How to Effectively Navigate a Crisis

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To effectively navigate a crisis scenario, companies must have a clear response plan to react promptly and honestly, and learn from their mistakes.

Today’s guest post is by Thomas Mustac, Publicist — Otter PR

Crises come in all shapes and sizes for businesses, but no matter how big or small, an organization will be overwhelmed if they have not adequately planned how to approach the crisis. Formulating a crisis response plan is one of the most important steps a business leader must take, as this will allow them to not only weather the crisis, but also walk away improved from the lessons they learned.

Everyone knows that time is not on the side of an organization facing a crisis, but few realize there are ways to use time to their advantage. In the face of a crisis, a business leader must consider the role of time in the public’s perception of the company and its crisis response. How long did it take to respond to the crisis — did it take too long, or did it seem like a knee-jerk reaction? Was the response too brief, too long-winded, or just right? And what is the timeline for the company to implement these changes? Considering these essential questions when crafting a crisis response plan will allow a business to reclaim precious time and maintain favor in the eyes of the general public.

Gaining control over a crisis

Often, a company does not have time to formulate a proper crisis response after the crisis hits. Businesses that have not prepared will find themselves scrambling, frequently getting overwhelmed and responding in a way that makes the situation worse.

Canny business leaders realize the intense timeline of a crisis and prepare a crisis response plan early in their organization’s life cycle. Although it is impossible to plan for every obstacle that will come one’s way, it is possible to create a generalized, strategic approach to crises that can be adapted to the unique circumstances of each situation.

Ultimately, a business’s crisis response plan aims to gain control over the narrative by letting the public know it has control over the situation and is working to remedy the situation as quickly as possible. Although no organization will have all the answers right away — and even if they do, it would seem suspicious — business leaders should strive to have enough answers to satiate the public’s chief concerns. If they don’t have the answers, it’s better to acknowledge this and explain that answers are in progress than to make something up that will later be exposed as a lie.

One of the most important characteristics an organization and its spokespeople must exhibit in the face of a crisis is honesty. In today’s increasingly connected and online world, it’s easier than ever for the public to find information. Chances are, if a company lies about something, someone will figure it out, and when the lie is uncovered, the situation will only worsen. Trust is difficult to build — much less rebuild — but lying is the quickest way to lose it.

Lessons learned from a crisis

Beyond honesty, businesses that hope to navigate a crisis successfully must also exhibit transparency and authenticity. If a crisis response is filled with empty promises of change and the company makes the same mistake again, the business will quickly lose consumers’ trust. Although consumers are quick to forgive and forget a mistake these days because of their shorter attention spans, companies that do not learn from their mistakes earn themselves a bad reputation — often one that is extremely difficult to overcome.

Another error companies can make when handling a crisis is over-apologizing. If a company continues to say sorry throughout its crisis response, it is not only admitting to the public that a wrong has been committed, but also continuing to point the focus towards the problem rather than the solution. While a company should acknowledge the situation in an initial crisis response, further steps should emphasize how the company will avoid a similar crisis in the future.

A major crisis is one of the scariest times in an entrepreneur’s career, but there are a few qualities to keep in mind that can help business leaders help their organizations successfully navigate these uncertain waters. By staying on top of time, maintaining composure, remaining honest, and focusing on the solution rather than the problems, the crisis will pass, and the leader and organization will grow with lessons learned.

thomas headshotThomas Mustac is Otter PR‘s medical and health industry PR specialist. He previously held positions at the “Dr. Oz Show” and New York Medical College. He has his Master’s Degree from Iona College and received an Advanced Certification in Nonprofit Public Relations. He has a diverse background in healthcare, pharmaceutical, telehealth, tech, cosmetics, sports, and interior design public relations.

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How do you deal with someone who is passive aggressive?

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Our reader poll today asks: How do you deal with someone who is passive aggressive?

