Training – Page 2 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

Motivating, Inspiring, and Developing People

October 27, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Training /by Trevor Jones

It’s easy to neglect your core responsibilities as a leader when it involves having uncomfortable conversations. Learn how to develop a maxim to overcome uncomfortable situations.

As a leader, one of your chief responsibilities is developing the members of your team. Great leaders build more leaders. You have to commit to their growth and create new opportunities for them to expand and learn new skills. That’s hard to do because for somebody to learn a new skill, you’re going to have to create an opportunity for them to do something they may not have done before. In doing that, you create risk because that individual might fail. And if they fail, that failure reflects on you. So a lot of times we’re afraid to take those risks on people to create growth opportunities.

That’s why you need a maxim to remind yourself that one of your chief responsibilities is doing that development work for the members of your team. My maxim to remind me that my chief responsibility is to develop people is, “It’s easier to correct course 100 yards into the journey than 100 miles.” I had a member of my team who was having some problems. One day he gave me some numbers and a report, and the numbers were off. I said, “Well, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. I’ll figure it out tomorrow.” I did this because I knew it was going to be a slightly uncomfortable conversation to have with him. A few days later, I heard about an interaction between this individual and a member of his team that hadn’t gone very well. I said, “I’m gonna need to talk to him about that. I’m not happy with what I’m hearing, but I’m not gonna do it today. Maybe I’ll do it next week.” The following week, I went past his office and he was berating a member of his team. He was speaking to them in a very condescending tone. I said, “I’m really gonna have to talk to him about this, but I’m not gonna do it today because he’s not in a good mood. The feedback won’t be well received.” I put off that more difficult conversation. I kept avoiding times when I should have given this individual some feedback.

Well, one day he came to me and said he was resigning. He had found another job and he was going to go work elsewhere. I was so excited because my problem was now gone. On the way home, I called one of my colleagues and I was relaying the good news, saying, “Hey, he quit—the guy who’s been giving me all the trouble. I don’t have to deliver the feedback now. He’s leaving the organization.” My colleague called me on it. He said, “Mike, you failed.” And I said, “What do you mean? How did I fail? He left. The problem is gone.” And my colleague said, “You failed every member of his team because your job as a leader isn’t just leading that individual. It’s leading the entire organization. Those people were getting beaten up on a regular basis. He was hurting their morale. And they were probably looking to you to solve that issue. You failed every member of that team. You have to remember that correcting course is easier 100 yards into the journey than 100 miles. You should have had the difficult conversation sooner because you could have either corrected performance or taken appropriate disciplinary action if he didn’t change the way he was operating.”

My colleague was right. I had failed the members of that team. So this maxim reminds me that when development conversations need to happen, I need to get over the fact that it’s going to be an uncomfortable conversation. I need to just have the discussion. It’s hard to do, but this maxim has changed my behavior on several occasions. There have been times when other members of my team since then have done something that I wasn’t exactly happy with. And my initial instinct was, “Well, I’ll just wait. It’ll fix itself.” And I said, “No. My maxim says I need to go have that conversation right now.” When I’ve done that, I’ve been very happy with the result because we correct behavior, get people pointed in the right direction, and do so before the problem gets bigger.

As you think about your team and about your responsibility to build leaders, to develop and challenge people, how are you going to remind yourself to take those kinds of risks? How are you going to remind yourself to have those difficult conversations when they need to happen? Has there been a time in your past where you created a growth opportunity for somebody and they succeeded well beyond your wildest dreams? Or a time where you avoided giving some tough feedback and there were bad consequences that occurred because you didn’t step up to the plate as a leader? Within those situations is where you’re going to find your maxims. Find that trigger. Find those words that were used in that conversation or the name of the project where the person succeeded. That phrase, that trigger, is what’s going to bring you back to that situation. It’s what is going to remind you of those feelings and get you to behave in a different way.

I know my maxim does that for me. When I have that difficult situation and I think of my maxim, I remember how uncomfortable that conversation was with my colleague when he told me I had failed. I remember how embarrassed I was of my failure as a leader. Those feelings drive me to change my behavior now because I never want to be that disappointed in myself again or that embarrassed. So you know what? I’m going to take action today. That’s how having a maxim based on something in the past can drive your performance in the future.

Want to learn more about developing your leadership philosophy? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to develop your leadership philosophy. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Why Complacency is Poison to Professional Development

October 25, 2021/2 Comments/in Books, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Training /by Trevor Jones

A new book by Sean Glaze shares 4 questions to help you and your team STAY COACHABLE and thrive in change.

