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The Leadership Challenge: Recruiting like Harbaugh – 5 Tips!

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The Point: There is a war for talent taking place, with the best candidates going to those organizations that effectively outflank/outwork their business competitors in the recruiting game. So with NCAA College Football’s Signing Day finally here, we thought it would be interesting to compare/contrast The University of Michigan Football Coach Jim Harbaugh’s tactics that could leave you/your organization with a similar top recruiting class… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge: Recruiting like Harbaugh – 5 Tips!

Tree Climbing, Sleepovers, and Sledding… Oh My!

Jim Harbaugh’s transition from the NFL (where he acted as head coach for the San Francisco 49ers until unceremoniously being shown the exit in 2014) to the NCAA (currently acting as The University of Michigan’s Head Football Coach) has been well documented. An almost fairy-tale return to his alma mater brought about a return to glory (Full Disclosure: I’m a Michigan Man and Jim was one of the legendary Michigan quarterbacks under head coach Bo Schembechler). He is known for wearing his fiery emotions like a badge of hotheaded honor and $8 khakis he purchases from Walmart.

What Jim is perhaps not given credit for is his recruiting prowess. With an “at all costs” mentality, he has brought this football program legitimately back onto the college football scene (It’s estimated that he’ll bring in the #5 recruiting class according to ESPN this year). Some might argue that his techniques border on the strange and unorthodox (In his pursuit of players he has climbed a tree in a recruit’s backyard, had sleepovers, and offered to go sledding). Say what you will and want, but call him effective in recruiting for the following FIVE (5) reasons presented in “Tip” format for you to implement to offset the leadership challenge recruiting moments!

Tip #1 – Recruiter Energy

Let’s face reality… Your Human Resources department is probably detached from your business at hand. It’s not that they don’t know what you/your company does, it’s that they don’t KNOW what you/your company does. As such, they display a typical “play it safe” and “no skin in the game” exhibition when it comes to recruiting. If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen this played out a hundred times.

Jim is known for his endless energy, raising the recruiting bar and setting precedents to new heights. While your recruiting efforts might not be able to change the players you have conducting the role, there should be an emphasis placed on examining how the recruiting role is changed so as to be conducted with energy.

Tip #2 – Transparent Culture

Typical recruiting tactics have taken the form of that of the applicant heretofore. Both parties want to put their “best foot” forward. However, who’s selling who in the recruiting war? Is the candidate selling the organization or vice versa? Your recruiting efforts shouldn’t shy away from your organization structure nor how you do things (and you should be profoundly proud of both as a leader!)

Tip #3 – The “Finest” of Goals

Harbaugh has gone on record as stating “We’re going to bring the finest student-athletes and character that we can to the University of Michigan.” And so it goes almost without saying that you similarly should be in pursuit of “finest” when it comes to recruiting team members mental capacity and character. Anything short of “finest” shouldn’t be pursued.

Tip #4 – Performance

While most envision the recruiting initiative done/successful once a candidate accepts an offer to join the organization, this is only the beginning for Harbaugh. There is the expectation that performance in the role recruited for not only meet, but exceed expectations. This takes thorough employee engagement and leadership feedback against a backdrop of organizational goals that the employee can immediately tie their performance back to (Your employees know what’s expected of them and can view their actual performance versus goal, right?)

Tip #5 – Expand Your Footprint

Technology has made it relatively easy to expand your geographic footprint in a search for talent. Unlike Harbaugh who has to attract student athletes to a specific geographic location (Ann Arbor, Michigan), you have the luxury of identifying best candidates without geographic boundaries (Are you fully taking advantage of A+ candidates that reside outside your geographic vicinity?)

SUMMARY

In this post, we’ve taken a look at the recruiting process/procedures of Jim Harbaugh and provided 5 Tips on how his success/focus should be yours. If there truly is a war for talent, you can’t afford for a bad recruiting effort to diminish your organizational talent. Remember, your business no matter how technical in nature you might want to believe it is, is still a people business. Having the finest people in the right roles is one of the variables of success you should consider/focus on.

Sam Palazzolo

The Leadership Challenge: Hands-On Leadership – 4 Tips!

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The Point: You have a choice as a leader… To micro or macro manage (i.e., lead) your stakeholders. But here’s the leadership challenge: In order to achieve “Super Boss” status, what’s the proper way then? In this post we’ll take a look at how being a hands-on leader is by far and away the best approach to leading along with four tips for success… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge: Hands-On Leadership – 4 Tips!

