Mike Figliuolo's Blog, page 76

Becoming a Net Exporter of Talent

Developing your team so well that they begin being poached by others and letting them go to those other teams is exactly how to develop your organization. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS Want to build your team? Get rid of the people who are on it. I don’t mean go about firing people in a flurry. Become what I call a “net exporter of talent.” You need to develop your people to the point that they’re ready for new challenges. Build their skills. Make them more valuable to the organization. Grow them and build upon their responsibilities. And once you can stand back and admire the fruits of your labor, send them somewhere else to work. Actually, if you’ve done a good enough job developing them, others will be trying to poach them from your team....



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Soft Skills Make You Stronger

Soft skills aren’t unimportant, in fact, they might be the difference between getting a job or not. Today’s post is by John Livesay, author of The Successful Pitch (CLICK HERE to get your copy). The concept of soft skills which include empathy, listening, and storytelling is known to not be as important as hard skills. If you’re an architect, your hard skills are what you learned in school, i.e. how to design a building. If you’re a lawyer your hard skills are what you learned in law school and passing the bar. If you’re a keynote speaker, your hard skills are knowing how to put together a talk that has a beginning, middle and end i.e. the craft of speaking. No matter what your profession, mastering the soft skills is what makes you stronger than your competition. ...



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When you get stressed out, how do you deal with it?

Our reader poll today asks: When you get stressed out, how do you deal with it? I go exercise.  24.38% I take time off from work. 5.48% I throw myself into my work and push through it. 28.86% I meditate. 13.31% I do something else.24.12% I never get stressed out. 3.85% Find a productive outlet. While many of you have productive places to release stress (exercise, meditation, time off or some other activity), an alarming portion of you (29%) simply push through the stress. This can work in the short term, but over time, the cumulative effects of this stress can be tremendous. Whether it’s health issues, relationship challenges, decreased performance, irritability or some other damaging effect, your desire to “push through” can have catastrophic effects. Find an outlet for...



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How to See Your Projects to Completion

Most of the major initiatives we pursue are conducted as projects. What do you do when those projects go up in flames? There are seven common reasons our projects go bad and the ways to avoid them. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS. Projects go off the rails all the time. Some statistics I’ve seen say only 1 in 8 projects can truly be declared as successes. Why are we so horrible at executing projects especially when we have all these “tried and true” project management methodologies? There are seven deadly killers of projects. Any one of them can undermine your project’s success. The good news is we teach people how to avoid these issues as part of our Project Management Reality course (CLICK HERE to learn more). For the benefit of all my readers,...



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How to Coach Your Team Like an Executive Coach

Expert tips on exactly what to say to lead your team, motivating inspiring and facilitating their efforts to great results. Today’s post is by Keren Eldad, author and TED speaker. Over the course of several years as an executive coach, I’ve been asked many times from company leaders for some pointers on how to take what they have learned in coaching back to coach their teams. Here’s the catch: they only ask for these pointers after a coaching series, making it relatively easy to help. Before the coaching series, most executives are convinced that they already function as “coach,” and that they do so very well. In my experience I have found that most leaders see themselves as inspiring and accountable from the get-go. However, through coaching, assessments and anonymous 360s, a different...



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

Our reader poll today asks: How would you describe the “back office” functions at your company (finance, procurement, legal, HR, etc.)? They occasionally add value and respond in a reasonable time.  29.78% They add value in every interaction and are highly responsive. 25.56% They are extremely frustrating and overly bureaucratic.  19.38% They rarely add value and tend to slow things down.  17.98% They make my life a nightmare, and I can’t get anything done.  7.3% Improving the back office. Eighty percent of you report your back office functions like procurement, finance, legal and HR only occasionally add value (30%) or even worse, rarely add value or make your life extremely difficult (55%). That’s alarming. But blame resides in two places. One place is with the...



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New Ideas of Executive Presence

Rob Salafia, thoughtLEADERS Principal, sat down with Jim and Jan of The Leadership Podcast to discuss his personal philosophy on executive presence. In continuation of our new collaboration with The Leadership Podcast, Rob explains his personal thoughts on executive presence  in this short form “chalk talk.” These chalk talk series are bitesize sessions on a common (but challenging) leadership issue. Rob dives into his explanation about what executive presence is, further explaining that it comes down to layers of experience, not your personal experience, but rather how others experience you or your impact on others. The group then discusses whether there are ways to assess progress in development of your executive presence and Rob dives into his personal philosophy on...



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Five Ways to Ensure Overachieving Isn’t Undermining Your Success

How to let go of the ‘can’t rant’ and other ways to stop sabotaging your own success Today’s post is by Keren Eldad. Overachievement is a concept that’s seemingly become a gold standard on how to become a “superstar” in business, career goals, and life overall. Just Google search “how to overachieve” and the web will dutifully deliver over 355,000 resources to help propel your prosperity. In today’s fast-paced business climate, masses have surrendered themselves to overachievement in pursuit of business and career success. Not just ordinary success, but rather the kind that exceeds expectations courtesy of excessive “above and beyond” effort put forth. Some relent to a life of overachievement willingly and enthusiastically as they yearn to earn, while others grievously succumb to a...



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How global is your immediate team?

Our reader poll today asks: How global is your immediate team? Very — We have many team members from all corners of the world. 18.5% Somewhat — We have a few team members from other parts of the world. 17.6% Not very — We have very few people from other countries on our team. 17.1% Not at all — We’re all from the same country. 46.8% A worldly perspective. While the vast majority of you (80%) have little international representation on your team, a healthy chunk of you do have colleagues from other countries. In an increasingly global economy, you can’t ignore the impact of having a diverse, global perspective. If your team isn’t very worldly in composition, explore opportunities to bring in those global perspectives. Invite colleagues from other...



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Balance is the Key Your Looking For

Achieving balance with your work is a difficult task. There are busy periods and slow periods. Many times we seek to make the busy ones less busy and the slow ones busier by adding work. If that approach isn’t working for you, perhaps it’s time to embrace the highs and lows. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, thoughtLEADERS’ Managing Director. Sometimes life is frenetic. Sometimes it’s slow. We all want to achieve “balance” in our lives but it’s difficult to do so through all those ups and downs. We falsely believe “balance” is a Goldilocks thing – not too busy, not too bored, but juuuust right. We try to manage the busy periods to make them less busy. We make the slow periods busier. We do all this in a futile effort to get our lives into that range of “just right” but it never...



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