also not afraid to position themselves clearly away from customer groups that aren’t in their crosshairs. Red Bull isn’t for ladies having a soda over lunch. Southwest Airlines isn’t for people who like to fly first class. Motel 6 most assuredly isn’t for the traveler who wants something more than a clean room at a great price.

Challenger brands aren’t afraid to limit their appeal at the expense of alienating those who will merely tolerate them. They’re laser focused on those who will love them. The benefit for the challenger brand is a fervently loyal core customer base.

A challenger voice– Challenger brands are willing to amplify their strategies, brand promises, and statements through a unique voice. Their advertising and marketing communications look and sound different from their competitors. They say different things, make different promises, and command a different kind of attention in the marketplace. The state of readiness present in challenger brand leadership not only paves the way for unique and unconventional marketing and advertising, it compels them to seek it out.

Successful challenger brands know where they stand, who they are, and how prepared they are to go to battle. They identify disruptive strategies, make distinctive promises and statements, and create and use a voice that’s unique to them. Just as crucially, they embrace their company culture as a distinct advantage. Changing the game isn’t an easy proposition, but when you build a team that feels empowered, supported, inspired, and even loved, there’s no limit to the havoc you can create for your competitors and the success you can achieve as a challenger hungry to change the world.

Mike Sullivan is president and CEO of LOOMIS, the country’s leading challenger brand advertising agency. For more than 30 years, he’s helped some of the country’s most successful companies build their brands. Michael Tuggle is an award-winning creative director and writer with more than 25 years in the ad world building brands and growing companies. Their new book is The Voice of the Underdog: How Challenger Brands Create Distinction by Thinking Culture First (BizComPress, Aug. 10, 2020). Learn more at theloomisagency.com.

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How to Identify and Motivate Slackers on Your Team

January 25, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

You put in a lot of time and energy into leading slackers, but you don’t get anything back in terms of results. Your job as a leader is to figure out what will motivate them to perform.

One type of detractor you might deal with is a slacker. These people are in the lower left corner of the leadership matrix. You put in a lot of time and energy into leading them but you don’t get anything back in terms of results. Slackers have the talent to get the work done. They just done care. They’re not motivated to do it. Leaders spend a disproportionate amount of time managing slackers. They require constant supervision and motivation. What’s so frustrating about them is they have the capability to do the work. They just choose not to.

Identifying Slackers

There are some easy ways to spot a slacker. They tend to be smart and have a strong resume. They can tend to be very self-promoting. They might be a frequent job changer. They’re difficult to get work out of because they constantly debate the merits of your request rather than doing the work. They might renegotiate their deadlines frequently. They’re more interested in other people’s work than their own work. They can tend to be outspoken. They annoy other team members because they always wander into that team member’s lane instead of focusing on their own responsibilities. Other team members push back a lot of times on covering for the slacker because they know the slacker has the capability to do the work.

I know one slacker very well. He was me. I had a role where I had previously been excited about the work I was doing. My boss changed my responsibilities. I was not thrilled with those new responsibilities so I started mailing it in. I just didn’t care. I became very frustrating to lead. I absolutely had the ability to do that work. I just wasn’t excited by it. My form of silent protest was to just not do the work and focus on everything else that was going on in the division. I drove my boss nuts. He was at my desk all the time pushing me, asking where the results were. I never had results to offer. If you spot a slacker on your team, get ready for what might be a long, drawn out engagement trying to motivate them and understand what’s going to get them to deliver the results you expect of them.

Motivating Slackers

Your slackers are in the lower left corner of the leadership matrix. You have to put in a lot of time and energy into managing them, and you don’t get anything back in terms of results. The issue with slackers is they’re unwilling to do their job. They drag the team down with their poor attitude. Slackers require motivation.

