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

How open is your leadership team to new strategic directions?

January 20, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: How open is your leadership team to new strategic directions?

Very: They’re happy to shift to a new strategy that makes more sense 25.85%
Somewhat: It takes strong effort to compel change 37.64%
Not very: It takes a massive market shift to get them to move 26.40%
Not at all: Don’t even bother talking to them about new directions 10.11%

Moving with the market. 62% of you expressed a willingness on your leadership team’s part to shift strategy as the market shifts and new opportunities emerge. A word of caution here – be sure you’ve set out a clear mission and vision for the organization to serve as a north star. Without that, you risk meandering and getting distracted by the latest trend instead of driving your organization to a chosen destination. Being too willing to change course can put you at a disadvantage versus more focused competitors. For those with leadership teams less willing or even unwilling to shift, recognize the market is always moving. Either you change your business or the market will change it for you with the latter being significantly less desirable. If they’re unwilling to move, show them a cost of inaction – what does their world look like in the future if they don’t take action today? Sometimes seeing that stark future picture can spur them into action.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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The Democratic Decision-Making Style

January 19, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Learn about the democratic decision-making style and the situations when it’s most appropriate.

The third style of decision-making that you can use is democratic decision-making. This is when a decision is reached by a majority vote. Buy-in is desirable, but it’s not essential. These are the decisions that we just have to make and then move on with life. Individuals are going to interact. You may have a committee where people come together and form an opinion, but ultimately, we set a deadline, we vote, and we move on.

Imagine a situation where you’re trying to choose a new color and floor plan for the office. This is not a huge decision. It’s not a make-or-break call for the organization, but we do need to make the call and then execute it so we can get back to work. You may assign a committee of people to ultimately choose that color, and you’re going to put it to a vote. Now, not everyone is going to be happy because this is a matter of personal taste so many times. We want as many people as possible to be happy, but we want to make the call and get it done.

As you think about situations where you’re going to apply democratic decision-making, they should be for those smaller decisions that aren’t going to have a huge impact. You need to set a deadline for things to get decided so you can move on and execute.

Want to learn more about decision-making strategies? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start improving your decision-making strategies. 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 You Can Lead with Influence

January 17, 2022/0 Comments/in Books, Career, Communications, Leadership, Upcoming Events /by Trevor Jones

The notions of perception, visibility, and influence are the keys not only to better performance for your organization but they’ll also help you advance your career to the next level.

Today’s post is by Joel Garfinkle, one of our thoughtLEADERS instructors.

How often have you looked at a situation in the company and thought of a better way to do it? Or felt that change was needed… but didn’t know how to make it happen? Sometimes we feel frustrated that we aren’t in a position or job title that has the power to make those changes.

But there are some techniques and methods designed to turn you into a strong influence in your company regardless of your title or position. Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level introduces the value of Perception, Visibility and Influence.

When you understand how to use perception, visibility and influence – the PVI model – you can lead from where you are right now. Those around you recognize your value. They respect your opinion and you have the skills to influence decisions and changes.

Start with Yourself

Sometimes advancing in leadership means changing cultural patterns and beliefs. You may have been taught to “not push yourself forward,” or “don’t ever volunteer for something.” You’ll need to push aside these well-meaning teachings in order to gain an unexpectedly powerful way of taking leadership.

The first step in perception is to examine how you see yourself. It’s not uncommon for people who want to be leaders to feel insecure – feel like a fraud. Here’s the secret. You’re likely better than you think.

So how can you raise your perception of yourself?

How effectively do you help your teams arrive at their own solutions rather than giving a solution to them?

January 13, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: How effectively do you help your teams arrive at their own solutions rather than giving a solution to them?

Very effectively: Almost everything we do is the team’s idea 17.52%
Effectively: I help them often but sometimes drive my own solution 71.89%
Not effectively: My solution often dominates the conversation 7.37%
Not at all: I almost never use the team’s solution and always default to mine 3.22%

Let them own the solution. While the majority of you responded that you let your teams develop and implement the solution to a problem, there is a pretty strong hint of leaders driving their own solutions. While you’re responsible for leading the team, it doesn’t always have to be your solution. Sure, your solution might be the best one but is it significantly better than the one the team generated? If there’s only a marginal difference, try letting the team run with theirs. They’ll be more excited about it, learn more effectively from where their plan had shortcomings, and be more invested in the outcome which should lead to better execution and higher engagement. Reconsider your role in the problem solving process and move from problem-solver-in-chief to being the enabler of your team building, executing, and learning from their own solutions.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

The Participatory Decision-Making Style

January 12, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Learn about the participatory decision-making style and the situations when it’s most appropriate.

The second style of decision you can make is participatory. This is when you’re going to make a decision with input from the people who are going to be impacted by the final call. Participatory decisions are made when the decision is much bigger and there’s a lot more risk involved. Getting additional information from more people is going to reduce the decision-making risk. Also, by getting buy-in, you’re reducing execution risk because people have had an opportunity to give their input and have a say in the final call that’s made.

As far as that final call, in participatory decision-making, there’s still a smaller decision-making authority. It may be an individual or a smaller group. This aspect of participatory decision-making can feel a little autocratic, but we’ve gotten input along the way. And the individuals are going to interact with each other as this decision is being made. Getting all the people in the room so that they can hear each other’s perspectives is going to help you drive to a better decision.

Allow me to offer an example. Recently in my firm, we looked at raising prices on some of the services we offer. This is a really big decision and it has a huge impact on the financials of my firm. So I couldn’t rush off and just make an autocratic decision without getting input from the other people I work with. So we sat down, we had a conversation, and we weighed the pros and cons. People had their say and they brought up things that I hadn’t thought of. We highlighted some risks that we were going to have to mitigate along the way. Ultimately, as the leader of the firm, I had to make the final call. But I got input from the people who are going to be involved in executing the decision so that we get better execution on the back end.

As you think about making decisions in a participatory environment, remember you should be using this style when the decisions are bigger. You have a little bit more time to make the decision because you need to gather more input along the way which takes time and meetings. But ultimately, that smaller decision-making body is going to make the call.

3 Steps for Protecting Your Most Important Asset

January 10, 2022/0 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Leadership, Training /by Trevor Jones

Today’s guest post is from Joel Garfinkle, thoughtLEADERS instructor, executive coach and author of Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Are you protecting your most important asset? No, it’s not your buildings, your equipment, or your investment accounts. It’s your people. Especially those rising stars whose contributions affect your bottom line and your future success.

The true cost of losing an employee goes largely unrecognized in many companies. Are you paying attention to this cost? Some managers shrug off this expense as a normal cost of doing business. Because there is no mechanism in place to compute the actual cost, the reality of the loss does not get reported to top management or discussed in terms of its strategic impact. But you can change all that.

Here’s the caveat: you need to be proactive. Don’t wait until turnover costs spiral out of control before you develop and implement a retention program. Start by mentally separating your employees into three categories:

– top performers
– mid-level performers
– lowest performers

While you may ultimately need to replace those in the third category, let’s concentrate on the other two. There are three important ingredients in an effective employee retention strategy: Read more

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