Leadership 104: Leading a Balanced Life

If you're burned out, you're worthless.

We all run around waving our arms proclaiming we want (and we want our people to have) a balanced life. The problem is we never define what that means, let alone actually behaving in a manner that keeps us balanced.

We're our own worst enemies. The good news is this leadership maxims approach to leadership includes keeping you sane. In this post I'm going to ask you to define a set of rules or reminders to help keep your overobsessive hypercompetitive too-long-at-a-keyboard-every-day psycho self in check.  If you're still having trouble creating your maxims, I again encourage you to check out the course we teach on the method by clicking here.

The first point on living a balanced life comes from realizing both your life *and* your work need to be in balance. So many times we perceive this concept as only pertaining to not working late or on weekends. Sure, that's one aspect of balance. Balance is all about making yourself more resilient (and yes, we teach a course on Building Resilience - you can read about it here).

Another aspect of balance is having work you enjoy. If work sucks, life sucks. You spend more time at the office than you do with your family (unless you work from a home office like me where you experience the joys of trying to write a blog post while your boxer is whining at you and while your son is in the basement below you playing xbox with his friend and screaming how he just "pwned someone with a no-scope headshot!").

Part of creating maxims for a balanced life requires you to define what is or isn't acceptable behavior for your boss, coworkers, or team. The second part of articulating your leadership philosophy in this arena is about how you spend your time off.

Articulating your leadership maxims around balanced life requires you to reflect on:

- Setting and keeping boundaries
- Maintaining a healthy perspective and
- Knowing and pursuing your passions

Let's begin.

Setting and keeping boundaries

You're the only one who can protect your time and your interests. The problem is, no one knows where your line is until you tell them they've crossed it. Whether it's the number of hours you work, the work you do (and the work others do), or the physical layout of your workspace, there are things that are or are not comfortable for you.

Unless you let others know what your comfort zone is, they'll superimpose their own upon you. 9 times out of 10, that will result in you being unhappy or dissatisfied with their choice. You have to set boundaries.

My maxims on this point? There are two:
- A failure to plan on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on mine. Said simply, if you mess up and didn't plan, it doesn't obligate me to fix things. That said, I may *choose* to fix things - just don't take it for granted.
- "I'm going home. You're doing my job." This one is centered around a long story where someone was micromanaging me. That led me to be dissatisfied. I expressed that dissatisfaction. You can read the entire story by CLICKING HERE.

Maintaining a healthy perspective

We take stuff waaayyyyy too seriously. Think about why you enjoy reading this blog (you do enjoy reading it, right?). Does the up front, no BS, semi-lighthearted nature of it appeal to you?

Now think about your workplace. Is it more uptight than Mr. Belvedere? When you take things too seriously, you lose perspective. Losing perspective creates stress. Stress makes you fat, bald, gray, and die faster. Not cool.

Maxims can be a helpful tool for maintaining a healthy perspective. They serve as that check to keep you from flipping out over things that, in the grand scheme of things, aren't really that important.

My favorite maxims?
- Burger King is hiring (translation: no matter how bad this place gets, there are other places you can go). Better yet, try on a Burger King crown sometime. You can learn a lot from it just like I describe in this post - CLICK HERE. If a crown doesn't work for you and you don't like your job, try this piece of advice: shut up and quit (another favorite article of mine).
- "It's only (insert whatever is driving you nuts here)." Unless you're a brain surgeon, try this maxim on. "It's only a budget." "It's only computers." It's very clarifying.

Knowing and pursuing your passions

You have to know what you're passionate about. And in this case I'm talking about things outside the office. We work to live, not live to work. I challenge you to come up with a maxim that puts the living part into perspective. A good maxim will remind you that work is a means to an end.

My reminder? A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work. That's my maxim.

I love to fish. I love to fish with my kids when I get a chance. Great time with people I love and pulling big smelly thrashing bleeding things into a boat. What could be better? What will your reminder be to pursue your passions? (And no, I didn't pee my pants when I caught this 42lb monster - they got wet when I leaned on the rail of the boat, smarties).

