Strategy – Page 10 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

Retention is an Asset

February 3, 2025/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Today’s post is by Anil Singhal, author of “The 5% Rule of Leadership: Using Lean Decision-Making to Drive Trust, Ownership, and Team Productivity.”

We live in an age of corporate layoffs. Whenever companies encounter a setback, the inevitable go-to move is to cut overhead. A challenging stock market, a significant customer loss, the retirement of an aging product line? Lay off employees. Wall Street analysts love to see it – staff cutbacks can mean a short-term boost in your stock price.

In the tech sector, getting ahead is often characterized by perpetual job-hopping in search of a better deal or a higher-level title on one’s resume. Staying at one employer for a few years is usually the exception rather than the rule.

But what if it is possible to build a company with an operating philosophy of never having layoffs and creating a work environment so rewarding that even people who leave to pursue a new job, often as not, come back?

I will make a pragmatic case not just against layoffs but for a commitment to hanging on to your employees in good times and bad. I’m basing it on my experience of running a company for thirty years, from founding to more than one billion dollars in sales without having a major layoff… and keeping my best employees for decades—and that’s through some of the toughest times the tech sector has experienced.

No one would ever call me a saint or a moral philosopher – and I’m not going to make the case that not creating the dislocation and pain of lay-offs is the right thing to do (though it is) or blithely acquiescing to the chaos of “endless employee turnover is inevitable” (it isn’t). But I am a pretty good businessperson if a bit of a maverick. The contrary side of my nature has kept me from going along with the accepted way of running a company, including using layoffs or accepting endless employee departures as a standard business tool.

What I’ve learned over the decades is that there is always some external force beyond a company’s control that can be blamed for its inability to hold on to employees – especially valuable, veteran employees. But if that is the case, why do many admired companies manage to keep their employees for decades, during good times and bad, in cutthroat industries, without losing them or forcing them into layoffs? How did these companies manage to transform employee retention into their own growth engine? Into an asset as important as their products or their customer base?

Here is the rarely admitted truth: keeping your employees is always an internal problem, not an external one. You choose to indulge in layoffs, or you acquiesce to losing key employees. Neither is inevitable. Further, regarding retention, if you are currently worrying about losing your best employees to your competitors, you already have a severe problem.

Why? Because your worry is disguised by knowing that you may not be creating the best work environment for your people.

Companies that enjoy high employee morale don’t worry about retention. They know they have it. If your employees are happy—and, more importantly, feel empowered with control over their livelihood—they aren’t going anywhere. That’s how retention becomes its own engine: if you are doing everything right for your employees, they aren’t sending out resumes.

Consider the alternative. By the time you realize that a valued employee is preparing to leave, it is essentially impossible to convince that person to stay, short of buying them off or promoting them. All that does is award the most brazen with advancement and teach everyone else that this is the route for higher pay. A great company is built on fairness, not upon unequal application or who has the loudest voice.

If you do not exhibit trust in your employees and convince them that you are treating them fairly every day in every corner of your company, with every single action, you will never be able to truly deal with the challenge of retention. Employees do not quit because circumstances have temporarily changed for the worse. They quit because they’ve long since decided that they will quit if they face one more setback. And by then, their unhappiness will have infected those employees around them.

Fairness has two components. First, it is the employee’s (not management’s) perception of being treated fairly. That comes from establishing rules of action and executing them evenly—not rewarding some (superstars, veterans over newcomers, or those who are the loudest) at the expense of others. Second, it is personal liberty. Everyone wants control over their life, and when they sense they have lost that control, they search for a way out.

Absolute fairness means giving every employee the same opportunity to succeed.

When employee departures rise to an unusual level, companies blame external forces. But that is rarely the case. Beyond average turnover from personal life changes, many employee exits are likely a measure of how fairly a company treats its employees. People stay where they are valued.

Anil K. Singhal is the co-founder and CEO of NetScout, a software developer that makes products to help customers monitor the reliability and security of their business networks. He is the author of the best-selling book, The 5% Rule of Leadership: Using Lean Decision-Making to Drive Trust, Ownership, and Team Productivity.

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 couple of emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog delivered to your inbox every week!

4 Ways to Assess Your Team Members’ Results

January 29, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

There are four major areas you need to assess when judging your team members’ results.

Beyond how you’re spending your leadership capital, you need to assess the results your team members deliver. There are four major areas you need to assess.

Assess the quantity of their results compared to what’s expected. Also look at the quality of their final work, again versus what you expect. Consider how timely the work they deliver is versus expected deadlines. Last, evaluate intangible results related to how they conduct themselves, to what degree do they improve morale on their immediate team, and to what extent do they improve relationships with external stakeholders.