Today’s guest post is by Sean Glaze, author of Staying Coachable (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Years ago, Charles Darwin noted that “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”

Regardless of your current career situation, change is always challenging you to adapt…to stay coachable.

Staying Coachable is the key to your growth and development.

And the truth is that everyone starts out coachable – it’s what allows us to reach the growth and plateaus and positions and views that we now enjoy…

But occasionally we become complacent.

And complacency is poisonous to your personal development.

The trouble is that we don’t always recognize our own complacency.

And so here, in a brief excerpt from the book, is part of the story and a few of the take-aways that Staying Coachable offers readers… Read more

Hiring a New Salesperson? Make Sure the Candidate Has These 5 Non-Teachable Traits

August 23, 2021/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Sales, Training /by Trevor Jones

A “Hunter” salesperson must have five non-teachable, non-negotiable traits to persevere in the face of rejection. Here’s how to identify them before you make an expensive hiring mistake.

Today’s post is by Christopher Croner, Ph.D , author of Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

You’re ready to hire a new salesperson and you know the stakes are high. While the economy seems to be moving in the right direction, surging COVID numbers are stirring up a lot of uncertainty. Whether more lockdowns happen or not—and whether the sales force returns to the office or not—you’re absolutely going to need a strong candidate who can bring in new clients in a tough business environment. Read more

Building High Performing Teams: Empower Your People

August 11, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

To build and foster a high performing team, sometimes you have to step back and let your people do their thing.

For you to get the most out of the members of your high performing team, you need to empower them. Remember, on a high performing team, those team members are typically very self-motivated, and they like being self-directed. You need to understand how letting go of your agenda, creating space for them to flourish, and then accepting that there are different ways of doing things is going to bring out the best in your people. Read more

How to Create a Stretch Goal

August 4, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Once you’ve established your commit goals, you should also set stretch goals. Learn how to use the one-third, two-third method to set a stretch goal.

In addition to setting a commit goal, you should also set a stretch. A stretch goal is what’s going to push people to achieve more. It still needs to be achievable when you go back and look at SMART goals, but it won’t have a guarantee of success. More often than not, you’ll fall short of your hitting your stretch goal. If you’re always hitting your stretch, you’re not stretching far enough.

So why should you set stretch goals? Well, if you only set a commit goal, the team might coast once you reach it. They’re going to say, “Well, we hit our goal. We don’t have to push ourselves so hard. Let’s just relax and get to the end of the year.”

A stretch goal gets them to continue performing. Once they hit the commit, there’s still something more that they can go out and achieve. A stretch goal can motivate and excite people. When they hit it, it creates a sense of shared achievement that’s going to build morale and team identity. Stretch goals force people to think differently.

Many times, a commit goal is based upon what people know they can do. They don’t challenge constraints or look for new ways of doing things. A commit goal is about getting things done and doing it the way we’ve always done it. A stretch goal gets them to challenge assumptions. They’ll look at the business differently. They’re going to be willing to make large changes and they’re going to take risks to achieve that stretch. A stretch goal helps them build new skills from trying new things.

So by combining a commit goal that they can achieve and they can deliver to the organization, and a stretch goal that pushes them to improve their performance, you’re getting the best of both worlds.

The one-third, two-third method for stretch goals

I often get asked, “How can I set a good stretch goal?” I like to tell people to use the 1/3, 2/3 rule. For the gap between your commit and your stretch, your team should have a good sense for how they might close 2/3 of that gap, and no idea for where the other 1/3 will come from.

Why 1/3, 2/3? Well, if it’s more than 1/3 that they don’t know where it’s going to come from, they’re going to give up and just say, “This is too hard. I don’t have any ideas.” If it’s less than 1/3, it may be too easy and they might coast. To create this list and understand what this 1/3, 2/3 is, gather a list from your team for ideas beyond the commit and add them up.

Let’s walk through an example. Let’s say we set a commit goal of X, and now we’re trying to figure out what the stretch is. I tell the team, “I need all your best ideas for how we’re going to drive revenue beyond that commit event.” The team goes off, they come back with their ideas, and they come up with $2 million worth of ideas. Now these will be hard, but they have a reasonable idea of how they can capture $2 million. That two million is my 2/3. What I need to do next is add another third beyond that. When you look at the math, you just divide that two million in half and add it. So I would add another $1 million, and then I’d have a total stretch goal of three million. Now let’s look at that 1/3, 2/3. 2/3 of that $2 million, they have ideas. 1/3 of it, $1 million, they don’t know where it’s going to come from. They’re going to have to innovate to find that incremental $1 million.

