Liquid Leadership: The Official Brad Szollose Blog - Preparing The Next Generation for Leadership

Welcome to the Liquid Leadership Archives.

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 12:30:00 +0000

Welcome.

This my friends is the archives of the companion blog to my award-winning book Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia.

As you might know, the subtitle says it all: Multi-Generational Management Ideas That Are Changing The Way We Run Things.

It's not that I've stopped writing, it's that I am moving past Liquid Leadership, and into brand new territory. If you scroll through, you will take a journey through time, and perhaps find a few gems along the way.

If you need to find me there are several new projects on the forefront these days...

My passion is my podcast Awakened Nation®.

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Season 3: Episode 54:

Becoming Enough With Panache Desai

"There's something simply cathartic about chopping vegetables or making huge vats of dal or cleaning the toilet... I realized that selfless service was cleaning me. Whatever activity I was engaged in, I was scrubbing myself. "

NY Times Bestselling author Panache Desai joins us on Awakened Nation to talk about the way he has learned to find his peace in life and how grace extended beyond any religion to help your soul find it's truth. This powerful and stirring conversation will light a path for you in these uneasy times.

Stop by and leave a review.

Thank you for your support through the years...

Leadership Lessons #1: Obtaining The Consciousness Of Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 13:30:00 +0000

Originally Published February 21, 2008

Part 2 of 4 in my Leadership Lessons Series:

"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge."
— Plato

Summer, 1981. I become one of many assistant managers in the games division of Hershey Park. It was my first real management position and I remember it as if it was yesterday.

Back-to-back for two previous summers, I worked in every single games booth as a barker - you know the job, "Step right up and give it a try!" and I was required to wear a bright crayon yellow shirt with rainbow bars on the shoulders, navy blue pants, and, to signify my rank, a white name tag with black all cap lettering to identify my status. No title, no last name, just me and a blue Hershey Park logo. All divisions at Hershey were required to wear a different uniform to determine their section - sanitation and food prep was a striped blue shirt with navy pants, security was a light brown shirt with chocolate colored pants, the rides division was also blue but a different style. The ever-present sweepers, all girls, were allowed to wear shorts with white bobby socks but the guys had to suffer through the summer in long pants.

Within each division, there were managers - green tags were assistant managers, blue tags were managers, and brown tags worked for Hershey directly. If a brown tag told you to jump, you asked how high. The color of one's tag was the rigid cast system under which we worked. Who knew "Hershey Park Happy" was based on solid management principles?

Over a slow two-year period, I had proven myself trustworthy, shown a solid work ethic, and exemplified leadership skills. I requested the coveted assistant manager position of green tag. To go from being a worker bee in a uniform with a white name tag, to moving up in rank to the first rung of management was a leap and very rare. I was only 18 years of age, but I wanted everything that came with that little green bar that was worn on my left lapel - respect, freedom, better pay, and the power that comes from management.

It was a huge mental shift. The week before I was in a uniform and now I was wearing the ubiquitous casual street look of all Hershey Park managers: A Polo shirt neatly tucked in, khaki pants and extremely comfortable dress shoes. No hat. Nothing screams Preppy louder than a blond haired guy in khakis.

Through a mix-up, my green tag hadn't shown up for about 2 weeks. So here I was out of uniform in what looked like manager's clothes but without a tag to prove it. Strange as it seems, the people I had worked side-by-side with all those years while in uniform, didn't respect me once I appeared outside a booth in regular clothes. No one listened to me, nor did they do anything I requested without rolling their eyes. Beyond the frustration of having to do everything myself, I was working twelve-hour days in sweltering 95-degree heat.

Today I understand what I would have done differently as my wife always says, "We teach others how to treat us," and I would have been much firmer. I was 18 and inexperienced, but I at least had a small amount of wisdom. I asked my fellow managers how to handle the situation, and their suggestions became invaluable throughout the years.

Eventually my green tag arrived and those who had been insubordinate, suddenly had a newfound respect for me. The green tag made my position real. Over the next two years I learned the basics of leadership - never connecting the dots until years later - that served me well at the helm of my own companies.

I know what it's like to rise through the ranks. It can be rewarding and rich with experiences. It can inspire jealousy in some, admiration in others. Either way, things never stay the same, and like it or not, the decisions are on your shoulders. But, always remember that it is a two way street between management and the work staff - You can't get any work done without them and they entrust you to see the bigger picture. Quid pro quo.

So what advice can I give to those of you who are rising into management positions from within your own organizations? Here's a quick word of advice through 30 years of hard knocks:

First: Realize that just because you are a manager doesn't mean you have some how magically obtained the skills to lead. That takes time, effort and a little humble pie. To be a leader you have to wear the consciousness of a leader. That means, you have to own it.

Second: Although you may be good at the job that earned you the promotion, you may not be the best leader for that department. Everybody knows your weaknesses and your secrets, therefore respect in the new position may take a very long time. That's why the military moves a newly promoted soldier to a different platoon. Peer groups don't see their former colleague as a part of the hierarchy.

Third: To obtain the knowledge of leadership start studying it. I read books like How Great Generals Win, or The Art of War, or Leadership 101. Emulate the leaders you admire... Jack Welch, Carly Fiorina, Steven Jobs, etc...read their books and learn. Some act like entrepreneurs and others act like executives and you can learn from the best while you're at it.

I hope that helps. I've made plenty of mistakes over the years but I have dedicated myself to learning more.

Thanks for reading,

Brad

Brad Szollose
The Art & Science of Leadership

Creative Director • Designer • Author • Workshop Facilitator • Keynote Speaker

Former Dot Com Executive and Baby Boomer Brad Szollose, is an award winning leadership strategist, author and professional speaker who shows people managers and entrepreneurs how to win big in the Information Age.

For more info, go to http://bradszollose.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/948820

Leadership Lessons #2: Establishing Your Own Management Style

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Originally Published February 21, 2008

Part 2 of 4 in my Leadership Lessons Series:

I have worked for over 30+ years in various areas of the design business - from advertising to branding, from corporate events and the early days of slide production, to high-tech screen configurations and audience response systems. The styles of management that worked best seemed to respect the culture, the skills of their workforce and the environment they expected people to work within. Those that did not, went out of business.

Case in point: one of the first jobs I had in New York City was at a slide production house. The new owner, Mr. G (not his real name), came in and bought the business lock stock and barrel. As a former executive with Otis Elevator, he felt it was high time some corporate structure was brought to the design field. Somehow he assumed that production artists and designers were not as structured as the corporate world he came from (Perhaps the Mr. Potato Head on the 20" monitor may have been what did it).

Mr. Ron G would walk around the office twice a day like the commander of a ship wearing his Otis Elevator tie clip to remind us all where he came from and how powerful he used to be. Nevertheless, his twice-daily jaunts were always at the slowest times of production but at the peak time for sales calls. Work would slow down as his Australian accent pierced the office and he forced everyone to listen to his tales from the "real" corporate world. His opinion was forged by what he saw from us when on these walks. To him, we weren't working very hard. And we weren't...we were talking to him!

Since he never integrated himself into the company culture, he never found out that every 8:00 AM shift change was filled with mounds of paper work, double tracking, and a check list that only the CIA could have invented, all for the sole purpose of keeping track of billings. Between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM chaos reigned as messengers arrived to whisk the slides to their destinations. This was long before Power Point and Macintosh. Slides were produced on a Genigraphics machine, and the night shifts' hard work was rushed to most clients' desks between 9:00 and 9:30 AM.

Where was Mr. G during all this chaos?

In his office with the door closed only 50 feet away from the production station. I guess he was strategizing his big walk.

The second time everything heated up was at around 4:00 PM when production prepared to pass the day shift production over to the night shift personnel. Paperwork was meticulously checked and discussed with each designer. Nothing could be left to chance. Each color had a number, each typeface, and, of course, a set of full color comps. Designed, programmed, photographed and processed for the following day.

As the year went on, Mr. G added a memo policy. With 10 day-shift employees it was really not necessary to pass a memo to the person sitting next to you. But that's what he wanted. He never understood that the business of slide production was a multi-billion-dollar industry because he had never seen a full-scale meeting, with staging and lighting and giant sets. Slides were a tiny component of that industry and he slowly began to wonder why his company was not profitable. Because he did not respect his staff, no one helped him make the leap from production to full-scale meetings. Why bother with someone when you know they don't appreciate the work you do? People began to show signs of insubordination out of frustration.

Mr. G began to micro-manage his company into the ground and, in a last-ditch effort to shake things up, he fired his top sales people. The company went under less than a year after I left. People were happy about it. If only he had asked his staff what was going on, they could have shown him another side of the industry. The more profitable side.

What did I learn? Here are my top three lessons:

1) Integrate Your Management Style into Your Workforce Culture.

In the printing industry, yelling on the main floor is considered the norm, whereas yelling in an accounting firm would get you fired. Integration will command respect and allow you to institute changes that seem organic.

2) Never Assume Your Staff Doesn't 'Get It.'

They see more than you, because they are on the front lines everyday. Trust me, they know why there is a problem in shipping. Ask their opinion and respect it. You may see the bigger picture, but they are the ones getting their hands dirty.

3) Loosen Up.

We have entered a new era in business. People like to collaborate with each other both at home and at work. The norm used to be that employees tolerated each other during lame team building exercises just to make management happy. Bonding took place only at work when necessary...usually at the company Holiday Party.

Not anymore. Fortune magazine Feb. 4 2008 did a cover article on The 100 Best Companies To Work For. Today, many a workforce hangs out together, join hockey teams, go on vacations and even form rock bands. The corporation is now becoming a socially acceptable peer network were each shares in their work, hobbies and just plain fun. Milton Hershey did the same thing for his workforce at the Hershey Chocolate Factory. 100 years later, that became Hersheypark.