This assessment includes objective observations like quantity relative to a goal, as well as subjective assessments like how well they build relationships. Knowing the results your people are delivering tells you what you get for your leadership capital investments in them.

Quantity of results

The first thing to look at when assessing team member results is the quantity of work they’re getting done. What’s the quantity of their results compared to what you expect of them?

Let’s compare what meeting versus falling short of expectations could look like. The quantity of work delivered should be equal in work load to their peers. You don’t want someone who’s responsible for a little bit of work when you’re asking everyone else on the team to do a lot of work. You want that work complexity to be comparable to that of their peers, and their work should meet or exceed goals that you set for them. The quantity of work shouldn’t be smaller in workload than their peers or lower complexity versus their peers, and it certainly shouldn’t fall short of the goals you’ve set.

Think of someone you’ve led who delivered a high quantity of results. What differentiated them? How did you measure them? How about someone who delivered few results? How did you measure them? How did you set their expected goals? Make sure your people are turning out the amount of work you expect. Measuring the quantity of their results is exactly how you do that.

Quality of results

Quality is an important aspect of someone’s results. You don’t want your team members making a bad trade-off between quantity and quality. To prevent that, you need to monitor the quality of their work versus what you expect. When assessing quality, consider whether their work meets quality expectations versus the expectations you’ve set for their peers.

Take a look at if their work gets good feedback from customers or business partners. Do other people seek out their help and expertise? Does their work add to your team’s reputation? If they’re delivering low quality work, their work is below expectations versus the expectations you’ve set for their peers. They may get no or even bad feedback from your customers. Other people may avoid working with this person, and the quality of their work detracts from your team’s reputation.

At one point in my career I had a quality issue. I was a consultant, and the other consultant on my team was a very high performer. She turned out great work. The thing is, both of us had similar quality expectations. When my project manager looked at my work versus her work, it was pretty clear my work was below expectations versus the expectations of my peer. I was getting some bad feedback from our clients on the quality of my work. Other people avoided working with me. I had a couple of client team members who went to my colleague instead of coming to me. I know the quality of my work definitely detracted from the reputation of our team. It was pretty easy to look at my work and say it was low quality.

Is there someone you’ve led who delivered high-quality results? What made their result high quality? What impact did they have on the team? How were they viewed by your customers or other stakeholders? Have you ever worked with someone who delivered low quality work? What was that like? You need to get high quality results from your team members to justify the leadership capital investments you make in them.

Timeliness of results

Work needs to be delivered when it’s promised. Timeliness is a major evaluation criteria for your team members’ results. How timely is the work your team members deliver versus the expected deadline? When assessing timeliness, consider is this team member held to the same expectations as their peers in terms of deadlines? Does this person meet expectations and deadlines? Do they negotiate realistic deadlines with you? And do they get good feedback from their stakeholders on the timeliness of their results?

Or do you have a situation where they are held to lower expectations then their peers? Where they miss expectations and deadlines? Where they’re constantly renegotiating deadlines with you? Or, where they’re getting no feedback or even bad feedback from your stakeholders about when their deliverables come in? Do your people get their work done on time and as promised? What’s it like when people consistently meet deadlines, or better yet, complete their work before the deadline? What’ve you experienced when people miss deadlines?

It doesn’t matter how much work you do or how high the quality of that work is, if you don’t get it done on time. Timeliness needs to be a major consideration when evaluating your team members’ results.

Build team morale

When looking at how your team members generate the results, the first intangible thing to consider is the person’s impact on team morale. To what degree does this person improve morale on their immediate team?

We’ve all worked with that person who generated great results, but they were a nightmare to work with. Intangibles matter. To assess their impact on morale, ask yourself, is this person optimistic? Do they lift team morale? Do people seek out working with them? Is the person thoughtful and helpful? Do they generate good team energy? Or, are they pessimistic, and they deflate team morale? Do people avoid working with them? Are they selfish and disruptive? Do they drain the team’s energy?

I know one organization that looked at people’s results, both in terms of the what they delivered and how they delivered them. If you delivered awesome results but you were a jerk when you did it, you ended up with a low rating. It was important that you were building team morale as you delivered your results. While morale isn’t necessarily something that goes on people’s annual goals, it is a result of people’s actions. You invest time developing and coaching your people to behave in a certain way. For you to get a return on that investment, you’ll hopefully see them building morale on the immediate team.

If you focus on morale building as a result, they will, too. In doing so, you’ll focus appropriate energy on building morale, and they’re going to build the morale of the overall team.