The leader’s job is to figure out what will motivate a slacker to perform. This can be in the form of incentives or punishments if need be. Slackers need to have expectations and consequences clearly laid out. The leader has to figure out what motivates the slacker. Whether it’s new responsibilities, compensation, or visibility, once a slacker’s motivated, their performance tends to improve quickly because they have the capability to do the work. The leader’s goal with a slacker is to unlock their motivation. Sometimes that includes moving them to a new role or even out of the organization to a job where they’re going to be happier. This requires the leader to invest more leadership capital in the near term figuring out how to motivate this individual.

For example, let’s say you have a slacker on your team. They have a big presentation that’s two weeks late. You sit down with them and you understand that they have the capability to do the presentation. They just don’t seem to be doing it. When you ask them what would excite them about working on that presentation, they tell you, “Well, you always present the presentation. I never get any visibility here for all the work I put in. That’s not a lot of fun.”

Now you have the key. You can unlock that slacker’s motivation. In this situation you might say, “Well, I’ll tell you what—if you finish the presentation, I don’t need to be the one who presents it. You can present it in front of the leadership team.” You might see their performance change dramatically to the positive in that moment. You’ve unlocked their motivation. You understand they want visibility. As soon as you connect the visibility with the work you’re asking them to do, you might see their entire attitude change.

The benefit of more effectively leading a slacker is that they could quickly become a higher performer. They’ve got the skills, just not the motivation. You’re also demonstrating to your team that you’re focused on results and that you will hold people accountable. If you do decide to move that slacker out of the organization because you can’t find proper motivation, make sure their attrition is as positive as possible. Help them transition to that new organization.

Your key as a leader when dealing with a slacker is figuring out with that motivation is. As soon as you know that motivation, you can get them to change their performance.

Want to learn more about developing your team? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to assess and improve your strategic plans. 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!

How to Focus Joyriders on Your Team

January 18, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Joyriders are team members that you don’t invest a lot of leadership capital in, but you also don’t get anything back from them in terms of results.

Your Joyriders occupy the lower right corner of the Leadership Matrix. You don’t put in a lot of time and energy but you also don’t get anything back in terms of results. Joyriders can be really tricky to identify. They have a lot of energy and enthusiasm. They seem to constantly be busy. Unfortunately, they seem to work on everything except their core responsibilities. Leaders tend not to spend a lot of leadership capital on joyriders because they seem like they’re delivering results. But at the end of the year they tend to come up short on what was expected of them.

Some ways you can spot a joyrider are they’re high energy, they’re enthusiastic, they’re busy, and they’re social at work. They have broad interests in a lot of different areas. They constantly come to you with new ideas. They’re the first person to suggest launching a new special project. They’re constantly volunteering for things outside of their area of responsibility. They also have a very light track record on results. They’re hard to pin down on their core deliverables and their deadlines. Their teammates end up covering for them and doing the work the joyrider was supposed to be doing. It’s easy to miss a joyrider. The key is to look for a lot of activity and not a lot of results.

How to Focus Joyriders

Leading joyriders involves investing additional time and energy into monitoring this person’s activities and focusing them on their core responsibilities. This means more frequent check-ins and putting more structure and measurement to their work. The additional leadership capital you spend on them is designed to improve their results. Once their behavior’s changed and they start delivering what’s expected of them, leaders can typically pull back and give them the room to operate.

Your goal is refocusing a joyrider on their core responsibilities. Inventory their workload. Reassign or stop unnecessary work that isn’t related to their core responsibilities. Closely manage them against their core duties. Add structure to their check-ins. Have them come in with a list of all the projects they’re working on. Have them articulate what the status is for every single project. And if they start talking about something that’s outside their responsibilities, put a stop to it immediately.

The benefit of more effectively leading a joyrider is that it’s going to surface a core performance problem. You’re going to see where there might be skill gaps or results gaps in what they’re delivering or not delivering. This is also going to demonstrate a results-focused leadership style to the rest of your team. Your team knows this person isn’t getting their work done, mostly because the other team members have to do the work for them. They’re probably not very happy about that. When they see you finally holding this joyrider accountable to doing their job, they’re going to feel a lot better about the work they’re doing. It’s also going to get that extra work off their plate and onto the joyrider’s plate where it belongs. You’re now going to be getting results from a previously non-producing part of the team.