So lighten up...it's the new trend. And it doesn't hurt production, it enhances it. Imagine people getting jazzed about coming to work. Try stopping that group from being more productive.

Thanks for reading,

Brad

Brad Szollose
The Art & Science of Leadership

Creative Director • Designer • Author • Workshop Facilitator • Keynote Speaker

Leadership Lessons #3: Work on Being Respected, Not Liked

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Published February 21, 2008

Part 3 of 4 in my Leadership Lessons Series:

At 18, I was promoted to a new Assistant Manager role at Hersheypark in the games division. Although I was young, I knew what I wanted and how to get it done. It wasn't always an easy road, but I learned to respect my staff and get them motivated. Barkers are expected to entice people all day to play games for extraordinary prizes...you know, stuffed animals.

I'd schedule an early Saturday morning meeting for my team. Saturday was known as D-day because this was the busiest day of the week. Four of the eleven barkers I supervised worked incredibly hard and the rest were just showing up for a paycheck. It was a summer job and most didn't care.

Those four became my backbone for collection and banking. At 18, I was in charge of collecting over one hundred thousand dollars in revenue per month. I needed people who were reliable, worked fast, and had earned the two-hour break to get out of a booth and work with me one-on-one. After we finished, I treated them to ice cream sodas before they hopped back into a booth for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, I couldn't use them all at once, but I rotated them as frequently as possible.

During one beautiful Saturday morning, during our meeting, the leader of the disgruntled blurted out,
"You play favorites." They all chimed up in unison.

"Yeah, you play favorites." Chatter ensued.

I shot back immediately..."You're right, I do."

They were stunned. They expected me to deny it, or placate them, or worse yet, pretend to feel bad and win them over by trying harder to make them happy. Instead, I went on, "And I will continue to hand pick these four until one of you steps up to the plate and shows me you want it bad enough. I reward those who go the extra mile. You do that and I will give you the shirt off my back. If you don't, I couldn't care less."

The results of that little speech were astronomical. Within two weeks, I had seven employees with new attitudes. It was like the Stepford Wives. They worked harder, complained less and competed amongst each other. The increased revenue showed. Of course, I backed up what I said - extra effort was rewarded with cash bonus awards and, what they all craved, getting handpicked for collection. Within two more weeks, everyone was pushing the envelope to see who would get in my good graces. What I learned was invaluable. In my own naïve and untrained way, I learned that respect came from the consistent application of my management style. Fair, approachable and firm, seemed to work for me.

One little speech turned a lack luster staff into a dynamo. In today's work environment, people are far more dynamic than our parents, they have to be, each generation has learned double the information of the previous one. Speed, multitasking and global connectivity are the norm.

Here is what have I learned in 30 years of managing people:

1) Respect Your Team.

People work harder for those who respect their contributions and in today's technology-driven landscape you want the best people working for you. A general is only as good as his army. So, respect the accomplishments of even your part-time workforce. Rewarding everybody equally is a form of socialism. Creating an environment of healthy competition and reward pushes your office to another level of productivity and creativity. It will also help you maintain your cutting-edge status.

Merit-Based Work, Results Only Work Environments work best in my book.

2) Be Firm, Fair and Consistent.

I have tried all kinds of styles over the years and, yes, I've tried Mr. Nice Guy in order to compensate for a business partner who was a bulldog to our staff. What begins to happen is the staff will go to the "parent" they think will give them the better answer. It doesn't work. Try getting someone to stay late and work on something. Which manager do you think they'll stay for - the one they like, or the one they respect?

3) Reward Winners.

I was working with one of the top pharmaceutical companies in America last year. Their executive vice president of sales stepped forward and placed a challenge before them: The top 9 sales reps will be flown to Costa Rica for an all expense paid vacation for the winner and their spouse. All they had to do was blow the doors off their previous sales records. The crowd went crazy. Big gains require big steps, and she planted the flag for them to follow.

Most of you do not have the budget to fly people to Costa Rica, but try some sort of 'effort gets rewarded' program.

Establishing healthy competition within your organization is paramount to success. But most importantly, the rewards must be worth it. Get creative, make it fun, and most of all, give big.

I hope that helps those of you looking to motivate your best people and win them over. Work on gaining respect, it pays off quite nicely.

And by the way, once you are respected, you'll be liked.

Thanks for reading,

Brad

Brad Szollose
The Art & Science of Leadership

Creative Director • Designer • Author • Workshop Facilitator • Keynote Speaker

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Brad_Szollose/36351

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1000246

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Brad_Szollose/36351

May I suggest the following: 

No More Mr. Nice Guy! by Robert A. Glover

Originally published as an e-book that became a controversial media phenomenon, No More Mr. Nice Guy! landed its author, a certified marriage and family therapist, on The O'Reilly Factor and the Rush Limbaugh radio show. Dr. Robert Glover has dubbed the "Nice Guy Syndrome" trying too hard to please others while neglecting one's own needs, thus causing unhappiness and resentfulness. It's no wonder that unfulfilled Nice Guys lash out in frustration at their loved ones, claims Dr. Glover. He explains how they can stop seeking approval and start getting what they want in life, by presenting the information and tools to help them ensure their needs are met, to express their emotions, to have a satisfying sex life, to embrace their masculinity and form meaningful relationships with other men, and to live up to their creative potential.

Leadership Lessons #4: Become a Resource, Not a Know-It-All

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Published February 21, 2008

Part 4 of 4 in my Leadership Lessons Series:

I recently accompanied a friend of mine to the doctors office, but she was not the patient - her son was. The young 15 year old was having weight gain issues. Naturally the mother was worried. The reason I was there was she had voiced her frustration with this particular doctor.

After reading the young man's info the doctor began chastising him for his diet. We assured her that he eats less than 2000 calories per day and eats healthy - salad, fruits and vegetables, no butter occasionally soda and, being a teenager, he eats one cheeseburger with fries at least once a week. He confirmed all this and told the doctor when he cheats at the mall. The young man was embarrassed, but honest. Pizza was very rarely on his diet.

This didn't satisfy the doctor. She laid into him for not working out enough. She just assumed that someone who gains weight is lazy and eating junk. This was not the case, so again we corrected her, explaining that the young man was a black belt in Karate and works out 5 times a week for 4 hours each night. "Well he needs to do more sit ups." as she pointed to his distended belly...I burst out laughing "He does 600 sit-ups every night at Karate, that's 2400 sit-ups a week, and he's in better shape than kids half his weight...so now your saying more sit-ups?"

Then the doctor went back to complaining about his diet. Clearly she wasn't listening. At that point I lost my temper..."Are you even reading his chart? If it's not his diet and definitely not exercise then it must be glandular. You can't eat less than 2000 calories a day and exercise the way he does and not be skinny. It is physically impossible."

And then I realized what had taken place. The doctor had assumed the role of the One Who Knows All
and stopped listening to the patient.

As far as she was concerned, this kid was lazy and eating junk food 24 hours a day in front of the TV. To her, our input was a waste of time.

How many times has this happened in your life? How many times have you done it to others?

Being a know it all shuts down communication and makes an executive, manager, parent, doctor or coach look like a world class jerk. But I can see where this behavior comes from. Since the Industrial Revolution, most management has been autonomous and hierarchical. One rose to management status by gaining knowledge and keeping that knowledge to themselves. Authority and power marked the executive. One didn't rise to this height in the business world by listening to the little people. But, somewhere around 1985, a shift took place that would start the doubling of knowledge that would keep pushing the understanding of what it meant to learn and to manage.

New generations started coming up through the ranks capable of handling mounds of data in a way that the Boomer mind can barely handle. After all, Boomers didn't learn about computers until they were well into their careers. Today's younger workforce grew up with computers in their homes since they were children. They also grew up with video games.

This tiny shift has created a workforce that is capable of speed despite distraction, efficiency despite transience, and global understanding, despite localized location. The platform doesn't matter, and if you the Baby Boomer thinks you can keep up...you are sadly mistaken. Data crunching is normal to anyone born in the mid 80s.

In their book Got Game? by John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, the biggest difference between Boomers and Gamers is Parallel Thinking. Let me explain - Boomers see a task as linear- a beginning, middle and end. Gen X, Gen Y and Millennials see everything with Parallel Thinking - five ideas at once with no end in site. This is why they multitask so easily. They were raised in it.

But are they getting any work done in this multitasking world?

I don't know why, but somehow I got lumped in with the Boomer Generation despite being so close in age to Gen-X. Baby Boomers listened to the Beatles. They were defined by Woodstock, Jimmy Hendrix and Vietnam. I was defined by John Travolta, KC and the Sunshine Band and Jimmy Carter. However, marketers seem to call the shots these days, and I have been put into Boomer territory.

The workforce I created at K2 Design, to tackle the interactive world, was filled with Gen X. They were trained to dive in and be fearless with new tasks. I realized that a Boomer was incapable of keeping pace with this kind of methodology: data immersion, multitasking and a chaotic work ethic. To a Boomer, this is crazy. To Gen X, Gen Y and Millennials, there is no cooler way to work.

My solution? I become a resource for talent and knowledge. Moving people around to meet our clients' needs: A structured interface design for Citibank would require Jason to manage the project. When AOL wanted a more organic and feminine style for one of their divisions, I chose Renée. Chris could handle interactive video and Vinton could do it all.

The old way of hierarchy does not work anymore.

Today's young workforce is very savvy and very aware of things that may have taken you your entire career to learn. This generation was expected to be an adult at a very young age, so don't think you can fool them. Instead, manage their expertise. They think like entrepreneurs, not employees. So when you pretend to know more, you may find yourself talking to an empty office.