When you set your stretch goals, following this 1/3, 2/3 rule will help you identify ideas and make that stretch feel like it’s something they can get, but it will still push them beyond the ideas they’ve already got, and hopefully drive incremental innovation.

Want to learn more about setting team and employee goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to create a culture of strategy execution. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Bridging the Gap: 7 Tips for Successfully Returning to Work

August 2, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Training /by Trevor Jones

Returning to work after a period of unemployment can be challenging. Use these 7 tips to make the process easier.

Today’s post is by Carol Camerino, career advisor at University of Phoenix.

Looking for a job is one thing. Looking for a job after an extended absence is an altogether different thing. From facing down impostor syndrome to explaining the hiatus, job-seekers face their own set of challenges when returning to work. The good news? They also bring with them their own set of advantages.

If you find yourself in this camp, there are steps you can and should take to find your next role. But one of the most important is that initial step to embrace a “possibilities mindset.”

Many people put constraints on themselves at the outset and view their time away from the workforce as more of a liability than an asset. But they didn’t hit ‘pause’ on themselves while they were away. They developed other skills and connections and outlooks. And I think that serves returners really well. Read more

How to Create a Commit Goal

July 28, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Learn what a commit goal is and what you should consider when creating one.

When you set goals, I encourage you to set two kinds of goals. The first is a commit goal and the second is a stretch goal.

A commit goal is something you’re committing to do for the organization. If you miss it, you can get fired. There should be extreme consequences for missing a commit goal. To build your commit goal, work from the bottom up. Work directly with your team and have them make commitments to you as far as what they’re going to deliver for their goals. You’ll then need to reconcile the team’s commits and make sure they all add up to your commit to your organization.

At one point I had three different teams and we were tasked with a major cost reduction project. My boss came to me and asked me how much cost reduction would I commit to removing from the system. I went to my teams and I asked them how much cost they could take out, and I asked them for their goals. They gave me commit goals of one and a half million, two million, and three million dollars, for a total of six point five million dollars that they would commit to.

When I went to my boss, I hedged on that number a little bit and I told him I could commit to six million dollars. Now, he knew better and he knew I was hedging a little and he pushed me on it. He eventually got me to a point where we negotiated and I committed to six point two five million. Over the plan period, we exceeded that goal and we hit seven million dollars of cost reduction. Obviously there were no negative consequences for the team, but the result of having that commit was the entire team was focused on delivering six point two five. We tracked it over the course of the year. It was something that was at the top of our priority list because we knew we had to deliver it to the organization. Our commit was fed into the budgeting process at the beginning of the year and by doing so we ended up with a very accurate budget that people could plan for.

When you’re creating your commit goal, sit down with the team and make sure they understand what they’re committing to is going to have implications. The organization will plan based on that number and if they miss that number, there will be consequences for them and for you. Having that clear commit will drive the focus you need in terms of achieving a goal and making sure that the rest of the organization can plan for what you’re going to deliver.

How to Set Zero-Based Goals

July 21, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Use this common budgeting technique to set goals that are more relevant and actionable.

When you’re setting goals, you can borrow a technique from a common budgeting process called zero-based budgeting. What you do is look at last year, forget about it, and then look at where you are today and what you can achieve going forward. Every dollar you’re going to spend in the budget is justified. And every number you’re going to deliver is based on your current reality. Read more

Focusing and Eliminating Distractions

July 14, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Learn how to identify distractions and focus your team on the most strategically important initiatives for your organization.

In a fast paced world, there is no shortage of distractions. Side projects, interesting new ideas, and the crisis of the day can divert resources from key strategic initiatives. In isolation, pursuing these small ideas make sense, but when you put them in the broader context of your strategic initiatives, you get to see exactly how nonstrategic these distractions are. You have to remind people of their priorities. Eliminate these resource-draining distractions. Chasing these ideas prevents your strategy from being executed. Read more

9 Lessons for Leadership Success No One Teaches You About

July 12, 2021/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Training /by Trevor Jones

Learn nine principles that can help you become a better leader.

Today’s post is by Angela Civitella, a business leadership coach and founder of Intinde.