  • I ignore it and focus on the work 40.26%
  • I call them out on it and work toward productive resolution 39.62%
  • I get passive aggressive myself in retaliation 11.36%
  • I get directly aggressive to counter the behavior 8.76%

Pushing Back on Passive Aggression. 60% of you push back in some way on passive aggressive behavior. Whether it’s directly confronting the person or pursuing your own campaign of passive aggression, their behavior gets a response from you. Consider your approach to your response. Passive aggression met with passive aggression can simply spiral into a silent war with no resolution. Directly aggressive behavior can cause a directly aggressive response or even stronger passive aggressive behavior. There’s a chance the person demonstrating the behavior doesn’t even realize how their behavior is affecting you or others. Consider a direct response that provides actionable feedback with offers of how the issue can be resolved. Being the bigger person is hard and frustrating sometimes but it can prevent future situations from arising.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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Prioritizing Your Efforts with Strategic Filters

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pouring coffee filter

Strategic filters can help you prioritize your efforts based on the objectives of your organization.

Once you’ve created a list of initiates that you’re going to pursue to help you achieve your vision, you need to evaluate those initiatives according to objective criteria for comparing them to one another. Because ultimately you need to prioritize those initiatives. The ones you’re going to pursue are the ones that meet the majority of your objective functions.

I like to use a tool that I call strategic filters for doing this evaluation. These strategic filters are going to be based upon the objective functions of your organization and the goals that you find to be important. Once you’ve constructed your strategic filters, you’re going to assess every single initiative relative to that set of filters.

Let’s say our company is growing and we’re also trying to expand internationally and we really want to launch some new products. So we’re going to create two types of filters. The first filter set is going to be qualitative, the second filter set is going to be quantitative. So I may construct evaluation filters that look at things like, “Is the product new? Is it going to leverage our existing brand? Is it white label and non-branded? Is it going to help us be global or does it focus on domestic markets? And lastly, is the product simple or is it going to be complex to launch?”

Those qualitative filters will help me assess those products and those initiatives based upon my goal of taking my brands global. Once I’ve decided if they’re a fit with the qualitative filters, I also need to look at the numbers. I may have three sets of numbers that I consider as my financial filters. I may look at the net present value of the initiative. I might consider the internal rate of return of that initiative. So if I invest money, what’s the return I’m going to get on it? And lastly, I might look at the impact of that initiative on my total growth rate for the organization. Having this complete set of filters will enable me to evaluate initiatives and identify the ones that are going to drive the most objectives as well as rule out or deprioritize the ones that don’t help me achieve my goals.

So your set of strategic filters should be based upon the objectives of your organization. As you evaluate your initiatives against them, you’re going to decide whether it passes a filter or fails. You can use a high, medium, low as you evaluate each initiative against those filters. Having done this evaluation, you’ll be prepared to move into a prioritization process.

Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? 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 build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Navigating Imposter Syndrome: Meditations for Young Chief Executives

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woman in suit thinking

Here are 5 top tips to conquer imposter syndrome and lead with confidence as a young entrepreneur.

Today’s guest post is by Sofie Roux, Founder — BloomBox Design Labs

When I started college at a school I had dreamed of attending since I was six, I was awestruck. This feeling was rapidly followed by the thought, “How will I ever measure up to this amazing place?”

I threw myself into my classes and work and clubs, but I often wondered if I was doing anything right. I soon learned that almost every college student experiences some form of imposter syndrome, “the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved.” I want to tell you what I learned about imposter syndrome this year — and especially how it can deeply affect young leaders.

After an amazing freshman year, I decided not to return for the fall quarter, but instead to focus my energy on leading my newly formed public benefit company to bring solar-powered, off-grid science, technology, and design labs to schools around the world, to help close disparities in access to high-quality education. This was extremely daunting, but the decision to go was largely guided by the values of fearless innovation and the pursuit of truth and beauty I had observed at college.

Now, I work full-time on my startup, BloomBox Design Labs. Being a young female founder can come with next-level imposter syndrome. Though I am far from an expert, and I can’t comment on running a big company, here’s what I’ve learned in the very early stages of my enterprise.

In moments of doubt, I have found inspiration from innovators that I admire, and from my current favorite dog-eared book, “Meditations” by the stoic Marcus Aurelius. Before I dispense this bit of advice, I’ll just say, if you have imposter syndrome right now, good! It means you are ambitious, sensitive, and ready to grow — a powerful combination for any young CEO.