So there you go folks. Four major areas to consider (leading yourself, the thinking, your people, and a balanced life). A simple approach to articulating a leadership philosophy on one piece of paper.

Make it real. Make it meaningful. Share it with your team, your boss, your coworkers, your family. Try living up to the leadership code you just wrote for yourself. If you do it right, it'll be hard to live up to but it will make you that much more of a leader.

I invite you to share some of your maxims in the comments section (or even email me your maxims and I'm happy to provide some quick thoughts as I'm able). So what are your leadership maxims? Please share.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!

Leadership 103: Leading Your People

Here we go with another step in the leadership maxims process. We've already covered how to lead yourself and lead the thinking (be sure to go read those posts). Now it's time to articulate how you plan on leading your people.

This step is NOT about feedback forms, progress reviews, goal setting sheets or any other template. This is about setting the expectation for yourself and your team on how you plan on working with them.

Expect this part of your toolkit to grow almost every day. I encourage you to reflect upon the success or failure of your leadership efforts and constantly look for new ways to improve. It's hard. It's a lot of work. It's incredibly rewarding and can differentiate your team and your business from your competitors.

Creating your maxims in this third aspect of leadership is comprised of four areas of concentration:
- Knowing and living your style
- Understanding your team members' wants and needs
- Living your team members' lives
- Challenging, inspiring and developing your people

Let's explore, shall we?

Knowing and living your style

If you're anything like me, you're probably not too keen on the "be something you're not" dynamic. That mindset needs to spill over to your leadership.

By now you've likely found approaches that are comfortable for you and others that aren't. I come from the school of play to your strengths and make your weaknesses irrelevant. That means knowing your style, articulating it, and being comfortable living it every day. It's the key to being authentic in your leadership.

There are two maxims I love in this area. "Kick up, kiss down" (translation: hold your leaders accountable while at the same time praising and supporting your people. This is the same premise as being the human crapshield I've written of in the past).  For deeper exploration of this maxim, you can read a fuller post on it HERE.

The second is "Don't bring me problems. Bring me solutions." It sets an expectation with my team that I expect them to try to solve a problem before bringing it to me. By the same token, it forces me to try to solve problems before bringing them to my leaders.

Which aspects of your leadership style are most comfortable for you? Can you articulate them in one or two clear, concise statements?

Understanding your team members' wants and needs

The better you understand your people as individuals, the better you'll relate to them. It's that personal foundation of the relationship that creates the common ground of trust and respect necessary for a good leadership environment.

One maxim I have that forces me to pay attention to my team is "You have two ears and one mouth for a reason." Translation: shut up and listen. It's amazing the things you can learn when listening versus talking.

The second maxim I use to remember that people are different and have specific needs is "He drinks 7Up." Rather than tell the whole story again in this post, I encourage you to go read it here. This maxim is deeply meaningful to me because of the story behind it.

Living your team members' lives

If you want to get respect, get dirty. Roll up your sleeves and do the job you're asking your team to do. First of all, you'll better understand what they go through on a daily basis. Second of all, you signal to them that you're not above any work you're asking them to do.

The better you understand the tasks they routinely perform, the higher the likelihood the tasks or projects you ask them to take on are possible and reasonable. To ensure you demonstrate this behavior regularly, you need to create a maxim that is a reminder to get out there and get dirty.

The maxim I use is again related to a story. It's "He's under the tank, sir." It's about a time I crawled under one of my tanks to pull maintenance on it. You can read the full story here to better understand why I've chosen this as one of my leadership maxims.

Challenging, inspiring and developing your people

No one wants to have a job where they're not challenged and where there's no opportunity for growth. Your job as a leader is to create that environment for your team. The problem is we often forget to do so during the daily chaos that is our life. Creating this environment is overtaken by deadlines, projects, and other crises. You need to write a maxim that helps you remember to challenge and develop your people.