Hello… I’m a Disengaged Leader!

It happened again (as it had happened like a broken record every time there was a grumbling from a stakeholder)… In managing his department, Tim was provided the latitude to counsel/coach his team under the guise of “Do what you think is best” direction from his superior. However, whenever Tim did in the moment what he thought was his “best” he inevitably received the call from his disengaged leader. This call typically consisted of this disengaged leader asking the question “What did you do?” and worse yet “What did you say?”

While these questions aren’t necessarily in and of themselves bad, they would put Tim in a defensive posture. Having to explain what was done and said left him backtracking on his position. His leader without receiving all the facts typically would overthrow Tim’s authority, and in so doing cajole the stakeholders into recognizing that while the organization’s org chart had him in a leadership role, instead relegated him to an inferior status.

Being a Hands-On Leader

If Tim’s story sounds familiar to you, it should bother you. While leadership is a role best served by allowing team members to perform at their best levels, it’s more than frustrating to have episodes of the disengaged leader undercutting authority, decreasing motivation, and prompting internal thoughts/conversations regarding whether or not you as a leader are truly in the right organization.

The role of a leader is to lead from a distance, but stay in tune with activities so as to insure organizational direction is achieved. Situations often dictate that when boundaries are crossed, or direction is not as intended, that leaders engage in realignment efforts. Nothing shows greater consistency than a leader engaging in what might be seen as the mundane/not worthy day-to-day activities with a “sleeves rolled up” support system. So what should you do to be considered as a hands-on leader?

4 Tips of a Hands-On Leader

The following four (4) tips should be subscribed to in order to increase your effectiveness as a hands-on leader:

Tip #1: Set High Expectations

Become bullish on what your team can accomplish. If you’ve never pushed your team and the leaders within to achieve extraordinary high performance, the shame/blame lies squarely on your shoulders. The thought “perfect is good enough” isn’t just a mindset, it should become your mantra!

Tip #2: Be a Master

You employee smart, ambitious, and adaptable team members, right? If so, trust them to execute. If not, look to recruit/hire those that are no less than four times (4x) as smart as you are. Keep in mind that failure is inevitable, and course correction from failures should be the way you do business!

Tip #3: Encourage Step-Change Growth

Learning and growth are paramount to your people. As such, design atypical growth and development plans that allow your team to springboard forward along a steep learning curve which becomes increasingly steep as successful projects are undertaken/accomplished.

Tip #4: Stay Connected

As a leader you can count on talented people departing from you/your organization. Rip a page from the successful consultant organization model by staying connected with your former associates. Think of it as a talent “Alumni Network” that you can tap into at any given moment and you’ll be afforded the gift of future benefits.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve taken a look at the hands-on leader as well as four tips to execute for success. Avoid becoming the disengaged leader that bares little respect as you grow yourself, your team, and your organization!

 

Sam Palazzolo

 

Are You a Leader Like Mars, Roman God of War? 5 Tips!

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The Point: What if you thought “bigger” than you typically do? I mean, when you tend to aim are you aiming high or too low? If you’re like most of the leaders I work with, you are aiming too low (That might be one of the reasons we’re talking, right?) In this post, we’ll take a look at aiming super high as a leader… So high that you would be considered a leadership God for all to worship! Sounds pretty good right, so read on and identify how you can put the 5 Tips into play for yourself… Enjoy!

Are You Leading at the Tip of the Spear?

I’m a Good Leader!

So you think you’re a “good” leader? What makes you come to that conclusion? Is it because you went to the best schools (So you’re book smart)? Is it possibly because of the results you’ve been able to accomplish in your career (So practical experience)? Perhaps it’s a combination of both schooling in-classroom and mean-streets?

Regardless of where you are on your leadership journey (and it is a definite journey), you probably recognize that the learning is not now or never finished. With changes in economic, market, and employee conditions you’ll have to stay on your tippy-toes if you want to succeed. But just how good a leader are you?

I Want to be Like Mars (Sorry Mike!)

Leaders that I work with in a leadership development and/or executive coaching capacity typically have me as them “If you could be any leader, who would you be?” The natural series of follow up questions includes identifying what is it about that leader that you’d like to emulate and why. So here’s my leader of choice: Mars (The Roman God).