1. Start with why: “To what use then, am I now putting my soul?”

Think of a problem that you are passionate about and then start forming your strategy. Even the most complex or seemingly impossible challenges can be deconstructed, and pursued one determined step at a time. It can be a tough journey, but if your idea reflects the passion of your soul, the journey itself will be a source of fascination and fun.

Make every decision in service of this idea, and keep that mission at the core of your work. Putting soul into the company is a powerful antidote for all forms of doubt.

2. Always keep learning: “The directing mind adapts itself.”

Being a CEO or innovator of any kind is like constantly being a student in subjects that matter, so soak up every bit of information you can. As a young CEO, you should know that you will never have all the answers, and that is the way it should be.

The journey of the company is to solve problems that may never have been solved. Remember to listen more than you talk. Have the humility to ask questions and learn — the best ideas and breakthroughs can come from the most unexpected sources.

Seek out and welcome diverse opinions, and lean into your weaknesses by practicing. Leaders that show some vulnerability create cultures of learning, exchange of ideas, and growth. The problems and people that challenge you to rethink and adapt will make your whole company stronger. Ask for help, be real, and keep learning.

3. Surround yourself with people who share your values: “Do not let the special quality of anything pass you by.”

The founding idea of your company is second only to a shared purpose with your team. These values will keep your organization in flight, even in the roughest weather of a startup.

Build your team from people who care about your company’s values and mission as much as you do. They will show up for you and your work when you feel that all hope is lost, as you will for them. When disagreements break out, the shared sense of purpose will transform them into creative discourse, and will keep you together and on track.

Those kinds of people are to be treasured. Keep them close.

4. Failure is a signpost: “All that exists will soon change.”

When you are in school — or on any track that has been run millions of times before — there are clear guideposts for success. You go to the next grade, go to college, and get a promotion. These established pathways are so important, but, by definition, when you are truly innovating, you embark on a journey without a guide or even a trail. When you do what has never been done before, the only indicator that you are making any progress at all is the next failure.

Thomas Edison wrote: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Be resilient.

5. You are on your own path: “Make the best move you can.”

At the end of the day, what matters is that you live every day with integrity, and that you do the very best you can. If, on a hard day, all you can achieve is treating people with respect and kindness, and making decisions based on your values, that is enough.

Young people and outsiders may wonder how they can make a difference in a world of established order, tradition, and precedent, but the truth is young people are so well-positioned to see and feel the opportunities that challenge the status quo — those that change the world. Keep going.

I write this on a Friday night, as the clock approaches midnight. I am sitting at the kitchen table, with my running checklist more incomplete than I had planned for, and Marcus Aurelius staring disappointedly at me from the cover of “Meditations” on my desk. Imposter syndrome is still present! I have so much left to learn about being a good leader. All I can do is return to step one and go from there — with faith in our company’s ideals, and unwavering belief that we will make it.

sofie headshotSofie Roux is a sophomore at Stanford studying architecture and engineering, and is the Founder and CEO of BloomBox Design Labs which designs and builds innovative educational spaces for girls in Malawi.

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How do you feel about doing a deal without a contract in place?

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Our reader poll today asks: How do you feel about doing a deal without a contract in place?

  • I’m fine with it in most situations 7.54%
  • I’ll only do it with partners I’ve worked with before and trust 29.77%
  • I’ll only do it in rare circumstances where time is short 16.27%
  • I simply won’t do it—too much can go wrong 46.42%

Flying without a net. Most of you indicate you’re not comfortable entering into a deal without the contract firmly in place. That approach is a wise one given how many misunderstandings can occur in deals as well as preventing someone from changing agreed-upon deal terms that were never documented. If the other party wants to start the work together without a contract in place, understand the risk you’re taking on and your lack of meaningful consequences if things don’t go as planned. Sure this means you might miss some opportunities by passing on a time-sensitive deal that prevents a contract from getting done but ask yourself if accepting that opportunity is worth accepting the risk that comes with it.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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Balancing Your Team’s Workload

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balanced rocks

Consider these five criteria when distributing work to your high-performing team.