The other benefit is there’s potentially a dramatic performance turnaround here. This person has a lot of energy. They have enthusiasm. Your job as the leader is to make sure you focus it on their most important responsibilities.

Want to learn more about developing your team? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to assess and improve your strategic plans. 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!

My CEO Career: Workplace Culture My Biggest Lesson

January 16, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Communications, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

Learn how an award-winning CEO transformed a once struggling organization by improving its workplace culture.

Today’s guest post is by Thane Lawrie, author of The Buddhist CEO (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

In this article I will tell you an interesting story about how I became a successful CEO and what I believe was my biggest lesson. I have just published a book called The Buddhist CEO, but in many ways I was the accidental CEO.

Ten years ago, I joined a large not-for-profit organization in my native Scotland. I was in charge of all their daily frontline operations and was part of a four-person senior leadership team. Four months into the job, our then CEO died suddenly due to a very unexpected illness. Cutting a very long story short, this resulted in me becoming the CEO.

It was clear to me that the organization was in some difficulty at the time. It had made significant financial losses for two years running, staff morale was low, and our services didn’t perform anywhere near the level they should. Some people might have said I had inherited a poisoned chalice. However, I was able to turn the organization around quickly. In my first year in charge, we made a small profit, staff morale increased significantly and our services started to dramatically improve.

How did I know things were improving? Improvements to the finances were easy to monitor by analysing our management accounts, but how did I know morale was improving? I decided that if the organization was to improve, we needed to boost staff morale. How could we expect staff to provide fantastic services if they didn’t enjoy their job? I set up meetings with different staff groups and asked them directly about what they liked and didn’t like about the company. Clear themes emerged. Staff really wanted to work for us as they loved the idea of helping people. We were a not-for-profit organization helping people to stay warm in their homes and were involved in other environmental projects. Our staff wanted to help people, but they felt our company got in the way.

They were unclear how their job contributed to the company, managers were reluctant to take decisions, nothing worked, the IT was useless, our company cars were old and broken, our phone system was frustrating to use, and they had no idea where the company was heading strategically. In the office, people were not always nice to each other as they were just so frustrated. I realized quickly that our workplace culture was awful and if we were ever to become a high functioning organization we needed to make significant changes and quick.

This was when I started to learn my biggest lesson as a CEO. Workplace culture matters and if it is broken then your organization will never be as successful as it could and should be. I set about fixing the structural issues first. A complete overhaul of our IT, company vehicles and telephone system. This was a big call at the time, after making such heavy losses for two years prior. The board took some persuading that spending more money was the way to go. The impact of this act alone was huge. Staff felt they were being listened to and they could see that things were now working.

I then set about trying to change the culture. I introduced the term ‘world class culture’ into our meetings, our policies and strategies. This lifted the aspirations of staff. I am not sure we ever became world class, but I am certain that just by introducing the notion that we were trying to deliver everything we do internally and externally, at a level that could be described as world class, raised everyone’s game. Our performance went from okay to very good/excellent. This resulted in more contracts coming our way, as partner organizations could tell they could trust us to deliver.

We then brought in an HR specialist to help us train our managers in how to be better leaders. I empowered them to take decisions on their own with clear instructions on when they had to push a decision up to their senior manager. In conjunction with staff, we developed company values that we agreed as a company and then held people to these values. We treated people well but we expected them to treat the company well. This meant that when a staff member clearly wasn’t acting in line with our company values, we intervened and addressed the behaviours being shown.