Here are a few of Mars’ Resume Highlights:

  • God of War
  • One of the Most Prominent and Worshipped Gods
  • God of Spring, Growth in Nature, and Fertility
  • Son of Jupiter and Juno
  • Father of Romulus and Remus
  • Romans Style Themselves ‘Sons of Mars’
  • The Male Symbol is Named After Him Representing His Spear/Shield
  • The Month of March is Named After Him

5 Tips to be a Leadership God Like Mars

I’ve done my fair share of research on Mars and here are 5 tips to be a better leader (perhaps God-like if you will):

Tip #5: Destroy everything in your path between where you are now and the goal you want.

Tip #4: Never be without your tools of the trade (For Mars these were his spear and shield).

Tip #3: If you lead others by rolling up your sleeves others will follow you… Consider this leading at the tip of the spear!

Tip #2: There is no place like home, so expand your empire!

Tip #1: Find your true love and your strategic purpose will reveal itself (For Mars it was Venus… Yes, that Venus!)

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve looked at Mars, Roman God of War and provided five tips to help you lead like him. You want to be the best leader possible, you’re going to have to aim higher, think bigger, and act. Now that you know a little about Mars, what’s stopping you?

 

Sam Palazzolo

The Leadership Challenge: Accountability – 5 Tips

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The Point: Have you ever sat in a meeting and heard the leader swear that from now on things were going to be different? How exactly is this “different” theme going to be carried out? Well, the leader swears again that they’re going to start holding people accountable. Accountable for what is one question you might be asking? Another question you should be asking is who is going to hold the leader themselves accountable? In this post, we’ll take a look at leadership accountability and provide five tips to better leader accountability efforts… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge: Accountability – 5 Tips

This Isn’t Oprah (It’s not even Ellen!)

I’ve seen a lot of leaders as an executive coach and leadership development coordinator. I’ve been fortunate to work with some really great leadership at Fortune 100 to Main Street organizations. Along the way on this leadership development journey, one aspect has rang the “failure” bell of many a leader looking to do good but ending up with bad results. That one aspect… Accountability. Accountability as a leader has at its core the ability to “count” on someone for doing something.

Too often leaders like their stakeholders to do what they say, but not as they’ve done (or are planning to do). In other words, some leaders are great at spouting off advice/hyperbole/recommendations to their stakeholders when all the while they should be heading their own advice. Unfortunately, Oprah (or Ellen) never show up in their workplace to ask them those really “hard” questions to get the leader to stop and reflect on what will/won’t work (You know those really hard questions… The ones that make you stop, think, and cry as you blubber out your response to Oprah).

5 Tips to Enhance Leadership Accountability

So what is our leader in development to do?(You are a leader in development, continuously learning, right?) What follows are five accountability tips for leaders searching to achieve better results:

Tip #5: Establish Expectations

It’s awfully hard to hold yourself/your stakeholders accountable if you don’t establish expectations. What are you going to do, by when, with what resources are expectation (or goal) setting basics. But begin to overcome the leadership challenge of accountability by beginning with the outcome, or the end in mind.

Tip #4: Determine Action Plans

As Marshall Goldsmith says, what got you here won’t get you there. However, if you know where there is and you don’t establish an action plan to get there you might as well not set out in the first place. Having an action plan that clearly establishes how you will get to your expectation outcome will provide you with a roadmap, one that if followed correctly and the current situation (market factors, competition, customer engagement, etc.) remains the same.

Tip #3: Identify Key Performance Indicators

You’ll need to know if you are to stay the course originally outlined, or pivot as needed to better overcome the situation identified. I know a leader that never measures his outcome until the end. They perceive the measurements to be some kind of leadership cherry on top of the sundae, when in reality it turns out being something a lot less savory. Knowing what your measurements are and taking them at routine moments can assist in letting you know where you are, how far you’ve traveled since the projects inception, how much is left to go, and identifying change in course moments.

Tip #2: Forget Hope

Hope is great when wishing for a gift to come true. It’s perhaps a deadly moment when it comes to organizational health. Simply put… Hope is not a strategy. As such, eliminate hope and the leadership challenge gets a lot easier.

Tip #1: Accept Ownership and Responsibility

You want others to follow you. You want to see things through. You’ll need then to roll up your sleeves and insure that the initiative gets done. While this doesn’t mean that you need to do every task associated (you should still look to delegate), it does mean that you’ll want to do everything possible to make certain the initiative is completed on time as expected.

SUMMARY

In this post we looked at leadership accountability. The leadership challenge at hand can be a daunting one, but putting into practice the five tips discussed can greatly enhance accountability for both leaders and stakeholders.