Another key task as the leader of a high performing team is how you distribute and balance work across the members of that team. It needs to be done fairly. Note, I didn’t say equally. Work allocation needs to be done fairly because you want perceptions of equality and you want people to work on things they’re good at but also that they’re excited by.

There are five criteria to think about as you think about distributing work.

First, for priority. Priority needs to drive everything. It’s based on the teams and the organizations goals. If a project is a top priority and somebody’s available to do that work they get that work, and you need to allocate it appropriately.

Second, consider the skill set of the people where you’re thinking about distributing the work. If they have the right skill set, you’re going to get a high quality result. This also prevents people from failing. You’re giving them something they can be successful with.

Next, consider availability. All things being equal in terms of priority and skill set, who is free to do the work? Who has the bandwidth? You should not be shifting resources from one project to another when you have available resources to pick up that new project. If you start shifting resources around between projects when you have available resources elsewhere, you’re going to lose momentum on that first project, and that project might fail.

Next, you have to think about the development opportunity this project might present for that person, because that’s how you’re going to take your team to the next level of performance.

The last consideration is, “Does somebody have an interest in it?” If someone is really interested and really passionate about a project, you should let them take it on. They’re going to be really motivated, excited to do it, and hopefully their performance will follow. One caveat here: Make sure people don’t just gravitate to the work they enjoy doing and they stay away from things that they’re not comfortable with because they’re going to end up getting pigeon holed and they’ll be very narrow in their focus.

If you think about all these considerations as you distribute work across that team, it’s going to ensure that you tackle the highest priority projects with the resources who have the right skills to do it. It’ll be balanced in a way where you’re going to execute the project and develop your people at the same time.

Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? 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 build high-performing teams. 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!

Are You Uplifting Your Team? 4 Ways Leaders Create Positivity

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Dr. Sam Adeyemi offers insights to business executives and C-suite professionals on creating positivity as a team leader.

Today’s guest post is by Dr. Sam Adeyemi, author of Dear Leader: Your Flagship Guide to Successful Leadership (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Here is something not every leader is ready to hear: You are the most powerful force behind the positivity in your workplace. If that positivity were the heavens, then you would be Atlas — or, at least one of his arms. So how do you cultivate positivity and find a healthy outlet for any dissatisfaction? You can start with these four step-by-step tactics for becoming a more inspiring and empathetic leader.

1. Look within yourself.

One of the most popular quotes from Carl Jung, noted Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, speaks to this exact issue: “Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.” You can find this quote all over social media and cataloged on websites promising a list of quotes that will “change your life.” And, while its surface-level message of finding peace within yourself understandably resonates with many, there is even more going on here than this small excerpt betrays to the reader.

Jung was describing a war between the Self and the collective noise of your outside reality. Any growth you hope to facilitate starts with you, which means you can’t hope to succeed until you know yourself and recognize your own opportunities for growth. Your ability to manage sources of negative energy and uplift your team in the workplace begins and ends with your own inner strength. You must be willing to take an honest look at yourself as a leader, then grow accordingly.

Unfortunately, our natural reaction is to avoid problems and circumvent confrontation whenever possible — especially when we are confronting ourselves. After all, difficult conversations are difficult for a reason. They often force us into awkward perspectives or unflattering looks at our own actions. Still, these internal conversations are essential to preparing yourself to improve morale and sustain productivity among others.

2. Work at the roots.

There is a type of bamboo tree grown in China that takes five years to reach maturity. What’s most astonishing, however, is that the plant remains hidden underground for the first four years of its life. For over 1,400 days, the tree is watered and fertilized at its roots with no real signs of progress for its caretakers. Then, in just over a month, it erupts from the ground with almost frightening urgency and grows up to 90 feet tall.

The “roots” of something are its foundational center — what feeds and supports its existence. Alongside the heart, there is no better metaphor for the “core” or the lifeblood of a team. Yet these roots are not easy to access. Much like the roots of the natural world, they are buried underground and operate according to their own schedule.