For me, this maxim too is related to a story. The maxim is "But he's never done that job!" It is about a time I put someone in a role when they had never performed that role before. It was a risk and I took a chance on someone's development. Click here to read the full story about this maxim.

What maxim will you use to remember to focus on your team's growth? How will you ensure you challenge and develop them regularly?

So that's a great start for creating your Leading Your People maxims. Up next is Leading a Balanced Life.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!

Leadership 102: Leading the Thinking

Continuing on our theme of articulating your leadership philosophy on one piece of paper (your leadership maxims), we now need to move on to leading the thinking.

Once you've taken care of defining how you'll lead yourself (learn how to do so in this post), you need to create some maxims that get you leaning forward and taking your organization to new places. The status quo is never good enough.

I can't think of a single leader I've ever met whose strategy was "Don't change a thing! Everything is perfect!"

In fact, the best leaders I've worked with continuously challenged the thinking, blew up business models, and constantly questioned how they could get their organization to a better place. This is what leading the thinking is all about. This approach is all about thought leadership (and lucky for you we not only cover the topic on this blog but we also teach a course on thoughtLEADERSHIP as well - click here to learn more about bringing the program into your organization).

Obviously the benefits of leading the thinking are that you'll see new trends and opportunities (or risks) before your competitors. You'll shape the market rather than the market shaping you. You'll uncover those huge new breakthrough opportunities that get your team excited and energized about their work.

To do all these great things, you need to establish some maxims that force you to think about new opportunities and set a vision for where you're headed. On top of that, I highly suggest you set aside some "think time" every month (at least 1/2 day) to take a step back and evaluate how you'r ethinking about the business.

Now let's dive into making leading the thinking practical and pragmatic.

Articulating a vision

I don't care what level you're at in the organization - you need to articulate a vision of a future state for your team. Usually we leave this high falootin' work up to the C-suite but doing it at any team level can be powerful.

Out of all your leadership maxims, this one will change the most frequently. It will change every time you take on a new role or move to a new organization.

To create the maxim, simply look out 5 years and ask what your organization should look like. What new skills will it have? How big will it be? How will the way you work with other groups change? Be sure to push this vision out far enough beyond where things are clear but not so far that your vision won't be realizable in a reasonable time period.

For my organization, the vision is "Provide distinctive leadership training taught by unique executives to world-class customers around the globe." Aspirational? Absolutely. Possible? We're already making it happen. What's your future vision for your team?

Setting the course

As in leading yourself, you also need to provide some guard rails for your team. They can be focused on how you treat customers or how you uphold team standards. These guard rails ideally point your team to the aforementioned vision but don't have to do so directly.

Ask yourself "How do I want my team behaving when I'm not there to give guidance? What are my expectations of how they perform?"

A couple of maxims I've used over the years on this point are "Is this right for the customer?" and "In God we trust. All others bring data." Obviously both were focused on how I wanted my team to behave.

Generating breakthrough ideas

Business can be boring when it's business as usual. But I know you - you're not usual. You want to change the world. You want to make your organization as great as it can be. The trick is, how do you break through the "that's the way we've always done it" dynamic and create something brand new?

For me, I'm not satisfied with the "way we've always done it" so I ask "why?" five times (that's the maxim: "Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?" By the time I get to the fifth why, I usually have found an insight or an opportunity to improve something.

Once I've found that insight, a second innovation maxim kicks in. It's called "The Seven 'So What's?'." Basically take that insight you just found from the five whys and ask "so what?" seven times. You're asking yourself to define the implications of that insight and the next and the next and so on. By the time you get to the fifth or sixth "so what?" you've likely identified a new idea to pursue. Between the whys and the so whats I've found more than my share of innovative ideas.

How will you remind yourself to think beyond the status quo and challenge the way you do things? How will you articulate this belief to your team? That's your maxim.

That wraps up some thoughts on leading the thinking. Coming up in our next post is leading your people.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!

Leadership 101: Leading Yourself

The first step in articulating your leadership philosophy (as teed up in our last post: READ IT HERE) is determining how you'll lead yourself. Nobody is going to follow you if you don't know where you're going (except out of morbid curiosity).