Leadership is not something one learns by reading a book or a Blog. It's about doing it. Much as studying aerodynamics does not make a great pilot, leadership is about learning by doing, and, most importantly, learning from one's mistakes. Gen X, Gen Y and Millennials were trained as children to think this way through in-depth video game play during childhood. Respect that.

Too many people are promoted to management because they were the best salesperson or the best scientist or the best assembler. This doesn't necessarily make them the best at leadership when offered the position. Leading people is another set of skills altogether. Great speakers may not be very good at Power Point, and great CEO's may not know anything about how to build a car, but they do know how to motivate and inspire. Those skills may come in time. So if you've been recruited from within, remember, it may be because you were the alpha member of your team. To become their leader may require another set of skills.

But whatever you do, try not to be a know it all. They are predicting that by the year 2010, Technological Information will double every 72 hours. So, you can try to know it all, but physically it will be impossible.

Thanks for reading,

Brad

Brad Szollose
The Art & Science of Leadership

Creative Director • Designer • Author • Workshop Facilitator • Keynote Speaker

Handling Problem Employees in The Digital Age

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 04 Sep 2017 12:30:00 +0000

A friend of mine owns one of the largest independent web agencies on the East Coast. He is sharp, takes no prisoners and runs his company like a well-oiled machine. Business is great these days. Over the past five years he's had his ups and downs, but after reviewing the bigger picture, he is taking very cautious expansion steps.

When last we spoke, he was focused on a larger space, getting investors and attracting top talent in full-time positions.

Our phone conversation went something like this:

"We hired a full-time writer with great credentials and a killer resume."

"And the problem is?" I like to tease him for maximum effect...I knew where he was headed.

"Well, it turns out he can't write worth spit!"

"So rescind your offer and look for someone else."

"You don't understand...He starts full-time employment in two weeks."

"You signed an employment contract?"

"Yes."

"How did you not find this out sooner?"

"His references checked out and his writing samples were perfect...what should I do?"

"Did you talk to your lawyer?"

"Yes."

I come from the old school of management, so I suggested he fire the guy and let the chips fall where they may. But times are different. Firing someone when they are about to transition from one job to the other can leave even a small company in a precarious situation.

94% of all lawsuits in the world take place in the United States. Suing companies is big business here.

It turns out, my friend had done his due diligence. He saw no reason not to sign the employment contract. Mr. Incompetent put in his two weeks notice and was just about to start. Over a two-week period they had him get his feet wet by freelancing on some projects. It became apparent that this guy had grossly misrepresented himself. After sending me some samples, I realized this future employee was writing below a 6th grade level. At $85,000 a year, this had the potential to be a major lawsuit.

It seemed so cut and dry - employee can't do the job so fire him. But why can't he be fired before he starts?

I spoke with another colleague and friend Bruce Fuller, (former), head of Human Resources at Newmark Night Frank of New York City. His response comes from 20 years as a human resource professional...

"To do this justice we have to crank back the video tape and ask a question: How in the world could an offer go out to a corporate writer at that salary and you didn't know he couldn't write? The manager who hired this person should be handed their hat. I would bet you a weeks pay his old company is laughing all the way to the bar because they were able to unload this lox on you. At this point the only cheap long shot way out is hoping for an unacceptable background report (If you do them. If you don't...double shame).

Alternatively, you can hire a good labor attorney who might be able to get you out of this deal, but it isn't going to be cheap. That's pretty much it. You're stuck and have to wait for an opportunity to rightfully terminate his employment. Hopefully you didn't add insult to injury by finding this person through an outside recruiter and paying a fee on top."

Ouch. But it happens all the time - The resume is perfect; the references check out, the writing samples were lightning strikes of brilliant Kafka-esque poetry that flowed like champagne. The advertising world would bow knowing the agency had pulled a major coup. One could almost see the CASIE awards (Coalition for Advertising Supported Information and Entertainment), lined up in the trophy case.

The problem is, this person misrepresented himself. Discovering that a potential or current employee has pulled the wool over your eyes can feel like betrayal of the highest degree. I personally have enough war stories on this subject to write a book...wait a minute...I did write a book about it;-)

The amount of duplicity that goes into creating such a ruse is astounding. The writing samples, the stable of friends and colleagues who are willing to lie, and the total lack of self-analysis begs to wonder if this person is best suited for life as a CIA agent instead of a writing career. Most of us know when it is time to step up to the next salary level. It's intuitive. (But then again, most of us have ethics and morals.) Others just want to go for the glory and the money without really taking a review of their capabilities. There's ambition and there's stupidity.

Thirty years ago this guy would have been fired. No questions asked. Incompetence was not tolerated. But today, employment law is big money, and incompetence seems to be rewarded with promotions.

Driven by fear we seem to be living in a topsy-turvy world which is even worse at the executive levels. I've personally had bad managers pawned off on me only to find that they were the laughing stock of the industry. Lawyers have made it impossible to tell the truth about a former employee, and as a result, most new hires are becoming the rotten egg that gets passed from one place to another.

Over eight years ago the New York Times Magazine did a study and found that many high school students didn't know the difference between right and wrong. One of the most glaring results of the study was when teenagers were asked what defines a thief? One who steals or one who is caught stealing? More than 70% of the students answered the latter. So stealing is okay as long as you don't get caught? This is why so many bad employment stories like these are becoming the norm. It also explains why many corporations are putting into place background dossiers, blood tests, and a quick double check at the local police department, (just in case). Lying has become the norm.

Case in point: Many years ago one of my business partners hired a seasoned creative director. He did this by not going through HR, but instead, railroaded this guy down our throats. His mistaken belief was that this individual would make us competitive against the bigger agencies. So he ignored protocol. Protocol that was designed to weed out the jerks.

With a traditional background, and significantly older than us, this guy had just enough Internet experience on his resume to make him a shoo-in for the job. Despite having experience at the largest ad agencies in the world and a couple of years at a web agency in Chicago, something was fishy. The weird part is that we had very capable individuals already on staff with the same background; they just weren't seasoned enough for my business partner.

At five-foot-one-inch, this new creative director was a dead ringer for Davy Jones from the Monkees. From day one he treated the staff like dirt. Machiavellian in his approach to management, he couldn't understand why our staff went behind his back to complain. He vacillated from furious at those who questioned his authority, to trying to be your best buddy. Word spread quickly that Davy Jones was passive aggressive.

The next three months turned into hell. No one could control this guy. And as things got increasingly bad, employees began to quit. Worse yet, we couldn't fire him because we had signed an ironclad three-year contract. (In New York State, the contract is king). My business partners and I tried to find reasons to fire him. The only solution we had was to track every serious problem to build our case.

After many discussions, he would tone down his act for a few weeks, then return to his unique, bristling style of management. His performance was great, but he was causing larger morale issues. No one wanted to work with him.

I predicted to my partners that this would end with him exploding or worse yet attacking one of our staff. Yes, his temper was that bad. I was sent away with no solutions. I am not a psychologist, but I know bipolar behavior when I see it.

Eventually, Davy Jones' anger got him in trouble. During a late night deadline, one of our art directors decided to use a different typeface for a national ad. Davy Jones decided to argue with him and eventually decided the best way to handle this situation was to strangle the living daylights out of the art director. (Imagine a five foot one inch man in high heeled cowboy boots attempting to strangle a six-foot two inch body builder with a European-American background. You get the picture of how silly this was.) That evening, our problem employee was escorted from the building in handcuffs.

If I had it to do all over again, Davy Jones would have been let go at the first sign of a problem.

We lost five employees due to our inability to act. What kept us from doing so was the respect we had for our business partners' emotionally based arguments. Don't make the mistakes I did. Get rid of the problem fast. We were very lucky the employee who had been strangled didn't sue us for creating a hostile work environment.

Word on the street evidently spread, because soon afterwards, I began getting phone calls from Davy Jones' former employers telling me he was fired from his last five positions because of his violent reactions when challenged. I was told of one incident of Davy Jones' hitting the owner of the largest ad agency in Chicago. Why didn't his references tell me this earlier? Too little, too late.

So how does one handle a problem like this? Bruce Fuller gives us 3 steps to handling problem employees and the mock scenarios to justify your actions:

"This is very easy Brad. Document, document, document.

You must clearly state the problem in your documentation outlining the problem, the resolution, and the time period when the situation will be reviewed. Most importantly it must have the signature of the manager and the offending employee. If the employee is unwilling to sign the document, read it to him/her in front of a witness and have the witness sign confirming it was read to the offender.

I find that generally there are three documents needed as follows:

#1 First Offense Documentation

It has been brought to our attention that Little Johnny has been eating other people's lunches, which has been confirmed by our security camera in the fridge. Little Johnny has been told that this is a no-no and that if he continues to eat other people's ham and cheese he faces disciplinary action up to and including termination. We will review his lunch habits in one week.

#2 Second Offense Documentation

(appears that letter #1 was ineffective in changing the behavior)  It has been two days since letter #1 and Little Johnny continues to eat other people's lunches. While we value Lil' J as an employee, this annoying habit must stop immediately or he will face disciplinary action up to and including termination.  There will be no more warnings.

#3 Final Documentation and Termination Notice

This is a notice of termination of Little Johnny effective immediately. Despite two previous warnings he continues to eat people's lunches out of the fridge.

Don't forget that a bad employee attitude can be addressed in the same manner. No need to tolerate someone who poisons the work atmosphere.

The biggest problem is that managers delay starting the documentation process. The sooner the better."

Bruno Bettelheim in his book The Uses of Enchantment points out that when fairy tales have the moral lesson removed, we learn nothing about cause and effect. Taking responsibility for our choices is what adulthood is about. We now have an entire generation that thinks Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid and Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame both have happy endings. Haven't you noticed? No one does anything wrong these days, it's just shades of misunderstanding. You still get a trophy for showing up and CEO's get millions despite driving a company into the ground. This seems to be the result of removing the lessons of responsibility that makes a civilization last.