Strengthen external relationships

It’s not enough for your team members to just build morale within your team. Team members should build and strengthen stakeholder relationships outside your team too.

Assess the extent to which this person improves relationships with stakeholders like business partners and clients. Take a look at the following to see if they’re doing it well. They should be getting good feedback from these external parties. They should be seen as a trusted advisor to represent you and your team. People should be asking to work with this person and they should build your team’s relationship goodwill. If they’re not doing this well, you’re probably going to hear bad or no feedback about this individual from these external parties. They won’t be seen as a trusted ambassador of your team. People might avoid working with this person. And over time, they’re going to drain your team’s relationship goodwill.

I coached one executive who had a member of his team who was not doing this well. She was causing all sorts of problems with their external partners and clients. She was pushing back on deliverables. She wasn’t following the prioritization that they had already agreed to. She was even talking about people behind their backs, and they found out about it. Over time, she was poisoning the relationship with these external stakeholders, and the leader I was coaching had to spend a lot of time rebuilding those relationships. High performers do more than just deliver the basic quality, quantity, and time-based results. They strengthen your team’s reputation. Make this intangible a key consideration as you assess their results.

People who perform poorly in this arena will cause you to spend excessive leadership capital repairing the damage they do. Those who build relationships well are going to save you a lot of time and energy.

Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to lead more effectively. 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 Spending Your Time and Energy the Right Way as a Leader?

January 22, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

The better you understand who’s consuming your leadership capital and how they’re consuming it, the easier it will be to change their behavior and yours as you work to become a more effective leader.

Assessing who’s consuming your leadership capital helps you understand how and where you’re spending your time and energy. To conduct this assessment, list out the 12 activities under the four major ways you spend leadership capital: directing, doing, delivering, and developing.

For each person on your team, ask yourself if you’re investing more time and energy in this person than you should for that particular activity. This is a subjective call. For situations where the answer is yes, you’re spending more time and energy than you should, put a yes in the box and give it a score of one. For times where it feels like you’re investing an appropriate amount of time and energy, answer no, and that gets a zero. If the total is seven or higher, this person is a high consumer of your leadership capital. Below seven makes them a low consumer of leadership capital.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say Jim is on my team and I’m going to look at at Jim across all of the leadership capital consumption activities.

Directing

In terms of directing, I’m spending an appropriate amount of time planning and prioritizing his work, so I answer no to both of those questions. However, in terms of coordinating, I’m doing a lot more coordination than I should. I’m making too many introductions for him and he’s asking me to be in the middle of a lot of those activities, so I would say yes, I’m investing more time and energy than I should in coordinating activities.

Doing

In terms of doing, I don’t have any problems with Jim making decisions, so I answer no. But I find myself constantly motivating him and clearing obstacles for him, and these are obstacles he should be able to clear on his own. I answer yes to both motivating and clearing. On delivering the work, I’m investing a lot of time and energy in Jim, way more than I should. I’m constantly having to monitor his work and his tasks. I’m correcting work all the time and I find myself a lot of times repairing damage after he’s caused it. I would answer yes to all three of those areas.

Developing

On developing, I’m spending a lot of time training Jim on tasks he should already know. I also have to invest a disproportionate amount of time in coaching him.

Promoting

Now in terms of promoting him, I’m not having to put in too much activity there, so I answer yes to training and coaching and no to promoting. When I add up all those scores, I get a score of eight. Jim is a high consumer of my leadership capital. These are subjective ratings based upon my assessment of how Jim should be performing, given his skills, tenure, and background.

You should conduct this assessment for all your team members. When you go to populate the leadership matrix, these scores will be one of the major inputs into that analysis. The better you understand who’s consuming your leadership capital and how they’re consuming it, the easier it will be to change their behavior and yours as you work to become a more effective leader.

Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. 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!

3 Ways to Develop Your People

January 15, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

A major responsibility of all leaders is building the next generation of leaders. Your development activities are the means to that end.

One of the four major activities that will consume your leadership capital is developing your people. Developing your team means you’re training them, coaching them and promoting them to help them advance their careers. Here are some keys to doing a great job of developing your people.

Training

In terms of training, you should be training them on new skills. You should be helping them apply what they learn in training to their day-to-day job. You should also be identifying skill gaps that these individuals have. Training should not be about training them on expected skills. You shouldn’t be doing a lot of retraining, and you should not be identifying specific training activities for them.

Coaching

Coaching is about coaching them to overcome new challenges. Coaching them to have high impact on whatever tasks they’re doing, and coaching does require critical feedback at the moment it’s warranted. Coaching should not be routine. It shouldn’t be a security blanket for the members of your team. And you shouldn’t be following up constantly on tasks that you’ve given them.