Most employees have big dreams of one day having the big title, the corner office, and being able to lead an organization. Industry knowledge is certainly part of the job, but it won’t make you a great leader all by itself. This is where leadership skills come into play, and without having an exceptional grasp of them, your days at the top will be short-lived.

How do you learn these skills? They aren’t taught in school. There’s no formal on-the-job training about them. In fact, most great leaders will tell you that everything they know about leadership they learned as they went along. Even things they thought they knew proved to be off or not exactly as they expected. It was only after rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty that they learned these lessons by doing.

Regardless of when and how you learn about leadership, if you want to lead an organization and do it successfully, there are nine things you have to know.

1. React to opportunities. Don’t sit back.

There are two types of people: those who sit back and watch, and those who act. Great leaders watch for less than a second and are quick to take massive action. Always be thinking more about forward motion and less about right or wrong. Remember, in most cases, you can fix a mistake later. When an opportunity is gone, it’s usually gone forever. If being indecisive is something you struggle with, set a time limit. When time is up, force yourself to act. Don’t just act causally. Act with purpose and full intensity.

2. Stop micro-worrying.

Micro-worrying is frantically trying to take care of or control every little detail to the point you actually begin to feel sick. Your mind is racing. Your heart is pounding. Your stress and anxiety are through the roof. Unless you’re trying to save someone’s life, there’s no need to box in your movements by “analysis-paralysis.” Obsessing over the finer details, or the things that are irrelevant and won’t impact the outcome is pointless and will only distract you from what you really need to be accomplishing. Your goal is to do the best job you can do and move on.

3. Find satisfaction.

Human beings have short attention spans. This gets worse when given a task someone doesn’t find appealing. Maybe it’s a long and boring meeting, conference call, training session or whatever else. Great leaders know the secret to success is to add a quotient of contentment and satisfaction to absolutely everything. The productivity of your teams will skyrocket. Your employees will be more engaged, have more fun, and actually enjoy their work. Some people might measure success with money. These days, satisfaction is a pretty high up on the list.

4. Be genuine with your connections.

We are so busy connecting on social media, that we have forgotten the true art of taking the time to meet someone in-person to really connect. This was a problem even prior to Covid. As soon as it’s safe to do so, get with people again for a real handshake, a real conversation, and a face-to-face meeting where you can actually have a three-dimensional experience with someone. This is what builds long lasting business relationships. Let’s go back to being real people.

5. There is no “overnight success” story

Tangible success in the beginning is very scarce. What comes in droves is frustration and all the other attitudes that make feeling successful an unattainable journey. Just remember, career success almost always equals hard work and time. People forget to give amply of it and then wonder why they aren’t getting anywhere. Remember, you get out what you put in, and sometimes it feels like it takes more than that.

6. Neglected connections are not connections.

How many times have you heard someone brag that they have 5,000 LinkedIn connections, 50,000 Facebook followers and a database of more than 200,000 people? Guess what? It’s all irrelevant if you don’t work those contacts and regularly stay in touch with them.

Be mindful and strategic about keeping a dynamic connection with contacts that can better your work life and life in general. There are different people for different aspects of your life. Be organized about your relationships, and nurturing. Stay on people’s radar. If you’re just a faceless connection on a website, how useful is that to you or anyone else? It really is quality over quantity when it comes to your connections.

7. Failure doesn’t last

Mistakes happen. In fact, they have a big purpose. I would even go as far as saying mistakes can be better than winning at times. Mistakes bring you to refine your thinking, your plans, and how you execute and deliver your business model. They are meant to give you the necessary pause in your journey to “reset.” So, it’s not about failing; it’s about learning. When you realize this, it takes away the fear and allows you to engage with less anxiety, less toxicity in your system, and have a better mindset about all the moving pieces in your life.

8. Spread out your interests

Has anyone ever called you a generalist, as if it were a bad thing? It’s actually a great quality when it comes to leadership. Generalists have a keen mind about a lot of things and are motivated to engage as long as something piques their interest. They are happy to learn something new, always thinking about a more robust arsenal of skills that they can claim as their own. These wonders of perpetual knowledge are always curious about everything and everyone. They never find anything boring. They are always able to get a nugget or two out of something. It might not happen right away, but eventually they will call on that knowledge in a big way and everyone will look at them and think: how in the world do they know that?

9. Teamwork makes the dreamwork

I love this saying. Being a good team member is one of the top things hiring managers and recruiters look for in a job candidate. You can be a superstar with awesome capabilities. If you cannot get along with your teammates and do not identify with the work culture in your organization, you might as well bow out and go home because you are of no use. Companies are looking for people who fit in harmoniously because conflict is usually a drain on employee productivity, morale, and all the other factors that companies rely on to keep their business moving.