When a successful leader is approaching a problem within their team, they must discover the root of the issue that’s causing the problem and only then actively work to provide a solution. Was there adequate direction and communication from the beginning? Were the expectations clear and concise? When and where did productivity break down? Once this line of questioning begins, the best leaders find an opportunity to empower other team members to offer solutions.

3. Don’t absorb negativity — redirect it.

You probably already know that magnets can either attract or repel each other. Depending on which “poles” of the magnet you are trying to push together, they might snap toward each other in an instant, or you might find it virtually impossible to connect them directly. In the world of magnetism, opposite poles attract each other while identical poles repel each other. Simple, right?

However, there is no magnet for attracting or repelling the sources of negative energy among your workforce — it’s just not that simple. And, even if it were, those sources of negativity would change on a daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly basis. For successful and empathetic leaders, maintaining positivity in the workplace begins with identifying the negative energy itself, then discerning what might repel that energy or even turn it positive. Dissatisfaction within your team is a perpetual drain on morale that will never go away on its own, which means your only recourse is to neutralize that negativity or transform it into positive action.

4. Embrace empathy and sincerity.

In Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the wise and stoic Atticus Finch offers up plenty of advice to his young daughter, Scout. One of my favorites is that you cannot truly understand a person until you “climb into [their] skin and walk around in it.” This adage is repeated in countless forms, the most popular being to “walk a mile in a person’s shoes.” That said, I think the version we get from Mr. Finch is more poignant than all the rest. It is not enough to slip on someone’s shoes — we must think holistically. It is not enough to walk for a mile — we must walk until we achieve understanding.

Empathy is essential for any leader that hopes to understand and inspire their team members. Empathy is about caring and curiosity, which makes it the perfect jumping-off point for gaining traction within your team. Your empathy and sincerity are your first lines of defense against negative energy, helping alert you the moment any dark clouds descend on the workspace. The most successful leaders use this empathy to direct their personal touchpoints, keeping the skies sunny whenever possible.

Start Small. Start Positive.

As a leader, you have an immense (and sometimes daunting) power to cultivate or suffocate the positivity within your workforce. The entire process starts with you — with self-examination — and ends with a team that understands its own limitations and demands empathy for everyone.

sam adeyemi bookAtlanta-based Dr. Sam Adeyemi (SAY: Ah Day yeh me) is founder and executive director of Daystar Leadership Academy (DLA). More than 45,000 alumni have graduated from DLA programs, and more than 3 million CEOs and high performing individuals follow him on top social media sites. Dr. Sam’s new book is Dear Leader: Your Flagship Guide to Successful Leadership. He 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 and founded Daystar Christian Centre in Lagos, Nigeria. Learn more at SamAdeyemi.com.

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How fairly are promotion opportunities communicated throughout your organization?

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Our reader poll today asks: How fairly are promotion opportunities communicated throughout your organization?

  • Very: as soon as a position is open, everyone knows and can apply 29.35%
  • Somewhat: select people are encouraged to apply for open positions 30.54%
  • Not very: you have to dig around and look for open positions 23.35%
  • Not at all: you only find out about open positions after they’ve been filled 16.76%

Expand the applicant pool. It’s disappointing that almost 40% of you report that promotion opportunities aren’t easy to find until it’s too late. While you may have a favorite candidate, not publicizing positions can have severely negative effects. First, you might miss out on a better candidate you didn’t know was in the organization. Second, it might lead your people to feel like the game is “fixed” and there’s no way they can advance because they don’t even have visibility into promotion opportunities. That may lead them to leave the organization since they know they won’t get a fair shot at advancement. Finally, it could prevent you from identifying the next generation of talent. People who apply might not be right for that role but they could fill future ones and should be n your radar when new openings arise. Bottom line: publicize the promotion opportunities and give everyone an equal shot at advancement.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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Creating Chemistry Between the Members of Your Team

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four employees at lunch

Chemistry and trust are what differentiates an average team from a high-performing team.