Promoting

Promoting activities fall in two buckets for me. First, promoting people and helping them get that next role, but also promoting their work across the organization. Promoting should be about giving people career advice. It should be about sponsoring their career plan, and making introductions to critical stakeholders in other parts of the organization. Promoting should not be you as the leader sitting down and writing that career plan. It shouldn’t be about you having ownership for that individual following that career plan. And promoting should not be about you building those relationships. You should make the introduction and step back.

I worked with one leader who did a great job of coaching. I was a consultant at the time, and I had a project that didn’t go very well. I didn’t do a good job. On my next project, she was my project manager. She and I sat down and said, “Mike, you need to fix these things.” We laid out what those new challenges were for me. We identified high-impact deliverables that I could focus on during the project. She also provided specific and frequent feedback at the point of need. The result was, I did a much better job on that project and I improved my skills overall as a consultant.

A major responsibility of all leaders is building the next generation of leaders. Your development activities are the means to that end.

Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. 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!

Dear Diary, Make Me a Better Leader: 4 Reasons You Should Start Journaling in 2025

January 13, 2025/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Reflective journaling gives you an honest look into the mirror, and such authentic awareness not only encourages you to make the right decision, but to do so in a timely manner.

Today’s post is by Dr. Sam Adeyemi, author of the upcoming book, “SHIFTS: 6 Steps to Transform Your Mindset and Elevate Your Leadership”

Did you write down your New Year’s resolution? If so, you’re 10 times more likely to keep it.

If you wrote down one idea and typed out another, which do you think would really stick? You guessed it.

Writing things out with our own hands holds a special place in our hearts — and minds. In fact, I bet many of you reading this right now received a brand new journal or diary as a holiday present. If not, I bet you thought about buying one as a gift. A new year signifies renewal, and keeping a journal always feels like a healthy and rewarding way to begin a new chapter or start a new journey.

And our assumptions are absolutely correct. Studies of psychotherapy practices have proven time and time again that self-writing can be transformative. What’s more, these benefits aren’t confined to acute medical situations. In the business world, “constructive self-talk” is directly linked with effective leadership and an increase in overall creativity, making journaling an essential tool for the most successful executives.

But why? What is it about keeping a journal — simply writing things down — that can turn the tide for even the most struggling executives? I’ve spent decades advising successful business leaders around the world, and there are four clear-cut reasons I tell all of them to start journaling right away.

1. Journaling provides clarity when dealing with the present.

Do you remember those “You Are Here” maps that used to mark the entrances of shopping malls across America? After a few steps inside, you were immediately confronted by a two-tone, two-dimensional map with a giant star labeled “You Are Here.” If you had just arrived at the mall for the first time — as was often the case — these maps were at least momentarily useless. Without any real context, you couldn’t really make sense of what was in front of you, and the “You Are Here” felt almost like a mockery to those who had no idea where “here” actually was.

If you want to know where you’re headed, you need to know where you are. If you want to know where you are, you need to know where you’ve been. Executives need a clear, high-level look at every situation that extends into the future and back to the past. They don’t simply need to know “We Are Here.” They also need to know “We Were There” and “We Will Be Here,” and they might even need to draw a line that unites all three.

Journaling makes this possible. It reinforces your recollection, promotes more comprehensive cognitive processing, and triggers more brain activity across the board — all while taking less time than typing things into a phone or computer. Essentially, journaling draws you a better map for navigating your metaphorical mall. A map in three dimensions with crystal clear context.

2. Journaling promotes mental well-being.

For many business leaders, mental health and personal well-being are at an all-time low. More than three-quarters of all US workers reported significant work-related distress in the last year, and over half of all managers say they feel “burned out” at the end of any given workday.

These heightened levels of stress not only threaten your organization’s working culture as a whole, but they also undercut the effectiveness of your leadership. Absent any healthy outlets for their distress, nearly 70% of executives say burnout is affecting their ability to make critical decisions. Since these high-level decisions greatly influence every aspect of the organization, it is imperative they are made from a place of clarity and personal safety.

Expressive and reflective journaling is one way to get there. Self-writing can help individuals cope with stressful events and soothe their own latent anxiety. These mental health outcomes could be transformative for most modern executives. Even leaders in neuroscience are sounding the trumpet about the big benefits of leadership journaling.

3. Journaling naturally supports more comprehensive CPD.

Have you ever heard of the term “phototropism”? To be honest, neither had I until somewhat recently. Phototropism is the scientific name for the process by which plants naturally bend toward sunlight, and it’s a big part of their survival mechanisms.