Angela Civitella is an executive, a business leadership coach, and the founder of Intinde. www.intinde.com

Breaking Free from Analysis Paralysis

July 8, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Innovation, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Do you struggle to get things done because you overthink your work? Try these three tips to overcome “analysis paralysis.”

Many times I’ve heard it said that perfect is the enemy of done. A big barrier to executing initiatives is analysis paralysis. The team gets bogged down on proving their case is 100% accurate and risk-free before they act. That slows down execution and leads to missed opportunities. By understanding the risks you face and making appropriate trade-offs between timeliness and accuracy effects, you can speed up execution and break through analysis paralysis. Read more

Managing Your Remote Team Successfully – Five “Must Do’s”

July 5, 2021/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Training /by Trevor Jones

Managing your work-from-home team successfully takes more than technology. Here are five steps to ensure clarity, collaboration, connectedness and productivity.

Today’s post is by Amy Jo Mattheis, Founder and CEO of Pavo Navigation Coaching.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about numerous seismic shifts in our lifestyles. One of the biggest for many of us is learning to effectively work from home. For team managers, the remote life poses particular challenges. Simply having the technology and tools is not enough. Managers also need to adjust priorities and protocols and develop guideposts to overcome the pitfalls of isolation and keep everyone productive and successful. Here are five things they can do:

Adjust your definition of success. Working remotely looks, sounds, and feels different from working in person because it is. That means you can’t use the same metrics to measure success. For instance, engagement looks different without in-person contact. Back-to-back video conferences can generate a new kind of fatigue for everyone involved, so make space to recognize this. Consider what you do require from your team be it an agenda, a defined and clear objective, punctuality, or video cameras on. Try to notice what works for your team. When do they stay engaged and when do they zone out?

Establish new priorities for the new space. Now that your team is working from home, recognize a new set of mental health needs that stem from persisting confusion and tension. Team members may be feeling overwhelmed, isolated, and “paralyzed” – things they used to be able to mitigate by merely walking down the hall and chatting with a coworker. Remind team members to take care of themselves and to take the occasional mental health day. Foster work/life balance by insisting on dedicated lunch times, carving out no-meeting blocks on calendars, and having a consistent end-of-day finish time. Have short one-on-one check-ins to assist in removing blocks. Set up occasional social, no “work talk” virtual meetups or create a buddy system within the team so team members are encouraged to get to know one another outside of their roles.

Be consistent and do not cancel. When we’re not physically together in an office, we have a natural tendency to forgo regular one-on-one check ins with our direct reports, but now it is even more important. Your team members probably feel more isolated than ever and their lives are full of new and complex pressures. Consistent, efficient one-on-ones are critical for staying motivated, collaborative, and reaching goals. Additionally, set a reminder on your calendar to consistently check in with team members, as their needs and concerns will constantly evolve.

Be honest and vulnerable about your own experience. If you are feeling exhausted by endless zoom meetings, share it with your team. If you feel “over” the pandemic, let them know. Offering what is true for you from a place of observational truth, without judging yourself or the situation, gives your team space and permission to do the same. When your team feels safe to express how they are coping (or not) you have the opportunity to creatively problem solve while you still can. Use your listening skills like never before. Tune in. Turn off notifications. Close other tabs. Be present with your team and truly hear what they have to say. An excellent tool to use here is to repeat back to them what they shared before jumping into a response. “What I hear you saying is…., is that accurate?” Then move into the conversation where you know you are on the same page and they know you heard them.

Last but not least, trust your team to do their jobs. Create an environment where people know they can ask questions or simply say, “I don’t know.” This builds their trust in themselves, each other, and you. When your direct reports know you have trust in them, they feel a powerful agency and motivation. Clearly state expectations. Take care to describe the scope of each project accurately. Then release your team members to do their work. Check-in for short meetings and continue to delegate. Sharing the work, giving support where needed, and allowing and encouraging questions builds a team that is resilient, curious, and connected.

Pavo Navigation Coaching is a resource for those seeking to reimagine their working environment. Focused on identifying and addressing toxicity in all its forms, Pavo serves a wide variety of companies both large and small with the goal of positively impacting employee happiness, loyalty, productivity and ultimately, profits. For more information, visit www.pavonavigation.com

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