It’s great to have a clear vision and mission and a nice set of prioritized initiatives, and you’ve got all the right people. But what starts differentiating a team from a high-performing team is chemistry and trust between the members of that team. These intangibles are some of the most critical elements of building that team, but they’re also some of the most elusive ones to build and to capture.

You need to understand it’s about personalities and shared beliefs. Make sure everyone on your team is involved in the interview process because candidates will show different sides of themselves to different people. And sometimes, those sides can be unattractive detractors from what you’re trying to build.

When I was a consultant, we were bringing in another consultant onto the team, and that person interviewed very well with the other members of the consulting staff. At the end of the interview process, we all got together in the team room, and we talked about this candidate. And all of us were very excited about hiring him. And then we stopped and we asked our front desk receptionist what she thought of him. She said, “He was incredibly rude. He spoke down to me. He acted like I didn’t matter.” That individual did not get an offer of employment from us. And he’s probably still wondering why.

To assess what people are like, you can use some standard tools out there like The Myers-Brigg Type Indicator, Personalysis, and other standard evaluation tools to help people understand each others’ personalities and their styles and their preferences. Don’t just do it for candidates. Sit down and do it with the entire team. It’s not critical for people to have the same personalities; actually, it’s quite detrimental. What matters here is you have to help the members of your team understand and respect the other person’s personality and how they like to work with others. Some people may have shared experiences, or they may have a shared ethnicity or geography that they’re from. Help them find some point of commonality that they can build from.

Once you’ve figured out the chemistry of the team and you have people with the right fit, you need to start building trust between the members of that team. Trust is about shared experiences and predictability. Shared experiences show people how others perform and react during stressful situations. You may look at putting them on a big project together, where people can share in experiences and build stories together and feel like they accomplish something with one another. The impact is people start feeling like they can rely upon one another to achieve the goal. They start feeling responsible for each others’ well being and looking out for each other.

Now, the second element of trust is that predictability. I want to know how my colleague is going to react in a certain situation, because then, when they tell me they’re going to do something, and I’ve seen them behave in a manner that’s consistent with that in the past, I am much more likely to trust what they’re telling me they’re going to do. And if I understand that person’s values on top of having that predictability, well, that’s a really strong bond between me and that other member of the team, because then I really start believing what they tell me they’re going to do because it’s consistent with their beliefs and their past performance.

So, if, as a leader, you’re able to step back and look at the team and assess who’s going to be a good fit, how to get the right chemistry between the members of the team, and then get them trusting one another because they have shared experiences, and they’re predictable to one another, that team is going to gel very quickly and start functioning as a team instead of as a group of individuals.

Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? 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 build high-performing teams. 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!

This Hidden Enemy is Making Your Job Harder than Necessary

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woman with laptop

We can be victims of our own thoughts holding us back. False equivalencies limit our beliefs and can turn our greatest strengths into barriers and limitations.

Today’s post is by Elizabeth B. Crook, author of Live Large: The Achiever’s Guide to What’s Next (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

As a business leader, you know the challenges of managing cash flow, dealing with personal issues or handling a customer who is dissatisfied – all problems we sign up for as leaders. Yet in my work as a business strategist for twenty-five years, there is an issue more common and potentially disabling to leaders than any of the above – limiting beliefs.

Back in the 50s Walt Kelly, creator of the comic strip character Pogo, expressed it best, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

 One way limiting beliefs show up in our lives is in the form of false equivalencies. False equivalencies are defined by the belief that doing something or not doing something will make us “good” or “bad.”

Here are three common ones – you might recognize in yourself – I know I did!

Abandoning a project/goal/position = being a quitter

Tolerating unacceptable conditions = being patient

Taking time off/resting = being lazy

False equivalencies can keep us trapped in situations, limiting our options.

Mark, a CEO of a rapidly growing manufacturing company, came to me for some “next step” work when his company was going through a growing phase. He had a loyal team who had been with him since the company’s formative years, yet he was resisting trimming out the staffers who weren’t able to grow with the company and adding more experienced management to his team.

Puzzled at first, I recalled Mark’s telling me about the early years. “We had an investor, who was wise and eager for us to succeed. During his lifetime he supported us and mentored me to become the leader I am today. Not only that,” Mark continued, “but my father also gave me lots of runway to learn and grow. Even when I messed up, he cheered me on. Their loyalty and belief in me changed my life.”