I believed the culture was changing from negative to positive, but how could I be sure? I decided to measure our culture and we entered the prestigious Sunday Times Top 100 Companies to work for in the UK awards. Why? As part of our entry, staff had to complete an anonymous survey asking them for their view on the company’s leadership, strategy, terms and conditions, ethos, their team, their manager and how we looked after their wellbeing. Every year we got a score which was benchmarked against other companies. Over time we could build up a picture of our culture through this and other measurements we used. To my surprise and delight, we were listed in the top 100 companies to work for in the UK during 6 of the 7 years I was in charge.

This is a brief outline of how I transformed a company. None of this was easy and it takes time and effort to really engage with your staff. In my experience though, it is always worthwhile putting this level of focus on your staff as they will go on to help your company thrive and achieve great success.

The person at the top sets the tone, so make that tone a positive and inspirational one. Put time and energy into developing an aspirational and supportive workplace culture. In my novel The Buddhist CEO, the main character sets out to lead like a Buddhist CEO, applying a compassionate and caring approach towards his staff. It brings his company great rewards, but he still faces great challenges.

Thane Lawrie was CEO of an organization called Scarf, in his native Scotland, and is now an author. He recently published his first novel, The Buddhist CEO (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Thane also writes a regular blog on his website. You can follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BuddhistCeo or visit his website at https://www.thanelawrie.com/.

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How to Develop the Square Pegs on Your Team

January 11, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Square pegs are team members that require a lot of your time and energy, but they’re not yet delivering the results you expect. One of the biggest benefits of leading a square peg well is you get to feel the satisfaction of helping somebody else grow and develop.

Square pegs occupy the lower left corner of the Leadership Matrix because you’re putting in a lot of time and energy helping them build skills, but they’re not yet delivering the results you expect. Developing square pegs can be fun. It can be rewarding. These people want to perform well. Your job is to coach and develop them to help them build those required skills. Square pegs tend to take to such coaching and development eagerly. Their performance can improve quickly with the right intervention.

Some square pegs lack the skills that are going to make them effective. In those instances, sometimes moving a person to a new role can be your best option. Your goal with a square peg is to fill their skill gaps. Communicate your performance expectations of them and where they’re performing relative to those expectations. Let them know that the status quo is not sustainable. They need to improve their performance. Identify the skill gaps they need to fill. Build a plan with that individual for how they’re going to improve those gaps. It may be training. It may be new responsibilities. It may be coaching from someone else on the team. Set deadlines with them for you to see that performance improvement.

I have one individual who I work with as her executive coach. She had a member of her team who went from being an individual contributor to leading other people. This individual had never led anyone before. He became a square peg. She had to spend a lot of time with him teaching him how to lead other people, how to motivate the members of his team, how to set direction, and set priorities for the work his team was doing. He was in her office multiple times a week. She invested so much more time and energy into him than when he was an individual contributor. The good news was that he wanted to learn these skills. He was excited about leading other people. His performance improved pretty quickly.

The benefit of effectively leading a square peg is that you’re going to be reducing problems for other members of the team. The square peg isn’t getting it done and other people have to pick up the slack. By improving their performance, you’re making everybody else’s life easier. You’re going to take somebody who’s not performing and move them to being a performing member of a team. One of the biggest benefits of leading a square peg well is you get to feel the satisfaction of helping somebody else grow and develop. You’ll help them identify the gaps they need to fill and move them down that path to success.

Want to learn more about developing your team? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to assess and improve your strategic plans. 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!

Fostering an Ownership Mentality to Boost Your Business

January 9, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Employees are driven to perform their best when they feel a sense of ownership over their work. Fostering a company culture driven by a ‘we’re all in this together’ mindset is easy – here are 10 actionable strategies.

Today’s post is by Shaara Roman, author of The Conscious Workplace: Fortify Your Culture to Thrive in Any Crisis (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

When you think of an entrepreneur, you think of someone who is constantly hustling. They’re highly invested in their work, extremely driven, innovative, and agile. Now, wouldn’t it be great if all employees operated like that?