Likewise, continuing professional development (CPD) is essential to the survival of any organization. Studies in both education and medicine revealed an almost-immediate performance dropoff when CPD was neglected by an individual or team. Conversely, routine journaling documents personal growth and makes CPD a very public part of the organization’s working culture.

So, who needs to step up? The professional development practices of an organization’s leadership have a direct impact on CPD as a whole. As such, the most successful executives put CPD at the top of their personal list of priorities. All leadership journaling should include detailed CPD records, including successes, failures, and reported benefits. Such a paper trail sets the tone and makes any formal CPD auditing process seamless and straightforward.

4. Journaling replaces reactive leadership with proactive leadership.

In Back to the Future II, Marty McFly unleashes a universe of problems when he steals a sports almanac from 2015. The almanac eventually finds its way back to 1985 in the hands of his nemesis, Biff Tannen, and the consequences are disastrous. Marty steals the almanac knowing how high the risks are for something terrible to happen. So why does he do it? Because the book holds knowledge about the future, and there are few things more tempting than your own crystal ball.

Routine journaling isn’t a time machine, and it isn’t going to help you place a bet on the next World Series. That said, it does offer something almost equally valuable to the modern executive: the ability to be more proactive in one’s leadership. Reflective journaling gives you an honest look into the mirror, and such authentic awareness not only encourages you to make the right decision, but to do so in a timely manner.

Atlanta-based Dr. Sam Adeyemi (SAY: Ah Day yeh me) is CEO of Sam Adeyemi, GLC, Inc. and founder and executive director of Daystar Leadership Academy (DLA). More than 52,000 alumni have graduated from DLA programs, and more than 3 million CEOs and high performing individuals follow him on top social media sites. He is the author of “Dear Leader: Your Flagship Guide to Successful Leadership.” His upcoming book, “SHIFTS: 6 Steps to Transform Your Mindset and Elevate Your Leadership” (Wiley, Feb 2025), is now available for preorder. Dr. Sam 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. Learn more at SamAdeyemi.com.

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!

3 Ways to Help Your Team Deliver Their Work

January 8, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Keep these three leadership roles in mind when helping your team members deliver their work.

One of the four major activities that will consume your leadership capital is helping your team deliver their work. A leader’s role in delivering the work requires them to monitor progress, correct work that needs fixed, and repair work that was done incorrectly. Consider these approaches to ensure your team is delivering the work.

Monitoring Work

In terms of monitoring, it should be goal focused. Your monitoring should be by exception, and hopefully when you’re doing monitoring, it should be confidence building for the members of your team. Monitoring should not be tasked focused at the individual task level. It shouldn’t be a total review of all the tasks your team members are working on. And hopefully, your monitoring is not stress-inducing for the members of the team.

Correcting Work

Correcting activities should be occasional. You should be dealing with first-time mistakes. You should be the final check on the deliverable. Correcting should not be every day. You shouldn’t be correcting the same mistakes over and over, and you definitely should not be the first check of your team member’s work. They should be doing that themselves.

Repairing Work

In terms of repairing, hopefully it’s infrequent. The repairs are done at a small-scale and your team members should be alerting you to the need to repair something. Repairing should not be frequent. It shouldn’t be large-scale issues that you’re trying to fix, and your team members should not be hiding those issues from you.

I know one leader who wasn’t doing monitoring well. He had a total review of all the tasks in his division. He used to have a 10-hour long monthly meeting with all of his direct reports. In that meeting, every single direct report went through every task they were working on. And this leader dug into every task, trying to monitor their activity on all of them. Eventually, the team got so frustrated with this approach that they left. Many of them sought jobs in other divisions or even other companies. His monitoring activities were not calibrated to the level he should have been operating at.

Delivering the work is about ensuring your team is doing high quality work that meets the commitments you’ve set out with your stakeholders.

Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. 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!

The Flexible Presenter: Preparing For The Inevitable Time Squeeze

January 6, 2025/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Being a flexible and dynamic presenter is a skill that not many people have. If you’re able to master it, you’ll be noticed and appreciated, which will enhance your reputation and career.

Today’s post is by Mike Schiller, author of High Impact At Low Decibels: How Anxiety-Filled Introverts (And Others) Can Thrive In The Workplace.

“What do you mean I only have 10 minutes to give my presentation? I was scheduled for 30!” How many times have you found yourself in that situation? As frustrating (and unfair) as it is for the presenter, it’s part of life in the business world, where meetings run late and plans change. The way you handle it can have an impact on your career, as a reputation enhancer or as a career derailer.