This aspect of leadership is the first area I'll ask you to examine as you define your own personal set of leadership maxims.  Again, for some video footage on the subject, you can watch me cover the subject here.

This aspect of leadership is tricky. It requires introspection and a frank, honest conversation with yourself to understand where you're headed and how you want to get there.

To start that discussion, there are four areas I encourage you to explore:
- Finding your internal motivation
- Charting your path
- Stating how you'll move down your path
- Inspiring yourself

Examining these areas each in turn can really help you crystallize what motivates you and what your personal rules of the road are.

As you go through the leadership maxims exercises, I encourage you to create a living document where you can capture pointed, clear statements that reflect your principles on the given point. To help you understand what I believe these principles might look like, I've offered up a few of my own personal examples. Remember, you can derive maxims from family sayings, books, songs, movies, leadership experiences you've had, etc. Heck, you can even steal some of mine if you like them and find them helpful.

All that said, let's get down to the business of leading yourself.

Without an understanding of what you care about and what your personal ethics are, you're lost. If you're lost, your team is lost. 'nuff said.

Finding your internal motivation

Why do you get out of bed every morning (alarm clocks, crying kids, or an overfull bladder are not  acceptable answers here)? Why are you excited to drive to the office? The answers to these two questions can help you articulate a leadership maxim.

My maxim on this point? "Light bulbs" (yes, a maxim can be that simple - a clear statement with deep meaning to ME). What does this one mean? I love to teach. I get excited on the podium. When I see light bulbs go off for people, I know they've had a new insight and learned something from me. That's my maxim. What's yours?

Charting your path

What are your professional goals? What will your epitaph say? Grim, I know. But at the end of it all when you become worm food, what will you want the summation of your career to be?

Allow me to assist you in developing your maxim on this one Mad Libs style. Simply fill in the blanks for this sentence: "(Your name) stood for (BLANK) and we'll never forget (BLANK) about him/her." Imagine someone is reading that statement as your eulogy. Once you've reflected on that and filled it in, you have a good start on a maxim for this point.

Mine? "Mike stood for personal and professional development. We'll never forget the way he was always teaching and always learning." Yes, it's a lofty goal. Yes, sometimes I fail to live up to it but at least I have something to shoot for.

Stating how you'll move down your path

We're human. We make mistakes. Having guardrails on the path of our lives helps keep us on track. Sure, we'll run into those guardrails occasionally (and sometimes find ourselves crashing through them and ending up in the ravine on the side of the road). The important thing is to put those guardrails in place and adhere to them as much as we're able.

A guardrail I've adopted as maxims: "What would Nana say?" For any action I'm not sure about, I can simply ask what my Nana would say about it. If she'd approve, I do it. If she'd disapprove, then I shouldn't do it. It's a very clarifying maxim for me to use in ethical decision making situations. I'm sure you have a similar rule you can use as your own maxim for this point.

Inspiring yourself

Life will knock you down. It'll kick you in the teeth. It'll spit on you and call you names. The big question is how will you pick yourself back up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fight?

As a leader, your team is looking to you in these situations. There won't always be someone there to lift you back up. You sometimes have to find that inspiration within. This maxim is all about creating an anchor phrase for yourself that you can use to reignite the fire in your belly.

My maxim on this comes from Ernest Hemingway: "Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated." Every time I've had the wind knocked out of my sails, I find myself referring to that quote to remind myself that I don't stop fighting and I need to get back up. What phrase, quote, or image will you use as your anchor?

That summarizes the leading yourself aspect of leadership. Is it holistic? No. Is it a great way to start articulating your leadership philosophy? I think it's at least a good start. Next up we'll discuss how you can lead the thinking.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!

Defining Your Leadership Philosophy on One Piece of Paper

We make leadership way too difficult.

We write entire books on it. We teach it in universities and MBA programs. We dedicate entire fields of study to it. We create massive corporate programs to foster it.