Because of Mark’s positive experience with loyalty, he had an unwavering belief that if you cared about people, you stick with them, mentoring and training them into being the executives they needed to be.

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How comfortable are you with understanding and negotiating contracts?

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Our reader poll today asks: How comfortable are you with understanding and negotiating contracts?

  • Extremely: I may as well be an attorney 15.19%
  • Very: I get all the business elements and most of the legal ones 43.46%
  • Somewhat: I’m hesitant to engage with much of the legal terms 22.79%
  • Not very: I’ll only get involved if I have to 11.39%
  • Not at all: I want my attorney! 7.17%

Get to know the fine print. 41% of you report being either somewhat (or less than that) comfortable with understanding and negotiating contracts. The thing is, if it’s your name on the signature line, you’re accountable for the terms being agreed to whether or not you had an attorney involved. As the ultimate signatory of the agreement, you’re well-advised to get familiar with every term that’s included in the document. While some may seem confusing or arcane, a good attorney will be willing to walk you through every clause and explain it in easy-to-understand terms. You may find terms in there you don’t want to agree to from a business perspective that your attorney is willing to agree to because they don’t fully appreciate the business implications too. Negotiating an agreement carries on well beyond the initial handshake. If you don’t understand the final agreement, you might find some nasty surprises down the road when elements of that contract get pulled out. You don’t have to be an attorney but you should understand what they’re advising you to sign.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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Recruiting the Right People for Your Team

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One of the most exciting aspects of building a high-performing team is recruiting people to be members of that team. Follow these three tips to improve your recruiting process.

One of the most exciting aspects of building a high-performing team is recruiting people to be members of that team. There’s nothing better than finding that really talented person who wants to come work with you.

As you think about doing this recruiting and finding the right people, you need to understand how to create role descriptions based on the team’s skill needs. Experience-based role descriptions might sound like, well, “The individual must have five years of experience on a small business credit union underwriting team working at a small mid-Atlantic community bank with multiple branches.” That’s a really specific description and there are very few people who probably meet those requirements. So you’ve shrunk the recruiting base that you can find somebody in. Instead, write skill-based job descriptions. Think about the initiatives you’re pursuing and the skills this person has to have. For example, “The individual must have the ability to perform complex financial analysis and combine those results with judgment to make effective decisions.” Those skill-based job descriptions open the applicant pool. It’ll enable you to get those new people in faster.

Next, in terms of hiring, once you have that skill-based job description, think differently in terms of where you go to find people because different perspectives and different experiences are going to bring new ideas into your organization. Additionally, by looking at nontraditional sources, you’ll probably have less competition for that great talent. So instead of recruiting from Harvard Business School where every organization in America is trying to hire those graduates, perhaps you look at different schools where you have less competition. Maybe try and pick off the top two people at the Ohio State University’s Business School.

Last, when you hire this person, don’t just hire for the role that you want them to do. You have to give them head room to grow into. People want to be excited and challenged. They want the opportunity to build their skills, which builds their personal marketability. When you hire them, make sure they can do 70% of the role you’re hiring them for, and they’re going to need to learn 30%. Because when you hire somebody who has 100% of the skills required for the role you’re bringing them into, that’s a very safe bet for you as a recruiter and as a leader, but think about it from that individual’s perspective. If they can come in and do all elements of that job on day one, it’s going to get pretty boring, pretty quickly. After about six months, they’re going to become disenfranchised and frustrated, and start looking for more challenging opportunities. Most people, especially ones that are going to gravitate toward the high-performing team you’re trying to build, are looking at that career path and thinking about how they can grow because that’s a very strong source of personal motivation for them.

So again, as you’re writing these job descriptions and going out and recruiting that talent, think about skill-based versus experience-based role descriptions. Look in nontraditional places for the people who have those skills. And when you hire them, think about their growth path ahead. Make sure they’ve got room to grow and develop as individuals.

Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? 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 build high-performing teams. 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!

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