Of course you want your employees to work for you the way they would work for themselves…and it’s possible. By nurturing an ownership mentality, you can create a team of people who are genuinely invested in the ongoing success of the business. Your employees are more likely to go above and beyond when they understand how their contributions impact the success of the company — and how that success in turn impacts them.

Benefits of fostering an ownership mentality:

Higher engagement rate
Increased retention
Boosted innovation
More autonomy
Improved collaboration
Higher client/customer satisfaction
Better bottom line

Some people come to work with this attitude — this desire to give it their all because they’re genuinely invested and they know it will pay off. But the majority of employees tend to be more disconnected, with a mindset of simply getting the job done. So how do you get your employees to shift from thinking like an employee to thinking like an owner who is fully vested in the success of the business? Sure, you can foster ownership by ensuring employees have some skin in the game by offering financial incentives, but there are also several other ways to make that happen as well.

1. Model a win-win mentality

Adopt an abundance mindset and commit to the notion that there is enough to go around. Too often our talent programs pit people against each other and foster competition versus collaboration. Show your employees that the successes of the business are directly related to the individual — made possible by their hard work and also to be enjoyed by them. When the company thrives, the individual thrives, and vice versa.

2. Empower your people

Give your employees the authority and information to make meaningful decisions. Demonstrate your trust in their competence and refrain from micromanaging. The more empowered each individual feels, the more likely they are to feel engaged in the day-to-day and connected to the big picture.

3. Value your employee’s work

Be sure to regularly express praise and appreciation for all the hard work your team does, both on an individual and collective level. Positive reinforcement is a proven method, and the more you encourage your employees with words of affirmation, the more likely they are to want to continue to meet those standards. In fact, Gallup research shows that you should recognize people for their contributions at least every seven days.

4. Ask for each individual’s input

By asking your team for their input, you show them that you really care about what they have to say. Everyone wants to feel heard, and we all perform better when we have a say in what we’re doing / how we’re doing it. You can even go further and seek out employee input to the company’s strategy and new services or products.

5. Keep everyone in the loop

Communication is key, and it tends to go a long way. The more transparent you are with your employee-facing communications, the more included your people will feel. If your employees feel in the dark about the goings-on of the company, then they will feel disconnected from their work, their results, and their drive.

6. Foster inclusion and belonging

Creating a strong sense of community has all kinds of benefits. Prioritize your culture and your people, and you will see a team-driven work ethic emerge. When your employees feel accepted and connected to each other, they operate more like a family. ‘What’s good for you is good for me’ will start to be a common denominator, and this will show up in all that your employees do.

7. Give your employees a sense of purpose

People need purpose — it’s what drives us. When you show your employees that their work is meaningful and that their contribution is invaluable, they will care about what they’re doing. They will put their heart and soul into it, rather than getting by with the bare minimum. Establish a clear mission/vision/values and explain why it’s so important to the bigger picture and greater good.

8. Hold people accountable for their commitment to the team

Teamwork makes the dream work. Without the belief that ‘we’re all in this together’, there will likely be dysfunction and more self-centered behaviors. When those types of behaviors arise, it’s important to course correct by holding people accountable to a higher, team-oriented standard.

9. Hire individuals who already have a sense of ownership over their work

This ‘sense of ownership’ attitude is contagious, and the more people on your team who feel this sense of ownership, the more likely they are to inspire others to adopt the same approach. While such a mindset can certainly be trained, it is of course easier when you’re working with people who are already inclined to think that way.

10. Minimize meaningless rules

Nobody likes having to jump through hoops. The more useless rules and protocols you have built into your organization, the further removed your employees are from having a sense of ownership. Ditch the needlessly rigid processes and instead emphasize trust and autonomy.

The relationship between employer and employed tends to be strictly transactional. By shifting that standard towards a more genuine sense of mutual care, you can ensure a higher level of success for your organization. Your greatest power lies in your people, you just have to shift the tone from the individual to the collective. Once your employees feel invested in the team, you will start to see a ripple effect.