Sam Palazzolo

The Leadership Challenge: Troubleshooting – 4 Tips

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The Point: Unavoidably, problems do sprout up in your life as a leader no matter how well you plan your day/week/month/year. Is it a moment of preplanning that is lacking? Perhaps there is an opportunity to develop better contingency plans? Should you belabor the troubled moment? Or, exactly how should you rebound effectively from such problem times? In this post, we’ll take a look at how you as a leader can better troubleshoot to maximize your leadership potential… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge- Troubleshooting – 4 Tips

Time, Time, Time… See What’s Become of Me

Simon & Garfunkel (and the Bangles) sang the verse of oh so many leaders in the classic tune “Hazy Shade of Winter” bringing up the point that there is never quite enough time to solve each/every problem faced without running into some form of adversity along the way. Think about it, is there really ever enough time to solve everything (and if you’re trying to solve all of them by yourself, this in and of itself is a recipe for disaster!) The problems will stack up faster than you can process them. Sooner or later, you’ll consider taking shortcuts (never a good leadership moment, right?)

What if in leadership development you could troubleshoot your problems away? Think of it this way… If you fail to solve the “core” of each problem faced, inevitably the problem will resurface again in the future (Think of this as blowing away the smoke, but never extinguishing the fire). You typically will find yourself facing the same problems in a never-ending continuous loop of predictable insanity.

Troubleshooting as a Leader

Solving problems is one of the essence of leadership. More importantly than always being able to solve problems, is that ability to problem solve. Getting out in front of problems and proactively problem solve is crucial, but this will take tremendous leadership strength especially when stepping out in front of problems that you may not know how big they are, can be, or are traveling towards you/your organization. Resiliency in solving such problems, along with a healthy dose of persistence, will reflect to the organization your abilities to troubleshoot and resolve issues.

Whether you are leading yourself, a team, or an organization here then are the four (4) most effective ways in which I see leaders troubleshoot:

Tip #4: Effective Communication

In what might seem like the most obvious of the four tips provided as leadership development opportunities, herein lies perhaps one of the most difficult. Communicating effectively has a dose of transparency mixed with both future vision as well as the plan for how that destination will be achieved. I often see/hear leaders that have a great “talk” with their organizational stakeholders. However, in discussing the message delivered with those same stakeholders find them to be confused, paranoid, upset, angry, etc. about the message delivered. It’s not that they don’t understand, they just couldn’t comprehend what was being said!

Tip #3: Forget the Org Chart

While organization charts were important 10-20 years ago, they still seem to play a role in the ego-driven leader of today (Think of it as how many employees can report up to a central figure and you’ll identify the power within an organization – either real or imaginary). Instead of fueling the leadership development ego flames of an out of control leader, look to communicate the message across the organization as a whole. There is no need to have one department hear the message and develop a solution while in the same organization but different part of the org chart a totally different solution is being developed to the same solution. Instead, troubleshoot together for a single best solution (or a series of solutions that could be appropriate for there to be a review of, and ultimate selection for the best).

Tip #2: It’s a People-Business

I can’t tell you how many leaders seem to forget that no matter how much technology is present, how big their organization has become, or how much revenue the organization drives that it’s the people that work in the business that make the difference. As such, having the best people working in your operation can, will, and does make the difference. Cautionary Note: A few years ago I worked with a client that was “force-ranking” all of their employees and looking to “Topgrade” all of their personnel. Everyone was ranked on a scale from 1-5 on a series of key competencies deemed important to the organization, with 5’s being the best. Those that did not measure up to a 4-5 were terminated. Unfortunately, in that group of 1-3 were some of the original people that helped start the company (and previously thought of as some of the “best” until HR started the ranking procedures). Also, the 4-5’s took note and most of the talented ones departed prior to the next go-round of force-rankings. Sometimes it’s important to note: You get what you deserved when it comes to treating your people like people.

Tip #1: Strategic Thinking

Who thinks strategic in your organization? If it’s only you as the leader, you’ve got problems! Troubleshooting, contingency planning, and looking for alignment with new methodologies that go above/beyond where you are today as an organization is crucial to future success. However, above how the troubleshooting message is delivered/received in the organization, it is important to insure that the proper metrics are measured/reviewed/acted upon.

SUMMARY

In this post discussing the leadership challenge – troubleshooting we took a look at leaders and their problems, as well as four tips for overcoming troubleshooting moments. It’s important to have open communication, a plan that encompasses the entire organization regardless of org chart structure, top-notch people in your organization, and strategic thinking to troubleshoot effectively.

 

Sam Palazzolo