Here's the thing - it's really not that hard.

Sure, we teach leadership too (it's our Leadership Maxims program) but we come at it from the standpoint that leadership is an intensely personal sport. Every leader is different. The only thing that's the same is every true leader needs to understand, articulate, and continuously improve their leadership philosophy.

Over the next five posts (this one included), I'm going to cover our approach to capturing your leadership philosophy on a single sheet of paper. I'll also share some of my own personal leadership maxims.

To get a holistic view of leadership, you need to look at four aspects of it:
- Leading yourself: what motivates you and what are your "rules of the road?"
- Leading the thinking: where are you taking the organization and what are your standards for performance?
- Leading your people: duh. This is the one we always focus on usually to the detriment of other aspects.
- Leading a balanced life: if you're burned out, you're worthless. How do you define and achieve balance?

For a quick video overview of these topics, check out this footage from a panel I was on to discuss the topic of leadership. It will give you a quick set of stories on the topic. In addition to that footage, here are video excerpts from a keynote presentation on this topic.  Beyond that, we need to dive in deeper into the leadership maxims approach. Here goes:

Let's start with examining the difference between management and leadership. It's really quite simple: you manage THINGS but you lead PEOPLE.

Budgets, materials, programs, projects, etc. all get managed. It's a checklist of tasks to cover off on. Results are typically pretty easy to measure. The problem is we want to take a similar checklist approach to how we deal with people.

People are funny. They're unpredictable. They're emotional. They're ambitious. They're irrational and complex. You need to understand all these aspects (and then some) and somehow get them to do difficult things because they want to do them. Tricky.

It's this ability to point the way and inspire that serves as the foundation of leadership. You can't do that with a checklist. Instead, we've found establishing a set of principles for how you'll lead can help you guide your teams (and your own) behavior on a daily basis. When you adhere to these principles you become more predictable, reliable, and likely to be the leader you want to be.

To do this, we encourage folks to commit a set of leadership maxims to paper. A maxim is nothing more than a principle or rule of conduct. I've provided a couple of examples of such lists in our Leadership Principles post and our Leadership Lessons from West Point post. I *highly* suggest you give both of those posts a read before we proceed.  Coming out of that, we'll start working on creating a set of leadership maxims for you.  What I'm encouraging you to do is create your own set of maxims (don't worry - I'll help you do so in the next few posts).

For a maxim to be effective, it has to be simple. No consultobabblespeak. No buzzwords. Ideally the maxim is rooted in a story that's deeply personal and meaningful to you.

Sources of inspiration for your maxims can range from lessons you've learned from a family member, movie quotes, song lyrics, leadership experiences you've had, book quotes, or any other situation in your life where you've adopted a simple principle for how you want to behave.

The leadership maxims approach asks you to explore the four aspects of leadership listed above and create maxims relevant to each of those categories (self, thinking, people, balanced life). Once you've drafted those maxims, your challenge is to share them with your team, your boss, your peers, and your family then set about trying to live up to them every day. It's really hard to do.

Realize your maxims will change over time and as you grow. When I first started out as a young second lieutenant I had two maxims I would share with any new soldier in my unit:
- Work hard.
- Be honest.

That summed up my leadership philosophy at that time. As I've grown, learned, and made mistakes over the years, I've added to my list of maxims. They change as I change and as I aspire to be more than I am today.

So why am I encouraging you to go through all this work of articulating your leadership maxims? First, it helps you set aspirational goals to be a better leader and to continue your personal and professional growth. Second, it helps set expectations for your team on how you want them to behave (which reduces confusion and inefficiency stemming from the perennial question of "What's on the boss' mind today?"). Third, your maxims will help you make better decisions more rapidly because you have an established set of principles for how you want to behave.

So yes, leadership takes effort but it's not exceedingly complex. What it really boils down to is knowing who you are as a leader, who you want to be, and being rigorous in how you chart that path forward.

In our next post we'll do just that. We'll discuss how you're going to lead yourself.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!