These stories are not generational either. I have many a story about older, wiser and seasoned individuals with no moral compass. The coming years are going to get sticky. Word on the street is that the economy is getting bumpy and unemployment is going to jump. Many of the larger firms are adding more counsel in anticipation of the glut of lawsuits coming down the road. After all, it is easier to sue than get another job. If America is to be competitive globally, we're all going to have to grow up.

Most employees believe that if their work is exemplary their behavior will be tolerated. "Why are you concerned with my lateness, I met my sales quota?" or "What's the big deal, I stay late every night?" and my favorite, "You have no idea what it takes to do this job." (I do, so stop). These and many more have been thrown in my face. I guess they're right - I just don't get it. But at the end of my life, we'll compare resumes. I don't reward mediocrity in myself or in others, and neither should you.

When employees are coddled along and treated to soft management, they learn nothing. It's not personal, it's business. When someone is re-positioned and told why, they're given the chance to improve. Increase performance, or change professions. One employee whom I fired ran into me years later. He thanked me for firing him; it was the push he needed to wake up. After that, he took his jobs seriously, eventually winding up at MTV. "I wouldn't have found my way if you hadn't fired me. Thank you."

Over the years I have developed my own system for figuring out who is a bad apple. My system would be frowned upon by most HR professionals and employment lawyers. I don't care. It is my company, not yours and when shareholders want maximum return, it is even more important that I do my own due diligence - my way.

Always remember, people exaggerate the truth on their resumes. Look for someone who seems to have built a career slowly and strategically. Job-hopping may be trendy, but it still smells of "Can't get along with others." Double check the references, and be creative when asking questions, after all, this person is an investment in the success of your company. We don't buy things, we buy experiences.

When confronted with a bad seed, document every mistake. Act fast, and keep your company lean. Do not act from fear, act from a strategic position. You'll be happy and so will your staff. Winners like to work with winners.

Thanks for reading,

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Advisor • Keynote Speaker

May I suggest the following publications?

A Manager's Guide to Employment Law: How to Protect Your Company and Yourself by Dana Muir 

A Manager's Guide to Employment Law will help managers make day-to-day decisions on how best to manage their employees and handle issues of legal liability. Expert author Dana Muir identifies the subtle and unnecessary mistakes managers make that cause legal headaches and shows how becoming familiar with basic principles of employment law will enable them to develop an internal compass to help make the right decisions. Each chapter focuses on legal concepts of broad application in today's workplace, providing real examples of problems managers face and offering strategies for addressing those problems.

The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim 

Wicked stepmothers and beautiful princesses ...magic forests and enchanted towers ...little pigs and big bad wolves ...Fairy tales have been an integral part of childhood for hundreds of years. But what do they really mean? In this award-winning work of criticism, renowned psychoanalyst Dr. Bruno Bettelheim presents a thought provoking and stimulating exploration of the best-known fairy stories. He reveals the true content of the stories and shows how children can use them to cope with their baffling emotions and anxieties.

The 5 Richest Payoffs for Fired CEOs
by Michael Brush

Although I am not a Bernie Sanders fan, this article on his site is thought provoking.

What is a Brand?

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 07 Aug 2017 12:30:00 +0000

It Is SO Easy To Create a Personal Brand These Days...

From November 23, 2007

Last summer was extremely busy for me. Richard Carey and I teamed up once again at Right Management teaching branding workshops to executives in transition. In other words, we were showing middle managers and C-Suite executives the basics of branding themselves using today's online technology. Web 2.0 open source sites are free and allow even a techno novice the ability to build their online credibility with sites such as Wordpress, EzineArticles, Blogger, YouTube, etc...

We based most of our work on an article that appeared in Fast Company magazine: A Brand Called You by Tom Peters. The implication was that personal brands would become the hot new wave for talented individuals to start branding themselves for greater employment and consulting opportunities. Using our own entrepreneurial experiences, and the fact that Richard and I launched some very successful online brands, we were the obvious experts to teach the seminars.

Our approach was simple. Start with your resume. Take out everything that didn't support your core competency, get focused on exactly which category you fit in, get your elevator speech down pat, and launch from there. Graphic design 101 was part of the seminar including migration to the online universe. We used the same techniques as major corporations.

It was a simple set of instructions. A few hours each night could build one's online resume, an archive of articles, or a small diary of web logs. Why create such online content? With Google becoming the dominant search engine tool, employers are turning to its abilities more and more to weed out the bad apples. Many a student complained that they were Googled as soon as they left the office. This makes online credibility paramount to managing where your resume lands. Either at the top of the heap or in the circular file. "Don't call us, we'll call you" can be turned into "Can you come in for a second interview" with just a few hours each night. Creating your online dossier is easy.

That's why I asked myself why
no one was doing it?

Everybody who took our seminars filled out their feedback form with glowing recommendations for us. But no one was running out to take action on what we just showed them. And then it dawned on me: in every seminar, the branding part seemed to leave most just nodding their heads in agreement. They understood that their business card, resume and online presence had to have the same look and feel, but was it possible that no one really knew what a brand was? Had I done my job well enough in explaining a brand? Perhaps not...

My writing is not so much to pontificate, but to give practical steps for entrepreneurs who may be launching their own companies or executives who need one piece of wisdom to complete their knowledge base. Since I speak only from experience, keep what you like and discard the rest. So the purpose of this article is to go back to basics and explore what a brand is and what branding is all about.

The best definition of a brand I could find is...

"A distinguishing symbol, mark, logo, name, word, sentence, or a combination of these items that companies use to distinguish their product from others in the market."

This definition is only half of the story. The reality is a brand is much more than a symbol - it is the experience one gets from using a product or service. How does this help you? To understand some more, let's walk through a little bit of history.

Brands themselves can be traced back to their modern use in the Old West. Cattle ranchers as well as horse traders needed to mark their animals permanently with a symbol that determined ownership. They had blacksmiths design intricate logos that represented each rancher's initials or company insignia.

Burning their emblem into the flesh of the animal determined ownership. Eventually over time some brands of livestock became more popular than others. So, when a particular rancher brought in his beef for sale, his reputation came with it. Lesser brands couldn't get the price for their livestock that the better brands could command. The buyers paid on repeat business and reputation.

It was the first use of brand recognition. The power of the symbol represented the reputation of the brand.

Since stealing horses was a felony punishable by death, brands were taken very seriously. Ranchers fiercely protected their brand so others couldn't copy the design. Copyright infringement law didn't really exist in the western territories yet, so keeping their branding irons locked up and out of sight became the norm.

But branding goes back even further. The history of modern brands reads like a Dan Brown novel, but, you probably wouldn't recognize them as brands. A golden sun symbol in Iran from 1400 BC was revitalized again in Rome, representing the sun-god Mithra. Eventually Emperor Constantine would fuse the sun god's symbol of Mithra (of which he was the grand master) with the Christian cross to create his brand. The golden sun with a cross in the center on a blazing red shield became a symbol to fear during the Byzantine period of Roman/European history.

Or even earlier, Pythia was the high priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Or perhaps the worship of Isis, Baal or any number of cults in the ancient world. Unfortunately branding animals as well as human beings wasn't new. A mark determined ones status as a slave, a conquest of war, or worse, marked for death. Either way, it meant ownership.

The formula for religious cults was simple; create a temple with an image, get people to gather around it and give out the gospel, then get the followers to spread the word. The ancient Greeks called this phenomenon, this worship of a holy word or symbol, Logos, (Used as both a noun and a verb). We use the same theories in today's marketing and branding techniques with out driving our followers over a cliff of course, but the theories are the same.

If you haven't seen Eddie Izzard, shame on you;-) LOL.

As the human race evolved, those brands meant less about ownership and more about who one was aligned with. Flags, hats, and special clothes are a form of branding. It is a quick and easy way for individuals to comprehend and choose sides. "The Red Coats are coming" was about the British Empire and what it meant to live under the "brand" of British rule. No one wanted to be owned by royalty anymore.

Eventually, branding spread from cattle to retail products. One hundred fifty years ago when a man wanted to buy a new razor for his son, he went to a store like Macy's, looked at the display of razors, picked what he wanted and was promptly handed a package wrapped in brown paper and string. Modern packaging didn't exist...partially because printing techniques needed to catch up. People evolved in their sophistication and therefore so did branding. Today we can't imagine buying a product without it's slick packaging enticing us to buy it.

To say branding has become a science is an understatement. Just look around your house and you will see brands everywhere. From the SONY television you bought to the Gillette razor you used this morning. From the Amerige perfume you just can't live without to those Jimmy Choo's your husband bought for your birthday, you and I and everyone in America is a branded consumer. Ironically, each brand has a logo for us to worship and it is getting harder to resist.

Every brand you buy has an emotional reason why you buy it. Why did you buy that Mercedes? It wasn't because you were looking for an economy car. Or how about that new suit? Hugo Boss says you spent a little bit extra to stand out. Paul Mitchell hair care products? What dental care system are you using? Are you brushing like a dentist or are you brushing like everyone else? You have to pay to get this kind of brushing technology. We can't let it fall into the hands of the British.

Great companies remember their name is more than a logo on a napkin, or a JPEG on a website, or a neon sign calling out from interstate 95. It is the relationship you've had with them. This collection of experiences forms an opinion in the consumer's mind that rarely changes. Let me repeat that: your experiences with a brand form an opinion in your mind. Which means it may not be based on truth. It is based on perception. Every great brand knows this and doesn't mess with it until they get into trouble.

Since you are beginning to understand that a brand is more about the experience of using a product than the logo on it, then it stands to reason that creating the experience becomes paramount as people begin to trust their association with your company.