Shaara Roman is the author of The Conscious Workplace: Fortify Your Culture to Thrive in Any Crisis and founder + CEO of boutique culture consulting firm, The Silverene Group. She works with executives to align their company’s leadership and culture with the business strategy and create programs to maximize the employee experience and productivity.

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Do You Have a Square Peg on Your Team?

January 4, 2023/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

One type of detractor you might have on your team is a square peg. Square pegs have the willingness to do well, but they lack the skills to perform effectively.

One type of detractor you might deal with is a square peg. They’re going to be in the lower left corner of the leadership matrix. You’re investing a lot of time and energy into them, but not getting a lot back in terms of results.

Square pegs have the willingness to do well, but they lack the skills to perform effectively. Sometimes it’s due to being placed in a new role. Other times it’s a function of them not having the training or resources they need. You’ll spend a lot of leadership capital on a square peg because you need to help them develop and grow. You’ll also spend that time and energy on fixing work they’re not doing correctly. Leaders have to figure out the root of the performance gap and help that square peg build the skills they need to perform effectively.

You might have a square peg on your hands if they regularly need rework. They may ask for time extensions. And their work needs to be repaired a lot of times. They’re unable to perform core tasks up to your expectations. Sometimes they even repeat the same errors. Other people tend to work around them. These square pegs are often mentioned as a source of other people’s problems. Sometimes a square peg might be territorial. They may come across as insecure or highly stressed. Sometimes these people are very hard to help.

I had one square peg on one of my consulting teams. Coming into the consulting engagement, I knew he was lacking some skills. That was the good news. The bad news was I had to invest a lot of time and energy helping him build those skills. He did analysis; a lot of times, it was wrong. I’d have to sit down with him, work through the model, and show him how to build it correctly. His presentation pages didn’t look that great. I was not going to put his pages in front of the client. A lot of times, I redid the pages myself. It took a lot of time and energy on my part.

The good news is he was aware of his skill gaps coming into the engagement. He was also very motivated to fix those gaps. When I would sit down with him to go over his analysis or his pages, he was all ears. He was taking notes and trying to improve. It made it a lot easier to work with him. Over the course of the four months we worked together, I did see his skills improve dramatically.

If you have a square peg on your team, they’re going to be pretty easy to spot. Their work isn’t up to standard and you’re going to spend a lot of time helping them build skills and bring their work to a level of quality that’s acceptable to you.

Want to learn more about developing your team? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to assess and improve your strategic plans. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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The Best Leaders Are Comedians

January 2, 2023/1 Comment/in Books, Business Toolkit, Communications, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Leaders can learn a lot from comedians. They’re captivating public speakers, they practice economy of language, and they’re experts at insight. Insight is a critical leadership skill.

Today’s post is by Antonio Garrido, author of MY DAILY LEADERSHIP: A Powerful Roadmap For Leadership Success (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

To be clear, I’m not saying that it’s the leader’s job to joke their way through the difficulties of the day. Nor am I saying that the leader’s job is to find something to lampoon in order to amuse others.

No, my argument is this: comedians are experts at insight: they are wonderful at drawing seemingly unrelated pieces of information together in new and unexpected ways. The best leaders have a similar gift: they have the ability to ‘see beyond the data’ and notice patterns, trends, or truths that nobody else sees. And then, like comedians, when they draw attention to the path of their particular perspective, suddenly everyone else sees it too – this is insight in action.

Comedy is Insight in Action

Have you ever noticed how often comedians say, “Have you ever noticed how…?”?

Have you ever noticed how…

you’re never quite sure whether it’s okay to eat green crisps.

triangle sandwiches taste so much better than square ones.

you’ll always pour a glass of water from the sink faucet, but never ever the bath faucet.

“Have you ever noticed how…?” is an example of cultural referencing and looking at the world from a different perspective. Comedians are brilliant at finding ways to come up with a new way of perceiving the world. We don’t see insight till we see it, and then once we do, we can’t ever unsee it. The best leaders do the same. The best leaders use insight to see what others don’t or can’t yet.

