Business Toolkit – Page 76 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

The Big Jump: Go From Having Answers to Asking Questions

October 25, 2010/12 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Do you know the difference between a “worker bee” and a senior executive? Have you ever wondered what it takes to move up in the world to those loftier roles? It’s pretty simple. You need to move from a world where you provide all the answers to a world where you ask all the questions.

I know there’s a cheeky clueless executive joke in there somewhere but I’m actually not joking around (today is my 40th birthday and I’ve decided I’m going to be completely serious and professional this decade and if you believe that last part, you’re obviously a new reader to the blog).

As we enter organizations and rise through the ranks, we’re expected (and trained) to have the answers. We, after all, are the front line. We do the work. When someone more senior asks us for information, our job description is to provide it. And provide it we do. We become experts in our field. We know all the answers. We become that “go to” person Scott Eblin describes in this recent post.

And every day we kick butt. We know everything that’s asked of us. Heck, we get to a point where we’ve created everything around us. But one day we wake up wondering why we’re not getting promoted. We can’t figure out why we, the expert of all experts, isn’t rising to the executive ranks. After all, those guys are clueless. All they ever do is ask questions that we have to provide the answers to.

And that my friends is the key to the paradox of advancing to senior management. Questions.

5 Changes Go-To People Must Make to Keep Going

October 20, 2010/3 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s guest blogger is Scott Eblin. You can read all about him at the end of the post and also learn about his great new book that just hit shelves. I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of it. Here’s Scott…

If you’re a high potential leader, there’s about a 98% chance that you’re thought of or view yourself as a “go-to person.” I know that number ‘s in the ballpark because I regularly ask audiences of high potential leaders, “How many of you have been referred to or think of yourself as a ‘go-to person?’” Usually, just about every hand in the room goes up. For example, in a webinar I conducted for Government Executive magazine, 98% of the 400 plus senior managers online answered yes to the “go-to” question in a flash poll.

And what do I mean by “go-to person”? As one leader explained it to me, “I’m the closer.” You either know the type or you are the type. Go to people are the ones who make sure the job gets done. If that means taking over, so be it. If that means staying up into the wee hours, so be it. Organizations reward go-to people because they can rely on them. They’re the kinds of folks who are designated as high potentials and are promoted into bigger and bigger jobs. Great stuff, right? Well, it is until it isn’t…

Email Stupidity: Reply All Cuts Both Ways

September 6, 2010/6 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications /by Mike Figliuolo

Reply All is the dumbest button ever.

I can’t tell you how much junk ends up in my inbox that should be a private conversation or frankly that I just don’t care about. I’ll bet if Microsoft removed the Reply All function from Outlook, U.S. productivity would climb by 15%, GDP would pop by a trillion dollars, and there would be 84% fewer aneurysms at work.

I believe there should be a qualification test you have to pass before Reply All functionality even works on your machine. It’s bad enough when people misuse the button because they’re clueless. It’s even worse when they misuse it to be passive aggressive or to play political games.

Yes, this is a bit of a rant post (like you expect less?) but it’s also a cautionary tale of how technology can be your friend and your enemy. You might think your laptop is cute and cuddly like WALL-E only to find out it rises up to destroy you like the terminator. Heed this advice now or pay the price later…

This one time, at band camp… oh. Sorry. Wrong blog. Lemme try again.

This one time, there was a team I was on. They did incredible work. They had found the balance between analytical rigor and rapid decision making. When they got busy, stuff happened.

Critical Tips Every Traveler Must Know

June 7, 2010/17 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Business Toolkit /by Mike Figliuolo

Most days I work from home but lately I have a lot of travel coming up. A *lot* of travel. And outside of airline delays (and terrorists), there’s nothing worse than dealing with a clueless traveler.

These are the people who cause massive delays in lines. They’re the ones who make the flight miserable. They’re the ones you want to introduce to your alter-ego Mr. Stabby McStabStab. And most horrifyingly, they’re sometimes YOU (but no one has ever told you).

So in the spirit of making the skies a little friendlier, I’m going to offer some simple, tactical tips on how to be a better traveler and reduce your risk of someone tipping TSA off that you need a cavity search because you were muttering something about “bomb in my pants.”

Feel free to pass this along to all the traveling rookies in your company. They were college kids a few weeks ago and they don’t know any better yet. Let’s see if together we can’t lick this travel stupidity epidemic.

Here’s everything you ever needed to know about traveling like a pro:

All I Need to Know About Marketing I Learned at a Lemonade Stand

May 31, 2010/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

It’s frickin’ hot, huh? Wow. But the dawning summer heat is a great reminder of good, solid marketing principles.

Many of us make “marketing” some arcane science. Focus groups, market research, surveys, brand consultants. Meh.

I learned everything I need to know about marketing at a lemonade stand.