Years ago, my two peers and I were scheduled to give a presentation to our primary stakeholders. We were each supposed to present on a different topic and had 45 minutes total, meaning we each had 15 minutes to talk. I was going third, and you can probably predict what happened. The first two speakers went long. By the time I got up there, we were out of time. So, what did I do? Did I shorten my presentation? No. Did I acknowledge that we were out of time and just skip doing my presentation? No. I delivered my entire presentation as planned. I mean, that’s how I had practiced it. What else could I do? And I took every question from the audience. I mean, they had questions – wouldn’t it be rude not to take them? But by taking this approach, I got us, and therefore the customers’ meeting, even further behind.

After it was over, I felt terrible. I knew I hadn’t handled it well. I went to my boss’s office the next morning and asked if my career was over. He said that it wasn’t but was glad I asked. He then proceeded to give me some guidance and advice: “You had the opportunity to be a hero and you didn’t take it. Your two peers put you in a tough spot and everyone in that room knew they had put you in a tough spot. But instead of taking the opportunity to be a hero and keep the meeting from falling behind, you delivered your entire presentation. You tried to talk fast. That never works. And then you took every question from the audience. It’s always the speaker’s responsibility to control the audience and the flow of questions. You could have gotten up there and said ‘We’re out of time, so I’m not going to go through my slides, but here are the three key points I wanted you to take away from my presentation. I’ll be available during the break and will be happy to answer any questions you might have.’ You would have gotten the meeting back on track and everyone in the room would have appreciated it.”

This was profoundly good advice and something I used to shape my preparation process for the rest of my career. I was determined to never make the mistakes I made in that meeting again. If you present at many meetings, you will find yourself in this situation, especially if you’re toward the end of the agenda. People are terrible at sticking to their time slots. And it annoys everyone in the room. You WILL be put in the position where your time slot gets squeezed, which means you WILL have the opportunity to be a hero.

After this incident, I was always the guy who stuck to his time slot. If you give me 20 minutes, I’ll be done in 20 minutes. If you give me 20 minutes and the meeting is running 5 minutes behind, I’ll be done in 15 minutes.

There were three keys to making this change to my presentation style.

First and foremost is advance preparation. When preparing for a presentation, I think ahead of time about what I’ll do if I only have 10 minutes, if I only have 5 minutes, and if I only have 1 minute. That exercise helps me think through the key points of my presentation, which puts me in a position to be dynamic and pivot “on the fly” if necessary. Caveat: while many presentations are ‘informational’ in nature and can be shortened and summarized, there are others that are intended to lead the room in reaching a decision, which might not be practical in 5 minutes. But by thinking it through in advance, I can determine the minimum amount of time I need and be prepared to say something along the lines of “We’re not going to have time to arrive at a decision, so I’ll cover the highlights and follow up offline (or set up a follow-up meeting or what-have-you).”

Second, if it’s my turn to speak and the meeting is running late, I’ll directly address it with whoever’s in charge of the meeting, asking if they still want me to wrap up per the original schedule or if there’s flexibility. That allows for expectations to be set up front and reduces opportunities for frustration on the part of the audience.

A third tactic is to have a way to see the time. You can’t stick to your time if you don’t know what time it is. When I arrive at the presentation location, I quickly look for a clock on the wall that I can see while I’m presenting. If there isn’t one, I’ll put my watch on the podium or table before I start speaking. Looking at a watch on your wrist while you’re presenting is distracting to the audience and isn’t a good look. It makes it seem like you’d rather be somewhere else. It’s much less noticeable to glance down at a watch that’s on a nearby surface. The same concept applies if you want to use a timer or clock on your phone. Don’t pull your phone out of your pocket and look at it while you’re presenting. Place your phone somewhere where you can occasionally glance at it.

This skill of being a flexible and dynamic presenter is one that not many people have. If you’re able to master it, you’ll be noticed and appreciated, which will enhance your reputation and career.

Mike Schiller, author of High Impact At Low Decibels: How Anxiety-Filled Introverts (And Others) Can Thrive In The Workplace, has more than 30 years of experience at Fortune 500 companies and most recently was vice president and chief information security officer at Texas Instruments. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University and is currently president of Onward Consulting, specializing in information security and audit consulting. Schiller is an anxiety-filled introvert and enjoys helping others with similar challenges succeed.

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!

3 Ways You Can Help Your Team Do Their Work

December 11, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Keep these three leadership roles in mind when helping your team members complete their work.