Branding is a huge part of your sales paradigm. Your reputation proceeds you, so why not work hard at creating a great perception?

Starbucks worked hard at developing each store. The leisure environment that invites you to sit down and relax. How about the customized service? You can order their products in over 80,000 different combinations. Everything about the Starbucks experience says you've earned the best cup of coffee in the world. Does Starbucks make the best cup of coffee in the world? Probably not, but you sure as hell feel like it is, and perception is 90% of the sale.

Starbucks also focuses on coffee and coffee finger foods. All cakes, muffins and donuts are at eye level for a quick sale. Anything else is in a case below your waste - Sandwiches, fruit and cheese, bottled water. In other words, Starbucks is focused on one thing: Coffee! Anything that doesn't support coffee never makes it inside the store.

In marketing this is called brand focus and has made the difference for many a company struggling to define what they are. If you are known for many things, your brand may fail. Dropping all services that interfere with your core competency will give your brand a major boost. Companies who do this statistically lose 25% of their clients. But, by focusing the brand companies can increase revenue by 75%!

So get as focused on one category as quickly as possible. After all, do you want to be a jack of all trades or a master of one? Would you go to a doctor who is a generalist or a specialist? I am guessing your answer is the specialist.

If you are confused by categories try this: What is FedEx known for? What is Gillette known for? What is McDonald's known for? Each answer is a simple sentence that tells you what category these brands dominate. Interestingly as well, these three companies are the leader in their categories. They were also the first.

If you are the last to enter a particular market, invent a category. Apple couldn't compete with IBM as a computer company, so they positioned themselves as the personal computer for everybody else. They not only dominate that market, they forced the other manufacturers to follow their lead.

As you launch your new brand, ask yourself these questions:
What experience does the consumer get from interacting with my brand?
How can I make that experience better?
Is the perception true?
Do I own my category?
Can I create a new category?
Is my logo reflective of my product/service?
Should my company be separate from my brand?
Does my brand reflect thematic consistency in my signage, website, and collateral?

Once the consumer has formed an opinion in their minds collectively, it is almost impossible to change it. So be very careful when launching a new product or service. This is why marketing firms get paid so well. They spend months interviewing tens of thousands of people on your new brand and where to position it. Positioning is important, but that is for another article.

Depending on the size of your company I would hire a brand manager who knows all the techniques to create a mega brand. Scott Bedbury comes to mind. He was in charge of a couple of brands you might have heard of; Nike, (he was responsible for the Just Do It! tag line) and Starbucks. His big coup was to increase Starbucks store base from 350 stores to several thousand stores world wide.

That's the power of a top tier brand and marketing manager.

Sometimes I get so used to marketing and branding that I see them as one and the same. But if you want to learn more about how to market your brand, I suggest The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries & Jack Trout. It will help you to understand the science behind building and maintaining a strong brand. I would not start a project until my clients read it from cover to cover. It's an easy read and can be devoured in a weekend. Enjoy!

So get out there and just do it...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

May I suggest these sites and publications?

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

There are laws of nature, so why shouldn't there be laws of marketing?

As Al Ries and Jack Trout—the world-renowned marketing consultants and bestselling authors of Positioning—note, you can build an impressive airplane, but it will never leave the ground if you ignore the laws of physics, especially gravity. Why then, they ask, shouldn't there also be laws of marketing that must be followed to launch and maintain winning brands?

In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Ries and Trout offer a compendium of twenty-two innovative rules for understanding and succeeding in the international marketplace. From the Law of Leadership, to The Law of the Category, to The Law of the Mind, these valuable insights stand the test of time and present a clear path to successful products. Violate them at your own risk.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
Smart and accessible, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the definitive text on branding, pairing anecdotes about some of the best brands in the world, like Rolex, Volvo, and Heineken, with the signature savvy of marketing gurus Al and Laura Ries. Combining The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, this book proclaims that the only way to stand out in today's marketplace is to build your product or service into a brand—and provides the step-by-step instructions you need to do so.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding also tackles one of the most challenging marketing problems today: branding on the Web. The Rieses divulge the controversial and counterintuitive strategies and secrets that both small and large companies have used to establish internet brands. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the essential primer on building a category-dominating, world-class brand.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/848026

Death to Diversity "Diversity" has the same root as the words divide and division. So why are we shocked and not fully recognizing that its implementation is polarizing?

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 12:30:00 +0000

When it comes to racial issues, Millennials are front and center with inclusion
and acceptance. So WHY are so many diversity programs failing?

I am in an interracial relationship, married to the same wonderful woman for 19 years, my wife Norma is from Haiti and speaks 3 languages fluently...while I can barely type the English language;-)

I talk about inclusion in my NextGeneration Leadership programs—a hot topic these days—yet I feel inadequate to the task of discussing racial issues, and inclusion. So, I acquiesce to my longtime friend, speaker, author, humorist and INCLUSION expert, Karith Foster.

She will take over this blog for now...

Death to Diversity!

Yes, as a black woman, married to a white man, with biracial children and years of dedication to diversity and inclusion work—that is what I am calling for.

Because “diversity” as we know it is officially a good word gone bad. Much like “feminist” and “liberal”, it is a word that has been overused, misconstrued, and it is now a pejorative with the often underlying interpretation of “us vs. them” i.e. straight white males against everyone else, or to be fair, vice versa.

"Diversity as we know it is officially a good
word gone bad." @KarithFoster

Regardless of who is on what side of the interpretation, we have traversed into a territory where we are now doing more harm than good and we are alienating ourselves from one another.

I am far from alone in this way of thinking. Superstar television show-runner Shonda Rhimes and film director Ava DuVarney have both acknowledged their disdain for the word. While I can only speak for myself, I feel confident in explaining that using the word “diversity” as terminology for increasing positive all-encompassing relations, be they in an academic or professional setting, now has the exact opposite effect of the intent of those behind it.

However, none of this should come as a surprise—“diversity” has the same root as the words divide and division. So why are we shocked and not fully recognizing that its implementation is polarizing?

Probably because we have all been duped into thinking that if you make something mandatory and you force feed it to people that will make a difference. That is the futile premise behind what traditional diversity training programs have been about so far.

A fantastic article in the Harvard Business Review—“Why Diversity Programs Fail”—hits the nail on the head addressing why traditional diversity programs are not only miserably inadequate but have had counterproductive results. I am in no way saying there is no longer a need for diversity training; nothing could be further from the truth given the current climate. But there is a need for a major overhaul in how we teach each other about one another. We need a way that it is truly effective.

Let me address it in simpler terms. Have you ever tried to make someone eat something they weren’t comfortable or familiar with? As the mother of small children, I can tell you what trying to force-feed my kids a food they aren’t ready for or not in the mood for does. It does not end well. Can we say tantrums, resentment, and a hot mess on the floor that now needs to be cleaned up?! Well, the same goes for adolescents and adults when we try to ram thoughts and ideas onto them.

It does not matter how well-intentioned or good it might be. When we do this we are taking away an individual’s rights and freedom to come to conclusions on their own. We are not treating one another with respect, nor acknowledging that we are all thinking, feeling human beings capable of processing right from wrong or good from bad; we are certainly not supporting the cause when we’re condemning one group or victimizing another.

That is exactly why I created the program Stereotyped 101™. I combined my years of corporate HR experience, with my stand-up comedy career and over a decade of speaking and performing on college campuses across America to address issues of unconscious bias in a unique way that infuses humor with heartfelt reality and experiences. My goal is for people to C.A.R.E. This acronym stands for Conscious empathy, Active listening, Responsible reactions and Environmental awareness.

Since we are all a collection of our personal experiences and our reality is our truth, this approach gives my audience the freedom to come to grips with their reality while being able to honor the reality of others. My focus isn’t about “diversity”—what makes us different—but rather inversity.™

I coined the term inversity™ because we need another word to start new ideas flowing; to remove the stigma and inherent idea of separation. This word is the perfect combination of diversity and inclusion; and it encompasses the ideology that to change anything and create a path for progress we must flip the switch and the dialogue; and most importantly we must first look inside.

Inversity™ is about celebrating the individual for their worth, value, and what they bring to the table. It’s not about shaming anyone because of the life they created for themselves or the life they were born into—good or bad. This is about recognizing that each of us has worth and the need to be valued and respected based solely on our humanity.

Inversity™ is not about ignoring what make us different; we cannot do that without invalidating someone else’s personal experience. It is about seeing others, their differences, and embracing our one commonality—our humanity.

In a perfect world, we would all agree that we cannot change the state of things without changing how we think. It’s a natural algorithm. Thoughts lead to words. Words lead to actions. Actions lead to change. So anything socially monumental has to begin inside with how we think about ourselves.

For more information on Karith Foster or if you are interested in bringing her to your organization, please visit www.karith.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at @KarithFoster.

Our Guest Blogger:

Karith Foster

Karith Foster is a humorist, speaker, TV and radio personality, author, wife and mother. She is also an inversity engagement specialist, impacting lives at academic institutions and corporations across America in a time when humor, understanding, acceptance and respect are so desperately needed.

Karith is one of the featured comedians in the 2016 hit documentary about comedy and outrage culture, “Can We Take a Joke?” which has since garnered accolades in The Washington Post and TIME magazine. She can be heard regularly on Sirius/XM Ch. 121 Insight and as co-host on the Fox Business News podcast “Timely Topics with Shapiro and Foster.”

She attended the historical women’s institution Stephens College and Oxford University.

Follow Karith on Twitter: @KarithFoster

Go to www.karith.com for more information on booking Karith at your next event.

I hope we serve you well here on Liquid Leadership. I try to find top talent, and guest bloggers and interviewers for you to follow.

Let me know how I can do better...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

Why Are Millennials Changing the Way We Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 12:30:00 +0000

It’s All Because of ‘Star Wars.’