As I was tooling around in my car this weekend, I was reminded of what it takes to be a great marketer. Really, it’s not as hard as the Marketing Group makes you think it is. The reminder of these principles came in the form of the perennial lemonade stand.

I drove past four such stands this weekend. Each one demonstrated a core principle you must adhere to if you want to be a successful marketer.

Marketing is about understanding a need and meeting it

It was hot this weekend. Unfortunately for Lil’ Jimmy’s Big Ade Stand, it wasn’t hot at 815AM when I drove by. I give the kid bonus points for getting to work early on a Sunday but he clearly missed the mark. He was out there selling his little heart out. The problem was the market did not have a need.

Lil’ Jimmy was targeting a market that didn’t exist. No need equals no sales. He had his dreams crushed by about 10AM and had packed it in thinking no one wanted lemonade that day. Jimmy’s problem was the market of overweight underexercised middle-aged homeowners doing yard work was just ramping up at 10. Jimmy missed the market. Right product. Wrong time.

Look at your business. What is THE MARKET asking for? Are you delivering what they want when they want it or are you pushing your product into a market you hope exists?

Great Leaders Should Move to a Cubicle

May 10, 2010/7 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Congratulations! You’ve arrived. You’ve earned that nice cushy office where you can shut the door and no one can hear you listening to the greatest American Idol video ever on YouTube (or looking for a video card to send your mom on Mother’s Day – use this one next year).

Yep. The office is fantastic. But if you want to demonstrate some real leadership, toss your junk into a box and move into Downtown Cubeville.

Before I explain why I encourage you to head out into the ant farm, let’s acknowledge why cubicles are one of the most horrific inventions ever:
– You have NO privacy
– You can hear *everything* everyone around you says
– You can smell every roadkill opossum Lean Cuisine entree your neighbor heats up in the microwave
– You can be subjected to the scorching hellfire of your cube-mate’s space heater or the gale force winds of their oscillating fan
– The lovely industrial gray or taupe of the cube walls makes you want to scream

All that said, sometimes getting back to the cube is a good thing if you’re the boss. There are two major benefits from doing so. You’ll just have to trust me on these and give them a try sometime.

12 Things My Son Would Say In Your Stupid Meeting

May 5, 2010/2 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management /by Mike Figliuolo

Admit it – you can’t stand meetings. Me either. I’d rather shove a rusty plastic spork in my eye (think about it…).

Why do we loathe meetings so much? Most likely because they’re venues where we can witness atrocious and moronic behaviors while wasting minutes of our lives that we’ll never get back.

Guess what? The meetings you hold are terrible too. Seriously. Fess up. By the way, my meetings are awful as well.

So I had writer’s block and asked my twitter followers to pick a blog topic. Here it is: 12 things my son would say in a meeting. This post will be sort of like my April Foolish Office Behaviors to Kill post (go read it – you’ll love it).

For those of you who haven’t read about my son before, he’s hysterical. Acerbic wit. Moronic ideas. Biting sarcasm. Silly concepts. I guess he has a career in blogging ahead of him.

A little about my son: He’s 13. He never stops eating. His nickname is “Galactus” so named after a Fantastic Four villain who is commonly known as “The Devourer of Worlds.” Trust me – you don’t envy my food bill.

Anyway… in this post I’ll tee up 12 common meeting situations and offer you his take on that behavior. Hopefully you’ll see the wisdom inherent in his perspectives. I’ll simply give an example of the typical meeting behavior. Galactus will supply the commentary.

You should be smart enough to walk away with the implied lesson and the “to do” of changing the behaviors on this list.

Hate Presenting? That’s Okay – They Hate Listening to You

April 26, 2010/5 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications /by Mike Figliuolo

This might sound mean but we don’t want to hear you present. The thought of you inviting us to your 2 hour presentation on “Budget Variances and Optimized Value-Added Opportunities for Synergies” makes us want to barf. Why? Because we’re terrified of watching you present.

I’m going to be a little snotty in this post (okay… maybe a lot snotty). First, you kind of expect that from me. Second, if I’m nice and polite, you won’t listen. I’m like your best friend who tells you you’ve been drinking too much and wearing lampshades too frequently. It’s not pleasant news but it’s definitely constructive and helpful.

Let’s break it down. There are three reasons we don’t want to hear you speak. Your presentation is awful. You’re boring and stiff. You talk down to us. Because of that, we hate you.

I know presentations are the lifeblood of every corporation. Without PowerPoint you guys would shrivel up and blow away. The thing is, you don’t have to be so terrible at it (although part of me is very thankful it’s such a rampant problem otherwise our Structured Thought and Communications Course wouldn’t be in such high demand).