One of the four major activities that will consume your leadership capital is helping your team do their work. You should make decisions, motivate them and help them overcome obstacles:

Making Decisions

In terms of deciding, you should be making decisions that are beyond their authority. You should be reviewing their plans and pressure-testing the decisions they make. Deciding should not be making decisions that are within their authority. You shouldn’t be making their plans for them and it’s definitely not about them offloading accountability for decisions to you.

Motivating

Motivating should be occasional. It should be about helping your team overcome new challenges. You should be setting aspirations for them. Motivating should not be every day. You shouldn’t have to motivate them in terms of routine activities and motivating definitely is not about invoking fear.

Clearing Obstacles

Clearing activities are helping them deal with issues above their level. You’re going to help them overcome new or tough barriers. Clearing is not about helping mediate conflict with their peers or helping them overcome routine barriers.

I have one client I work with as an executive coach and he was having some problems with deciding. When we sat down and talked about the decisions he was making, he felt great about it. When we dug into it, what we learned was most of the decisions he was making were ones that were definitely within the authority of his team. His team members were coming to him and saying, “Hey, here’s a decision. How about you make it for me?” Now, my client felt great because he felt important, he felt needed and he felt like he was making great decisions. On reflection, he was doing work that should have been done by the members of his team. We had to reassess how he was going to engage with his team members on deciding activities.

Remember, doing doesn’t mean you’re actually doing the work. Your job is to ensure the team members are able to get their work done.

Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. 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 Direct Your Team: Planning, Prioritizing, and Coordinating

December 5, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Directing work is one of the four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. Directing work involves planning, prioritizing, and coordinating.

There are four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. They’re directing work, doing work, delivering work and developing people. Let’s look at directing activities, and what doing them right or wrong looks like. The three activities, in terms of directing, are planning, where you’re translating your vision into team and individual goals, prioritizing, where you’re turning individual goals into team priorities, and coordinating, using your position to provide a broader perspective to the members of your team.

Planning

In terms of planning, it should be about team goals, and reviewing those goals. You should be approving the team members goals when they bring them to you. It shouldn’t be about driving individual tactics, drafting their goals for them, or renegotiating those goals on a regular basis.

Prioritizing

Prioritizing is done at the team level. You should be deciding what the top priorities are, and what the things are that you’re not going to work on. Prioritization should be done routinely. It’s not a one-off activity. Prioritizing should not be done at the individual level. That’s up to your team members. You shouldn’t be renegotiating priorities on a regular basis, and you shouldn’t have to re-do your priorities all the time.

Coordinating

Coordinating is about connecting your team members with people outside your organization. This should be for first-time connections and you should play the role of the referrer in those situations. Coordinating is not about relationship management. That’s up to your team members. Coordinating shouldn’t be repetitive. You should make the connection once, and be able to step back. And you definitely should not be the referee in these relationships. Leave it up to your team member to work effectively with the people you introduce them to. Focus your directing time on higher level activities versus individual tactics.

Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. 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!

4 Ways to Invest Your Leadership Capital

November 27, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

There are four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. Depending on your team, you’ll have a different mix of these activities.

There are four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. They’re directing work, doing work, delivering work and developing people:

Directing work

Directing including planning where you translate your vision into individual goals and activities. Prioritizing which is turning individual goals into team priorities. And coordinating using your position to provide broader perspective to the members of your team and help them see how their work fits into that broader picture.

Doing work

Doing is comprised of deciding where you as the leader have to make decisions that can’t be made by the members of your team. Motivating, inspiring your team members to do difficult things. And clearing, helping your team members overcome the roadblocks they’re going to face.

Delivering work

Delivering consists of monitoring where you’re tracking team progress against goals and objectives. Correcting where you’re fixing work that wasn’t done right the first time. And repairing where you’re repairing damage when mistakes are made. You’ll have to smooth over some relationships that get damaged when they make those mistakes.

Developing people

Developing includes training where you’re teaching new skills and building the capabilities of your team members. Coaching where you’re building their confidence and their capabilities by helping them understand how they need to grow. And promoting, advancing your team members’ careers by positioning them for growth.

Depending on your team, you’ll have a different mix of these activities but these activities comprise for the most part what’s expected of all good leaders.

Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. 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!

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Investing Your Leadership Capital

November 21, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

I’ve seen leaders make three common mistakes when investing in their leadership capital. These mistakes hurt both their efficiency and their effectiveness.

Do you work a 40 hour week or are you working 24/7? How much effort are you putting into your work? How much stress do you experience from the energy you’re putting in? Your time and energy are finite resources. You can squeeze more time out by taking away from other activities in your life but you can’t do that forever. That time isn’t unlimited. If you squeeze out too much, bad things can happen. I’m speaking from experience here. I’ve had two heart attacks because I was spending too much time and energy with my work. Something needs to change.