Great Leadership is Also Insight in Action

If real leadership is about ‘future proofing’ (future proofing themselves, their people, and their business), then the ability to see the as-yet unseen or unrevealed is critical. This is why Steve Jobs insisted the iMac was launched in four bright colors (not beige), because he realized color is a critical way for people to express themselves. Insight. This is why Bata Shoes opened a shoe factory in Africa where nobody wore shoes, because they saw a potential opportunity where every other shoe manufacturer saw, well, a market where nobody wore shoes. Insight. And this is why Sam Walton of Walmart insisted on building superstores between towns, and not in them, because of lower rates and fewer competitors. Insight.

Insight, as comedians will tell you, can be developed. And you can’t get more insightful without getting more creative. Creative insight is what we’re after. The most creative leaders are, at their core, playful – playing with ideas and scenarios and messages. Great leaders have creativity sessions actually scheduled on their weekly calendar.

Take a look in your calendar right now. Go to next week. How many scheduled, blocked-off slots are there for “thinking” or “creative time” or “idea generation?” How many?

Count again. None? Exactly.

What you should see in your calendar is forty-five minutes peppered here and there for blue-sky thinking and ideation. Or even better, five minutes every morning and evening dedicated to creative thinking in your Leadership Journal. If you don’t make time for creativity, for insight development, you’ll find a million less important tasks to do.

As the extraordinarily insightful Maya Angelou once said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have.”

Lighthearted, Not Lightweight

The best leaders, like comedians, are lighthearted, not lightweight: we often confuse the two, but there’s a difference.

I’ll never forget how one of the best leaders that I ever had the pleasure of working for always took time to start every speech with an amusing anecdote or observations (insight). He used this insight skill to great effect too when studying a lengthy balance sheet, or considering the salient KPIs of a particularly complex plan.

He would even charge the HR departments to specifically identify candidates who would test high for insight when recruiting new leaders.

Here’s an example of how this inspirational leader would begin a typical meeting. How’s this for the opening line of an annual general board meeting to announce that year’s performance? It’s probably important to note that the company was a world-leading lock-maker with global revenues of around 100 billion.

He began, “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending our annual general meeting. It’s a little-known fact that my entire work life has been involved in security in one way or another. You probably don’t know this, but my first ever job was selling security alarms door to door. I was really, really good at it. I’d knock and if there was no one at home, I’d always leave a brochure on the kitchen table. They’d call me right away.”

Okay, so that’s not the best joke you ever heard, but for that particular audience it was the perfect opener to a discussion that would at times, he knew, be rather difficult. It probably goes without saying that this particular leader was a master at insightful strategy development.

Insight is a Key Leadership Differentiator

In terms of leadership, insight is one of the key differentiators – it separates the best from the rest. Insight allows the leader to peek into the future and helps them to start creating a pathway into it today.

Too many leaders rely on their intellect, or experience, or tried and tested methodologies. Unfortunately, though, the future is increasingly uncertain. This means that new directions and new and uncertain futures will require, if anything, new insights. Wayne Gretzky skated to where the puck is going to be, and not to where it is now – and that’s the leader’s job too. Intellect and experience might have got you here, but insight, will get you there.

In closing, comedian George Burns probably said it best: “Look to the future – because that is where you’ll be spending the rest of your life.”

Antonio Garrido, author of MY DAILY LEADERSHIP: A Powerful Roadmap For Leadership Success, has over twenty-five years in senior leadership positions with world-class businesses. He is a serial entrepreneur, successful business coach, author, and charismatic speaker.

For more information, please visit www.MyDailyLeadership.com

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When you or someone on your team gets sick, how do you approach the situation?

December 29, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: When you or someone on your team gets sick, how do you approach the situation?