Originally published on Heleo, by Jeremy Price
June 6, 2017

Click Here for original article.

David Burkus is an award-winning podcaster and author of Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual. He recently hosted Brad Szollose, a global business advisor who helps companies understand how technology has transformed corporate culture and the behavior of Generation Y (a.k.a., Millennials), to discuss how the influences of video games, Star Wars, and more are helping millennials transform the workplace for good.

David: As you’ve explored in your book, Liquid Leadership, times are changing, and leadership styles are changing. I wonder if you could take us back to how you arrived at this [conclusion].

Brad: Around the early 90s, I started a company called K2 Design with my business partner at the time, Douglas Cleek. A year later, he comes into the office. He says, “Dude. We have to become an internet company,” and I say, “What the heck’s the internet?” In the early 90s, very few people knew what the internet was.

As soon as we started building our first websites, we exploded. 425% hyper-growth for five straight years. It went from just me and a business partner to sixty employees. [But] the behavior of this next generation [of employees] was driving me up a wall. We had a generational issue. You have a new generation that’s been trained and influenced by three major things.

First, let’s go back in time. Around 1977, these new things came into our world called “video games.” How do you learn in a video game?

David: You die and then you try again.

Brad: You learn the rules intuitively. You push against, you test, you fail as much as you can so that you can figure out what the rules and the politics are. Now if you’re a baby boomer, you remember playing Monopoly. You had to read the box, take your time, learn the rules, and then you could play the game.

So what happened is a new generation was raised with all this interactivity. They didn’t just sit and watch a television show. Everything became interactive: Teddy Ruxpin, Speak and Spell, things like that. And in the video game world, leadership is rotational. Everybody is used according to their skill set within the parameters of the quest. So video games are a huge component to the behavior of millennials.

The second big piece that influenced this next generation is Star Wars. It changed our perspective on how to use technology in a ubiquitous way. Just like using a toaster or driving a car, Star Wars showed us what a T1 line would look like. Or how to use a pad or a robot, or even a wifi network. And this was shown to us at a time when we had rotary dial phones.

It didn’t matter where you were, everybody started to see Star Wars. And from that moment on, if you look at the top 10 blockbuster movies in the last 30-35 years, seven of them have either been science fiction or fantasy-driven. Before that, what did we watch? Westerns and romance and mystery. From 1977 on, the new generation demanded science fiction. From Terminator to Back to the Future to even The Avengers and Iron Man, they are science fiction-driven. But also [in] Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, what’s the main story? A young or little person uses technology or magic to battle evil adults.

“We’ve entered into a time where people don’t equate hard work with getting ahead. Instead they want the work/life balance. They watched their parents work themselves to death, and they don’t want to do it.”

David: Of course, there being no real difference between sophisticated technology and magic anyway.

Brad: That’s true. Those hundreds of dot-com companies that were formed during the first dot-com boom, 98% of them were started by young people who were born around 1977. So that’ll tell you how influential this great technological wave was. My generation was taught to resist technology, [but] the new generation was taught to embrace technology. And it was from [interactive video games and the consequences of Star Wars].

But there’s a third part to this: child-centric parenting and child-centric curriculums in school. When my dad heard about child-centric parenting, he said, “You know, this is a load of crap.” A lot of parents said that at the time. But what started to take [root] was the idea that a child was special, and shouldn’t be paddled or controlled or yelled at. Instead, [children are] taught to open up their unique creative gifts so that they can find their own way, develop their own talents, and do the things they truly want to do.

A lot of [kids] were encouraged to have adult conversations inside the household. And TV shows started to shift as well. You had Doogie Howser who was sixteen and a surgeon, and he was having conversations with adults. 90210 was having all these conversations. And then John Hughes’ films came out, and they started to show the outlier being more important and cooler than the football jock. So what did that do? It flattened the hierarchy inside the home.

So now you had young people who were incredibly comfortable talking to their parents, and then they went into the school system and were encouraged to call their teacher by her first name. They were taught to collaborate, and they were taught they were special, and that there is no right or wrong way of doing things. And all of a sudden, by the time they entered the corporate world, people were shocked when they would walk up to the CEO and say, “Hey, I’m gonna show you how to run this place, ’cause I learned it in college.”

Millennials are independent thinkers. They will get up, en masse, and leave a company overnight. That scenario actually played out. This Fortune 500 pharmaceutical chemical company invited a hundred interns to come in and work for them for ninety days. After thirty days, they all quit and left one email for the CEO. It basically said, “You people are evil.”

And I have to look closely at my boomer brethren myself. When we were disgruntled at work, we would complain and fill out our resume, but we would stay for five years. And then we’d go, “You know what? This place is really getting on my nerves. I’ve been here long enough. I’m gonna get my resume together.” And then another seven years go by, and we’re like, “I hate this place, [but] I have a mortgage, and I’ve got kids.” And then after twenty-five years, we’re going, “You know, this place wasn’t that bad.” We never left.

We said to the next generation, “Follow your passion. Don’t do what Mommy and Daddy did. We gave our lives to this corporation, and we lost everything in 2008.” They learn this through osmosis. And they are never going to give their heart and soul to a company unless that company treats them with respect.

“Autonomy is the new badge of merit in a lot of organizations.”

David: I totally agree. Gen X is smaller, right? As boomers are phasing out, there are not [enough] Gen X-ers to fill the managerial and senior leadership roles that are created by the baby boom void. So you have to tap the top millennials. Now you’ve got these people who are a little more individualistic, [who] aren’t gonna let companies control their hearts and souls. But also, the need for talent is pushing them to a higher level faster than Gen X.

Brad: You’re absolutely right. Generation X is a smaller portion of the population. They showed up early, they wore the suits, they obeyed the boomers, they listened to everything, they worked very hard, and now they’re ready for management. But guess what? A lot of Gen X-ers are not reaching for the big salary and the responsibility of that upper-management role. They simply don’t want it. We’ve entered into a time where people don’t equate hard work with getting ahead. Instead they want the work/life balance. They watched their parents work themselves to death, and they don’t want to do it.

This generation is looking at us as if we’re crazy because technology allows them to work less hours. It’s not hours anymore, and it’s not age anymore, that determines your success in a company. That corner office, believe it or not, is a status symbol of the 20th century. The industrial age. The 21st century is, “What have you learned lately that you can contribute to the team?”

David: I would say too that autonomy is the new badge of merit in a lot of organizations. Jeff Pfeffer has this quote that you can empower, you can have autonomy, but you can’t have them both. And a good portion of the up-and-coming generation is picking autonomy. As Cal Newport would say, “I want to be so good they can’t ignore [me], so that I have leverage to ask for things that [give] me more autonomy over my job than anything else.”

Brad: Yes. And they’ve found out that when people are given that autonomy, when they’re given the freedom to make their own decisions, they actually work harder than if they had a boss that was driving them and yelling at them.

David: It takes respect and [firmness], but it [also] takes replacing hierarchy with meritocracy. I’m thinking about your video game analogy. Telling someone “You’ve just got to pay your dues before you can have that next opportunity” is like saying, “You just have to play the game for a certain number of hours.” [But] the world record for beating Super Mario Brothers 3 is like four minutes; it’s not a question of how long you play it. It’s, “Did you acquire the skill to level up? Then you should be allowed to level up.”

“If you’re looking for “How do you cope with all these changes?’ I would say, ‘Begin to separate presence from productivity.’”

Brad: Rob Hirschfeld and I came up with this analogy. If a millennial is the best at digging ditches, and an old guy has been there for forty years and is slowing down, the millennial believes they should be in charge of digging those ditches. It’s just simply, “If my skillset is better than yours, [you] have to get out of the way, and let me do my job and manage everyone else.” And that can be confusing to a boomer who’s basing their entire career on age. A millennial’s coming up from the bottom and saying, “Look. I’m the fastest at doing this. You’re slowing the company down. Get out of the way and let me run this.” And in many ways they’re right. You may be the boomer who’s bottle-necking everything and not know it.

It’s going to take a very dynamic leader to not only communicate extremely well, but [also] see what still works well in the business cycle, let go of what is no longer viable, and listen to a younger person. Or take them seriously, to get the best out of them while not discrediting their enthusiasm, their ambition, their need to prove themselves.

David: You said two key phrases there that I’m convinced are the recipe for survival in leading the future of work, which are “listening” and “letting go.” Listening to your people and figuring out what is causing frustrations, and what are they seeing that you can’t see? And then eliminating those barriers, barriers to your ability to see what they see, or barriers to them doing their best work.

Brad: Right. If you’re a boomer, remember how we were managed? When the boss was there, what did you do? We started to look busy ’cause we were afraid of our boss. We only obeyed the rules and showed up early to show that we were doing our work. And what did you do with the knowledge that you had gained? You hoarded it. And when the boss was around, you would show how awesome you were at something. We were knowledge hoarders. When management walked away, what’d we do?

“We can relax now.” Now the boss has to be there in order to make sure the work gets done on time.

I know executive vice presidents who are millennials in the oil and gas industry. And they [say to] their employees, “If you finish your work in two hours, go to the beach. But you damn well better not miss that deadline.” That’s how they operate. So you have a younger worker who wants to work faster, wants to work more efficiently, and doesn’t understand why you [may] want them to just sit there for three hours until the clock hits a certain stroke. They’ve been raised so differently. They [don’t know] they should be obedient to you or fear you or they should get their work in early or put in extra hours. They don’t know any of that. And maybe they don’t need to know that.

David: I think that’s a really good start to give people. If you’re looking for “How do you cope with all these changes?” I would say, “Begin to separate presence from productivity.”

Final question. In your view, what makes someone a leader?