To reduce the time you spend at work, reduce stress, and improve performance, you need to approach how you spend your time and energy differently. Leadership capital is the time and energy you invest in leading your team. It needs to be invested carefully like any other scarce resource. When’s the last time you assessed where you’re spending your time and energy? Who are you spending it with? How are you spending it? Are you getting the results you want from those investments? These are all questions I want you to consider as you assess how you’re spending the valuable resource of your leadership capital.

3 Leadership Capital Mistakes

I’ve seen leaders make three common mistakes when investing in their leadership capital. These mistakes hurt both their efficiency and their effectiveness.

The Peanut Butter Approach

The first mistake I see is what I call the peanut butter approach. What leaders do is give everyone on their team exactly the same amount of their time and energy. They just spread it around evenly. They do this because it feels fair to everyone. What’s wrong with this approach is not everyone needs the same amount of your time. It’s not fair to those who need less. It feels like micromanagement. It’s not fair to those who need more of your attention. They feel like they’re getting slighted for time.

The Reactive Approach

The second mistake I see is the reactive approach where leaders give people time and attention whenever they ask in the order they ask for it. Just think about a queue of people lined up outside that leader’s door knocking on the door and asking for time and attention and that leader just calls the next number in line. This mistake happens because this approach requires very little thought. What’s wrong with this approach is it fails to prioritize the leader’s time and allocate it to the most important issues. It also encourages team members to constantly take up the leader’s time rather than solving issues for themselves.

The Path of Least Resistance Approach

The third mistake is taking the path of least resistance. Leaders spend more time with people who are easiest or most fun to work with. They avoid team members who give them trouble. Leaders do this because this approach is easy. It avoids conflict. The issues with this approach include not solving issues that need to be resolved and instead dedicating time and energy to low return efforts. Spending excessive time with high performers doesn’t contribute a great deal to delivering outstanding results.

When you look at these mistakes, I’d like you to ask yourself a couple of questions. What would you do if your chief financial officer allocated budget and investment dollars this way? Do you spend your leadership capital this way? Once you know what these common mistakes are, it’s easier to avoid them and instead be more intentional about how you spend your leadership capital to get better results.

Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. 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 Being Set Up to Fail?

November 13, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

When someone who has traditionally been your opponent creates a great opportunity, question their motivation. Seek to fully understand the situation before you say yes.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Set you up to fail

Some people want to see you fail. They also want everyone else to see you fail too. They do this because they believe if you fall behind, they get ahead. A common way for them to do this is create a great visibility opportunity where you can fail. They can encourage you to share something they know will be unpopular. They might share information they know is wrong to make you look bad in a particular situation. They might even put you in the spotlight before you’re ready to share your ideas. They may ask you to lead a project they know is doomed to fail, they may encourage you to take over a team they know it’s going to be disbanded or let go. It seems like they’re doing you a favor in that moment, but what they’re really doing is setting you up to fail. When someone who traditionally has been an opponent creates a great opportunity, question their motivation. Seek to fully understand the situation before you say yes.

I know one vice-president who had traditionally pushed back on a director’s career. This director was a rising star and the VP didn’t like him very much. One day the VP went to the director and said, “Hey, for the executive leadership team meeting next week, a spot just opened up to present. And I was thinking the project you’re working on would be great to update the executive leadership team on the progress of it.” Now this director thought, “Wow, this is a great opportunity. I’m going to get in front of the C-suite and talk about my project.” Then they realized the project wasn’t going that great. They also didn’t have a current status update ready to deliver. But they felt like they were on the spot and they had to take advantage of this opportunity, so they accepted. When they went to the meeting, they weren’t fully prepared. When they started presenting, this VP who had created the opportunity started asking a ton of really difficult questions. They put this person in a really bad position where they were having to explain the shortcomings of their project in front of the executive leadership team. That meeting didn’t go well for that director. They never saw it coming. They had been set up.

If you’re in this situation, if you’re dealing with a project and somebody comes to you before you’re ready, maybe ask them to cosponsor the project. You could ask them to contribute resources to that project that’ll increase the likelihood that the project doesn’t fail and that could get that person committed to helping that project succeed. If you’re given an opportunity to present and you’re not quite ready, it’s okay to defer and say, “Hey, the project isn’t at a state where I’m really comfortable sharing that information or maybe we could share it next month when we’ve hit some key milestones.” Don’t be too eager to get in to that spotlight. If you’re dealing with someone who has traditionally been a detractor, and that great opportunity comes along from them, really question it to make sure you’re not being set up to fail.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. 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!