Stay home, stop working and only focus on getting well 31.81%
Stay home but stay in touch on major deliverables 29.69%
Stay home and keep current on as much work as you can 30.03%
Power through and go to work for important tasks 3.88%
Power through, take medicine and get back to work 4.59%

Give yourself a break. While 32% of you focus on getting well when facing an illness, the other 68% of you continue with some degree of work – up to and including actually going into the office when sick. And note these results apply to expectations of team members as well. As a leader, the wellbeing of yourself and your people should come first. The work will always be there. The more you focus on getting well, the faster you’ll return to work fully healthy. You’ll also be sending a message to your team that their personal wellbeing is more important than whatever work is waiting on their desk. Carefully consider what you’re communicating with your behavior as far as expectations you have of others when they fall ill. People want to work for employers who care about them as individuals and prioritize their health above the work. If you’re not sending that message, you might find yourself with some open roles on your team.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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How to Wean Squeaky Wheels on Your Team

December 28, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

The key to weaning squeaky wheels is to boost their confidence and make them more independent.

Your high-cost producers are in the upper-left corner of the leadership matrix. They deliver great results, but they consume a lot of your time and energy. The squeaky wheel is the epitome of a high-cost producer. They need to be weaned off of taking up all of your time.

Your goal with a squeaky wheel is to make them more independent. Make their check-ins less frequent. Limit their ability to just drop in and talk. Provide them boundaries within which they’re expected to make decisions on their own. Try boosting their confidence in their abilities so they’ll be more independent.

To improve a squeaky wheel’s performance, leaders must take control of their interactions with them. Put structure to those interactions. Reduce the likelihood that they overuse informal channels with you, like sending you emails or just picking up the phone and calling. Give them clear parameters where they should act autonomously, and reward or praise them when they do.

I had one squeaky wheel on my team who was constantly in my office, and I would always talk with him because he was delivering great results and working on cool projects. Eventually I figured out how much of my time he was consuming, and I decided to make a change. I went to him and said, “Hey, from now on, any decision that’s below $50,000 you need to make it. Just tell me after you’ve made it. I trust that you’re gonna make the right call. When it’s above $50,000, make sure you involve me earlier.”

What happened was all those small decisions were no longer coming across my desk. All that time I had previously been spending on $5,000 or $10,000 decisions became my time again that I could spend somewhere else. The benefit of more effectively leading a squeaky wheel and weaning them off of the need to see you and talk with you all the time is that you reclaim your leadership capital. You can invest that leadership capital in other team members who need it more. You’re also building this individual’s self-sufficiency. You set them up for success and encourage them to be a higher performer on their own.

With a squeaky wheel, the sooner you can pull back from the amount of time and energy you invest in them, the faster you’ll be able to reinvest that time and energy in other members of your team.

Want to learn more about developing your team? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to assess and improve your strategic plans. 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!

How well do you define accountabilities when the team is listing out all the work that needs to get done but no names are being put next to the tasks?

December 22, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: How well do you define accountabilities when the team is listing out all the work that needs to get done but no names are being put next to the tasks?

Extremely well: We don’t end the conversation until there’s a name next to every item 31.29%
Very well: We resolve most accountabilities immediately but some slip by 27.61%
Well: The important items have accountabilities identified but I let the smaller ones sort themselves out 22.70%
Not well: Only the most important tasks get defined and others tend to languish without owners 15.34%
Poorly: I have a really hard time assigning people’s names to tasks 3.06%

Naming names. 80% of you report doing a good (or better) job of assigning accountabilities to specific people when task and project lists are being created. Without visibility into who’s driving something, you run the risk of the task falling through the cracks of “I thought so-and-so was in charge of that.” If you’ve not yet developed the habit of assigning tasks, even smaller ones, to specific people, consider changing that behavior immediately. And just because a task is small, that doesn’t mean the owner should go unnamed. Small tasks can be on the critical path for larger ones getting done. It can be a nasty surprise when a seemingly-small item got dropped and that failure delays or jeopardizes a larger deliverable.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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