Brad: Leadership is an individual thing. We all have our own style. For me, it is setting the standard for people to follow. But at the same time, being aware and open-hearted enough that you can see the talent in a person that they don’t know they have, and elevating them to be their very best. And in some cases, even better than you. The old saying is, “A true leader helps others become leaders.” I truly believe that.

This conversation has been edited and condensed. To listen to the full version, click here.

See you next time...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 1 of 5

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Step 1: Flatten Your Hierarchy

To start this 5 part series off right, let's get something clear; this series is based on my own experience of building several start-ups (8 to be exact), from the ground up. One of which I took public on NASDAQ.

Through the years I've learned one thing; the power of any organization is locked deep inside your people. Manage them badly and they leave. Manage them correctly, and they release an unprecedented tsunami of productivity.

Honestly I didn't have much of a choice. I was forced to learn how to manage people because I didn't have unlimited funds to shower them with, expecting them to live up to my standard of expectations. Boomer expectations.

So I learned to be better. I learned about what drives behavior, motivation and loyalty. And in this 5 part series, I am passing the baton of over 30 years of my experiences to you. So let's dig in...

In today’s fast-paced work environment, clinging to your 100 year old hierarchy can be detrimental. "But Brad, that's the way it's been for 70 years...why change now? We can't change things just because Millennials showed up."

Your younger workers aren't the problem. The way Millennials act and behave are a symptom of a much bigger issue; your workforce has been raised differently—trained in business since they were children. I explain it all in my award-winning business book Liquid Leadership.

Those of you still complaining about Millennials may not realize they are acting the way they do in your organization BECAUSE they have been trained already in business. I know, hard to believe,...but if you watch my TEDXTalk, you'll see, video games, new parenting methods and a student-centered curriculum have created someone waiting for you to give the right command.

Simply put, you are not speaking the programming language for a new generation of worker. A generation Baby Boomers raised.

Here is my Liquid Leadership Generational Behavior Chart.
Click on the image to see the full-sized version.

Behavior has changed, but in addition, technology has given us the ability to get work done without physical effort anymore. You can work from anywhere as long as there is a WiFi connection, and in some cases, work better.

With all these changes, management models haven't really changed much since the turn of the 20th Century.

So here are two reasons you need to flatten hierarchy: a 21st Century Organization needs to move faster, and age is no longer the criteria for advancement. Skill is.

Let me explain.

Former CEO of Cisco, John Chambers flattened the hierarchy back in the early 2000s. You may remember Cisco Systems being the darling of Wall Street back in the Go Go 90s of the Dot Com Era.   Suddenly the stock went from $68 per share plunging to $11 in less than 6 months.

The Dot Com implosion destroyed solid companies along with weak companies. The bubble had burst on the dot com era and the baby was getting thrown out with the bathwater so to speak.

Chambers went into action firing thousands of employees and eliminating hundreds of dud products that were no longer profitable. In other words, to save Cisco, he made her lean and mean by trimming the fat.

Chambers also figured out something else, he was the bottleneck that made the company too slow for the up and coming 21st Century. If all decision making in a company HAS to go through the owner, then guess what? That's a company that will not survive very long.

He even said it himself...

“Without exception, all of my biggest mistakes occurred because I moved too slowly.”

— John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco Systems

John decided to get out of the way and created two autonomous groups within Cisco that made purchasing decisions without him. He created a more democratic organization.

What does all this mean? Why must we flatten today's organizations? By getting rid of the distance between decision-making and implementation, an organization starts eliminating bottlenecks, and moves faster. Frictionless productivity starts becoming a reality and communication happens in real-time.

And since speed is paramount in the 21st Century. This means your people managers need to be trained differently.

Netflix (The online streaming media company a.k.a. TV on the go), seems to have the best grasp of this—training their team managers in team morale and communication has become paramount to their success.

Their controversial hiring and management practices have made the cover story in the Harvard Business Review. Check It Out: Netflix--A Great Place to Work

One of their tactics is to make sure managers are in charge of creating great teams. By visualizing the outcomes they want, and aligning with the skill sets they NEED to accomplish that goal, Netflix team managers waste no time hiring the right people.

Imagine picking only the people you need? That would make you really efficient, right?

I'll talk more about Netflix in Step 5. Until then, see you in Step 2: Creating a 'Truth Telling' Environment.

See you next time...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 2 of 5

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 29 May 2017 12:30:00 +0000

2: Create a 'Truth Telling' Environment

Watch Office Space if you really want
to understand the viewpoint of today's workforce.

Too many companies place weight and authority on title and position; ignoring the front line employee who didn’t get an MBA or even a Bachelors Degree.   The reality is, front line workers KNOW exactly how to make the company more efficient. But if telling the truth can get you fired, why bother speaking up?

Software workarounds are a good example of this. When your workforce is consistently trying to find solutions because the new software is incapable of producing the desired effect, they create a workaround. Which is corporate jargon for "we gotta create a solution that gets the work done without blaming the software."

Some companies have entire workbooks filled with "what to do" when the software fails expectations. If there are 15 different workaround solutions, it may be time to admit the truth; "the software is bad. We need something new."

 But what if the software was forced on the company because one of the C-Level Executives plays golf with the CEO of the software company? Well now you are looking at a real problem that will never get solved.

And that is the point of this article...

"For progress to be made, people need to be able to tell the truth; even if that truth is uncomfortable to leadership." — Brad Szollose

I have listened to story after story of employees keeping their mouth shut so they could keep their jobs simply because it was an executive decision. Decisions from the top down will fail when leaders are disconnected from the company culture.

And that is why they hire consultants; to do the icky work of actually talking to low-level workers. If you still believe in this method of leading, go sit in the corner and be ashamed. Be very ashamed.

Create an environment of truth telling and you will see a company that is cutting edge, willing to face facts, and a company filled with employees who are so passionate about what they are creating, they are willing to tell you something so uncomfortable it could get them fired in any other organization.

Think about that for a moment. They would have to love the company more than their job to speak up wouldn't they?

And just an FYI: Millennials get a bum rap in most organizations for one simple reason; they will be the first to call you on your own BS.

That should scare you. It scared me when I had to face facts in my own companies.

See you at my next step...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 3 of 5

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 22 May 2017 12:30:00 +0000

3: Modern Organizations Support Creativity

“Without consistent creativity, there can be no innovation. So why do so many companies ignore creativity? Because you have to let go of control.”
— Brad Szollose, Liquid Leadership, page 38  

K2 Design 20th Anniversary Party NYC 2013.
Our Art Directors.

One way to be innovative and pull ahead of the pack, is to entertain new ideas that are employee driven.   

That doesn’t mean you abandon what works for something new and sexy, but it does mean that what works needs to be supported while incubation is also supported.

At my own company, K2 Design, we had a policy; employees were encouraged to submit any and all ideas that they believed could be a great addition to our products and services.

We had dozens and dozens of ideas. Three we turned into new divisions of K2—K2 NetMedia, VisaTrack, and CliqNOW!

CliqNOW! was sold off for a few million dollars and a stock swap. The employees who managed that division wound up going onto the new parent company.

But this isn't some kind of anomaly. This requires the leadership to create an environment of trust. Trust that is built into the corporate culture from day one. Try new employee orientation with the idea that all creative ideas will be supported.

And then put your money where your mouth is.

"Creativity, innovation, and breakthroughs WILL BE REWARDED HERE." Print that on a poster and put it on the wall of your office.

Everyone is complaining about Millennials these days. But managing these new wunderkinds is actually an easy task when you give them a chance to unleash their creative nature.

Imagine discovering the next Mark Zuckerberg right inside your company. That would be an astounding achievement. But it starts with the structure of the company. From the bottom up, not top down. Creativity should be the cornerstone of your company.

Look at companies like Zappos and ValvE Software. Creativity CAN be managed. But it requires a new set of rules.

See you in Step 2...

Brad

PS: At K2 we were always trying to be cutting edge:
K2 Design Branches Out Into The Risky Realm of Wireless Services...

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 4 of 5

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 15 May 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Step 4: Give Employees Responsibility For The Success of Your Organization

As a leader, when you let your workforce know they are responsible for the outcome of the success of the company, suddenly something magnificent happens; they put their entire self into the work they do.

Sounds too easy doesn't it? But I've actually done this and it works like magic.

But here is where it gets scary: employees get to control the quality of the product as well.

When Harley Davidson decided to turn the company around after buying it back from AMF, they realized the number one complaint from Harley Owners Groups HOG, was that the quality had slipped. The AMF Harley's would lose a bolt on a highway. Dangerous To Ride became Harley's middle name.

Quality HAD TO became a priority.

So what did they do?

Here is an excerpt from my award-winning book, Liquid Leadership: Page 116...

Rebirth of the Badass Bike
Early in the seventies, the name Harley-Davidson became synonymous with junk. American Machine and Foundry (AMF), the bicycle and sports equipment manufacturer, had purchased Harley back in 1969, assuming that the Harley name would assure a profit center.

Unfortunately, over time AMF drove the octogenarian company into the ground by streamlining production, cheapening the manufacturing process with inferior parts, and firing employees in an attempt to squeeze every penny out of its acquisition. At the same time, Japanese imports began inundating the United States with cheaper, café-style racing motorcycles. Harley-Davidson became the laughingstock of the motorcycle industry, and even die-hard HOGs (members of Harley Owners Groups) were having trouble supporting a company whose motorcycles could come apart on the highway.

Something had to be done, or else Harley—at the time America’s only motorcycle company—was about to go out of business. In 1981, a conglomerate of investors and thirteen company executives led by Vaughn Beals and Willie G. Davidson, grandson of cofounder William Davidson, bought back an almost-bankrupt Harley-Davidson Motorcycles from AMF for $80 million, and the Milwaukee-based headquarters had to get to work restoring the tarnished Harley name.

