Leadership – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

How would you describe the “back office” functions at your company (finance, procurement, legal, HR, etc.)?

March 26, 2020/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll, Project Management /by Ryan Shaw

Our reader poll today asks: How would you describe the “back office” functions at your company (finance, procurement, legal, HR, etc.)?

They occasionally add value and respond in a reasonable time. 29.78%
They add value in every interaction and are highly responsive. 25.56%
They are extremely frustrating and overly bureaucratic. 19.38%
They rarely add value and tend to slow things down. 17.98%
They make my life a nightmare, and I can’t get anything done. 7.3%

Improving the back office. Eighty percent of you report your back office functions like procurement, finance, legal and HR only occasionally add value (30%) or even worse, rarely add value or make your life extremely difficult (55%). That’s alarming. But blame resides in two places. One place is with the back office. If you’re in one of these functions, remember these other groups are your customers. While policy and procedure has a place, responsiveness to their needs helps business performance. If you’re more interested in process and bureaucracy than you are in getting things done, it’s time to rethink your priorities. The other half of the blame is with those who consume back office services. Going to them with short timelines, ill-formed requests and excessive requests for exemptions doesn’t make their lives easier. You need to plan your requests better. Give them time to respond (they have a lot of customers!). Respect their rules and processes. The answer lies somewhere in the middle here (and 26% of you have found that sweet spot). It’s a partnership — treat it as such.

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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New Ideas of Executive Presence

March 25, 2020/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Strategy /by Ryan Shaw

Rob Salafia, thoughtLEADERS Principal, sat down with Jim and Jan of The Leadership Podcast to discuss his personal philosophy on executive presence.

In continuation of our new collaboration with The Leadership Podcast, Rob explains his personal thoughts on executive presence in this short form “chalk talk.” These chalk talk series are bitesize sessions on a common (but challenging) leadership issue.

Rob dives into his explanation about what executive presence is, further explaining that it comes down to layers of experience, not your personal experience, but rather how others experience you or your impact on others.

The group then discusses whether there are ways to assess progress in development of your executive presence and Rob dives into his personal philosophy on executive presence and how he utilizes different factors to define and frame out the different components of executive presence so people can build upon them and improve.

Stay tuned for more of these brief Chalk Talks featuring Rob, as well as many more members of the thoughtLEADERS team.

Five Ways to Ensure Overachieving Isn’t Undermining Your Success

March 23, 2020/0 Comments/in Books, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Ryan Shaw

How to let go of the ‘can’t rant’ and other ways to stop sabotaging your own success

Today’s post is by Keren Eldad.

Overachievement is a concept that’s seemingly become a gold standard on how to become a “superstar” in business, career goals, and life overall. Just Google search “how to overachieve” and the web will dutifully deliver over 355,000 resources to help propel your prosperity.

In today’s fast-paced business climate, masses have surrendered themselves to overachievement in pursuit of business and career success. Not just ordinary success, but rather the kind that exceeds expectations courtesy of excessive “above and beyond” effort put forth. Some relent to a life of overachievement willingly and enthusiastically as they yearn to earn, while others grievously succumb to a multitude of pressures (both external and self-inflicted) and work themselves to extremes in order to achieve and maintain an enviable stature and lifestyle overall.

While overachievement certainly has it’s tremendous share of virtues, having induced profound innovation, breakthroughs, productivity, and abundance for individuals, organizations, industries, and economies at large, there’s oft a dark side to this extreme approach to advancement. For some, yes, dreams come true, but throngs of others miss the mark despite best efforts. This often happens because they’re aiming for achievements instead of at a deeper understanding of themselves and of what they want.

It’s a silent story shared by many who present a happy, accomplished and enviable image: one of putting on pretenses and internally writhing with angst and anxiety, of never having enough, of insecurity, doubt and dissatisfaction—a state I have coined the ‘Superstar Paradox. The paradox is when pursuing the illusory things we think we want actually produces undesirable results like strain to keep up low self-worth and general unhappiness—and those consequences actually impede our ability to attain what we want. It can become an exhausting and hugely debilitating vicious circle.

Below, are the five foundational insights to help ensure some of your overachievement behaviors or mindsets won’t actually be undermining your success—or your level of life satisfaction even after you’ve actually realized superstar status.

How global is your immediate team?

March 19, 2020/0 Comments/in Career, Communications, Leadership, Poll /by Ryan Shaw

Our reader poll today asks: How global is your immediate team?

Very — We have many team members from all corners of the world. 18.5%
Somewhat — We have a few team members from other parts of the world. 17.6%
Not very — We have very few people from other countries on our team. 17.1%
Not at all — We’re all from the same country. 46.8%

A worldly perspective. While the vast majority of you (80%) have little international representation on your team, a healthy chunk of you do have colleagues from other countries. In an increasingly global economy, you can’t ignore the impact of having a diverse, global perspective. If your team isn’t very worldly in composition, explore opportunities to bring in those global perspectives. Invite colleagues from other countries to join your project teams. Schedule knowledge/culture sharing calls. When out of town colleagues are visiting, go out of your way to include them in team meetings and meals. The better you’re able to see the world through other people’s eyes, the better you’ll be able to meet global competitive pressures. Plus, it’s fun meeting new people from far-off lands!

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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!

Balance is the Key Your Looking For

March 18, 2020/1 Comment/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Career, Leadership /by Ryan Shaw

Achieving balance with your work is a difficult task. There are busy periods and slow periods. Many times we seek to make the busy ones less busy and the slow ones busier by adding work. If that approach isn’t working for you, perhaps it’s time to embrace the highs and lows.

Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, thoughtLEADERS’ Managing Director.

Sometimes life is frenetic. Sometimes it’s slow. We all want to achieve “balance” in our lives but it’s difficult to do so through all those ups and downs.

We falsely believe “balance” is a Goldilocks thing – not too busy, not too bored, but juuuust right. We try to manage the busy periods to make them less busy. We make the slow periods busier. We do all this in a futile effort to get our lives into that range of “just right” but it never seems to play out. Why?

It doesn’t play out because we mistakenly believe we have control over our lives. Control is an illusion. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to achieve a sane sense of balance. But it’s not balance as you might be thinking about it. It won’t be in that “comfortable range” every day. To achieve the balance I’m talking about, you have to look at balance differently and therefore approach it differently.

First, the busy periods will always be busy.

Second, the slow periods will always be slow.

Third, control is an illusion and you can only do so much to manage those busy and slow periods.

Can You Identify Thought Leaders by Their Emails?

March 16, 2020/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Ryan Shaw

Leaders practice productive email habits. Here are the results of the University of Northern Colorado & Booher Research Survey of 30 industries about writing faster, fewer, better emails.

Today’s post is by Dianna Booher, author of Faster, Fewer, Better Emails (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Although you may not be able to tell a book by its cover, you can definitely tell thought leaders by their emails and their communication habits.

First, the content of their email: Their emails begin with a succinct summary of a clear message targeting specific readers. None of this “I know what I want to say, but I just can’t say it.” They know what they want to say it, and they say it—clearly, concisely, and directly.

After the summary, the email states very clearly what action should follow—either what action they’re recommending to the reader or what action they plan to take next based on the message they just delivered. Readers will never get to the bottom of their email with this reaction, “So what?” The so-what is logically laid out as a next step––never implied or assumed.

If details are necessary to “make the case,” these thoughtful writers generally follow up their summary and action statements with elaboration on the “why” and “how.” They may elaborate on why they’re making a change in procedures and how things will work in the future, why a specific study was completed and how it was done, or how a mistake happened and why it has caused confusion among customers.