I won’t go into why it’s critical for you to get better at building compelling presentations and having powerful meetings. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you need to stop reading this blog and head down to McDonald’s and pick up an application. I will go into why we think you’re awful, boring, and condescending. And don’t worry, I’ll offer some suggestions on how to fix the problems. Here goes…

5 Keys to Being an Outstanding Team Member

April 14, 2010/7 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

This post is courtesy of Maureen Metcalf (one of our thoughtLEADERS instructors). Enjoy her perspective. Here’s Maureen:

It is not enough to be an exceptional individual contributor; you must also work effectively with others. Even super heroes work together just like Batman and Robin.

A key differentiator for professional growth is how well you work with others. We can all think of times where we could have accomplished a task easier alone but still needed to work with others. We can probably also see where there was some benefit to the organization by our working with someone else, like they got to learn from us and from the experience.

I worked with a client who saw himself as the expert at everything he did. He was frustrated by working with teams because it got in the way of doing the real work and no one knew as much as he did. This team stuff slowed the work down and frustrated him. He also thought he should be promoted because he could certainly accomplish the work more effectively than anyone around him.

If only he knew and focused on the 5 key behaviors that would have made him a better team member.

From his perspective, he was forced to work for leaders who were not as competent as he was. From where he sat, his leaders had all kinds of stupid requests and changed their minds regularly. They could not pick a path and stick to it.

He was a great individual contributor but got a complete FAIL for team effectiveness and it was getting in his way. He was not moving forward and others disliked working with him.

He remembered when he liked going to work but that time had long passed. He was frustrated and unhappy and did not know where to turn to fix things other than find a “better” company with “smarter leaders” to work for.

What he missed was HE was the problem.

Want a Powerful Business? Take Your Own Medicine

April 12, 2010/2 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

You’ve all been to the doctor at some point. There’s always that moment of truth where he tells you to change your bad habits, eat better, and exercise more. It all makes sense and is sound advice.

But how likely are you to follow his advice if he’s wheezing it out because he weighs 350 lbs. and you keep getting distracted by the piece of Ho Ho hanging off his lower lip? Not so much, right?

As a trainer, coach, and communicator I dispense more than my fair share of advice and guidance. A lot of it even makes sense. Occasionally. But there’s something I find more difficult than just about every other aspect of my job: taking my own advice.

The weird thing is I regularly advise leaders on how to improve their businesses yet I sometimes get lazy about doing the same exact things I tell them to do. Why do I demonstrate this shortcoming? Maybe it’s pure sloth. Maybe I run under the misguided belief that all the things I advise others to do I must naturally do myself in my own business dealings.

Then one of my friends proves me wrong. When you surround yourself with incredibly smart people, they tend to ask some really smart questions. Needless to say I get asked smart questions quite frequently. If you stop and listen to those questions though (either from others or the ones you’d ask yourself if you were dispensing advice to you) you can make your business exponentially more powerful. Here’s how:

If You Want to Close the Deal, Go Naked

March 29, 2010/7 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Entrepreneur, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

No one will deny business has become infinitely more complex and exponentially more efficient. Kind of. The challenge we face in the information age is there’s too much frickin’ information. Even worse, you’re usually trying to cut through the clutter to make your sale. It can be you’re selling a product, a service, or an idea to internal customers but the point is you’re always selling something.

Well I have news folks. I found a new trick for cutting through that clutter to make the sale: go naked.

I know how important clarity of communications is to making these sales. Heck, a huge part of my business is based on clear, concise communications training. You wouldn’t believe how much demand there is for tools to help us persuade and influence people more effectively and efficiently. One of the first blog posts I ever wrote was about getting to the “so what?” in a compelling way.

I try to practice what I preach. I try to make my communications succinct and punchy. I don’t always succeed. I’m always looking for new ways to get to “yes” with my audience. The other day I tried a new one. I went naked to two separate and hugely important meetings. And it felt so good I plan on going naked much more often.

Since you all know I kept my clothes on for those meetings (really being naked would be kinda creepy) let me explain what I mean.

Two More Traps that Destroy Entrepreneurs (Part 2)

March 22, 2010/2 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Sales, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

In my last post I talked about the traps entrepreneurs face with respect to cash (not planning it well enough or managing it rigorously enough) and being your own boss (which means you might not have coworkers to help you make decisions). If you missed the post, go read it here.

Today I’ll cover two more traps that can ruin your business faster than Takeru Kobayashi can destroy a Nathan’s hot dog.

If you’re an entrepreneur you likely have a cool idea for a product or a service. That knowledge and innovation is the core of what you’re about. You somehow intuitively understand a market need and that’s the source of your success. Or failure depending on how you play it. That’s the third trap.

The fourth trap is that as the Big Cheese, you don’t need to sweat the small stuff. You’re the king of rock. There is none higher. Sucka MC’s better call you sire. Well guess what your majesty? You DO have to sweat the small stuff. All of it.

Let’s explore these two traps, shall we?