The “new” owners had been with the company for years, so they knew the Harley brand and what was needed to turn it around. The first mission was to change how their bikes were made—increasing quality while keeping costs low.

One way they did this was to shift decision making from the top of the organization to the front lines, putting quality control in the hands of assembly workers during any and every stage of the manufacturing process. If a part or a weld didn’t meet the new Harley standard, any worker could stop the line and correct the final product.

"Innovation can thrive only in environments where it is safe to tell the truth." - Brad Szollose

Harley faced the truth quickly and implemented a quality-over-quantity attitude. Pride in workmanship and a sense of purpose returned to the factory floor and the work that employees were involved in. Word began to spread that Harley made great bikes again. Once the internal part of the company was reworked, it was time to change customer perception about the Harley-Davidson brand.

The executive team at Harley is rare for another reason: They don’t just work for the company, they live the motorcycle lifestyle. By participating in racing events and HOG rallies in Daytona and Pennsylvania, they could meet their customers face-to-face. This is not an easy thing for a company to do if its customers feel angry and abused. Yet even though it hurt to listen to painful and honest complaints from customers, it helped give the company still more direction for recovery—and clout.

Meeting Harley owners head-on helped these executives for another reason: It let them show off new products while building brand loyalty. After all, if the guys at the top were riding these cycles, they had to be good. This went a long way to bringing the brand back to life.

As a result of all of this, Harley’s demographic evolved. What had been an affordable motorcycle for a small group on the edge of society became a high-end brand that started to attract doctors, lawyers, and college-educated wannabes who could afford the new bike lines but also wanted to get back in touch with masculinity. The affluent who worked in homogenized offices and courtrooms were suddenly interested in dabbling in the rugged Harley-Davidson lifestyle on weekends. The nine-to-five office worker became a weekend warrior Friday at 5:00 pm.

Since Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Honda had chosen to inundate the United States with their modern café racer look, Harley did the opposite in order to recapture their brand—they deliberately returned to the macho, “retro” look of the past.

But that didn’t stop the development team from looking into the future. Today’s Harley-Davidson brands encompass traditional touring bikes such as the Fat Boy, female biker–focused brands like the Sportster, and cutting-edge bikes like the café racer–style and retro-inspired V-Rod, along with a macho-inspired apparel line of jackets, T-shirts, and helmets. This is part of the strategy that made them strong enough to go public.The lesson here is to give the customer a lifestyle-changing product that is built to last, and support the hell out of that choice.

It’s an amazing turnaround story, but it couldn’t have gotten off the ground if the executive team hadn’t taken a good hard look at their company and faced the truth about the internal and external problems of the Harley-Davidson brand—it was dying a slow and miserable death.

They didn’t live in the glory days, and they neither blamed nor complained. They simply faced the reality of what had destroyed their products and took steps to turn it around and make an even better product that would keep customers coming back.

Truth is the cornerstone of great leadership, and great leadership faces the truth—head-on.

Even if it is uncomfortable.

I am always astounded when companies refuse to face facts. Making money during boom cycles in an economy is easy. Making money during a down cycle requires brilliance.

See you next time for Step 3.

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 5 of 5

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 08 May 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Step 5: Create a New Set of Rules for Talent Recruitment

Netflix (The online streaming media company a.k.a. TV on the go), is thumbing their nose up at tradition Human Resource methodologies by setting the bar higher; they expect people to be fully formed adults.

Their controversial hiring and management practices have made the cover story in the Harvard Business Review. Check It Out: Netflix--A Great Place to Work

One of their tactics is to put their money into hiring winners. Netflix discovered that two mediocre employees could be replaced with one A-Player.

For those of you who grew up believing there are no winners and no losers, welcome to the real world. "Sprinkles are for winners."

What do A-Players expect from other A-Players? Intensity in all they do.

Yes you have to pay that person a bit more, but you get one self-starter instead of having to pay two for the same output.

Now there's a caveat to hiring a company full of A-Players; at some point, they will want to kill each other. Not literally, but figuratively.

So that means you need a new way of managing people's behavior and workflow.

Which I will explore in the next part of this series.

Create your own rules for hiring. Rules that fit YOUR workforce culture.

See you next time...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

How Do You Manage Winning Teams? Teams that INCLUDE Millennials!

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Brad Szollose on Kelly Roach's
Unstoppable Success Radio

I had the very best time on Kelly Roach's Unstoppable Success Radio.

Episode 194: Brad Szollose on Managing Winning Teams (Of Millennials!)

We sat down and had a great conversation; helping her listeners realize that Millennials grew up with business training...and what to do with that.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or a business executive, this generation is great to work with once you understand their code...or Operating System.

Listen in on iTunes:

In this episode, I talk about:
• How shifting from a hierarchy to a results & deadline-driven management model caused K2 Design to grow by 425% for 5 straight years - and how you can replicate those results

• What heart-based leadership REALLY means and why you may want to consider it in your growth plan this year

• Top 5 things you need to do if you want to learn to manage millennials and get the BEST out of them to grow your business

Kelly and I served up a very real perspective and strategies on what it means to hire and work with a winning team of millennials and how to tailor your leadership to make sure you’re not wasting time and money on what I call “ninnies!”

If you like the show, share it;-) THANK YOU.

See you next time...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

TEDX Speaker, Web pioneer and the author of the award-winning, bestseller Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia, Brad is a former C-level executive of a publicly traded company that he cofounded that went from entrepreneurial start-up to IPO in three years; the first Dot Com Agency to go public on NASDAQ. His company K2 Design, experienced 425% hyper-growth, due in part to a unique management style that won his company the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices in Fostering Innovation.

Today the world’s leading business publications seek out Brad’s insights on Millennials, and he has been featured in Forbes, Inc., The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Inc., Advertising Age, The International Business Times, and The Hindu BusinessLine to name a few, along with television, radio and podcast appearances on CBS and other media outlets.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's books...Liquid Leadership and the latest...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

Advising The Millennial-Owned Startup: The Ins and Outs of a FASTER Business Cycle

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Telling a Millennial that they need to stick to a five to ten year business model will be met with complete skepticism.

Here’s why:

The reason the business development cycle is three months out instead of five years is due to several influences: digital devices, email and big data have given us the power to get more work done in less time with more accuracy.

Technology has also given us the ability to work from anywhere we want regardless of location even on a modest budget. Skype for instance gives a small business access to international videoconferencing for pennies. This allows smaller startups to compete for the same low hanging fruit that well-established behemoths used to ignore.

As Olympian Vince Poscente puts it, like it or not, “we are in the age of speed.”

And with that said, any coach, regardless of generation who is still clinging to the 20^th Century models will not survive the milieu of coaches about to join your ranks.

And besides, Millennial business owners want to move fast.

But here is where Millennial coaches and business advisers will have the hardest time; cracking the generational mindset of older established business professionals. Let me explain, if we go back in time, to the 70s no one was seeking the advice of a 25 year old. Age determined rank in the boomer world, and that ideology of age+experience=trust is present to this day.

Inside EVERY Baby Boomer’s head is something I have labeled the Career Path Paradigm. At 20 a person was to start in the mailroom. Know your place in the organization. Sit down. Shut up and listen. Hard work and sweat would get you noticed. No one is interested in what a 20-something has to say. At 30, you might get noticed and move up in rank. Stability starts at 30. You were supposed to get married and buy a house and start a family. By 40 you get a middle management position and 50 gets you the corner office and a title and keys to the executive washroom.

Although this model is over, Millennial Coaches will have to overcome this very real belief still sitting in the nooks and crannies of anyone over 50.

If you are a Millennial Coach selling to a Boomer, I suggest you enter with a diverse team made up of Gen X and Boomers. Even if it is just your advisory team, do it f you want to make the boomer comfortable.

Learn more about this topic. Watch an exclusive webinar from Brad Szollose and Nathan Smith on Are Millennials Destroying Business As We Know It?

What about coaching the Millennial-owned startup?

Two close business associates invited me to a breakfast meeting. The topic? Could I groom a Millennial business owner? Although the young man was a genius at 28—his entire business centered around a multimillion dollar app he had developed. His entire business was a digital product. As they filled me in, I realized the young wunderkind was intelligent, but sloppy, said inappropriate things and was inexperienced at business structure.

My job is to groom this young man for the C-Suite. I have one year to get him ready.
Since I have a deep understanding of Millennials, my job will be simple. For the rest of you, here are a few tips;

1) Millennials are friends with their parents. Use that to your advantage.

What that means is as children they were privy to conversations that previous generations never had with their parents. This included getting career advice and mentorship lessons since they were 5. In other words, Millennials weren’t raised by parents, they were raised by advisers. The hierarchy in the household was flattened in favor of collaboration.

To work with this generation, become a partner in their success. Sounds exhausting but a Millennial will need far more hands on than other clients. Why you may ask? Well, although they had deep relationships with their parents and teachers growing up, they may not have the same business polish that was expected of Gen X and Boomers at the same age.

Huge chunks of knowledge is missing from their experience. And you as a consultant, a coach, will need to explain why things need to get done in a certain way in a particular order.

2) Harness their innovation before they get cynical.

Because Millennials are not trained in traditional business methodologies they break the rules. BUT, they don’t know they are breaking the rules. This is a good thing because like any breakthrough entrepreneur, innovation is what wins the day.

But show them that creating cool products can also go hand-in-hand with traditional business structures. A Results Only Work Environment is best for creating an environment that Millennials respect, but at the same time, celebrate the importance of deadlines and systems. In a ROWE environment output is 32% higher than traditional business hierarchies.

Celebrate Innovation and counter intuitive solutions. THAT is what Millennials do best.
The new Holacracy trend is great and all, but unless you have money to burn through before that first product takes root, I suggest sticking to a ROWE model.

3) Build Fast and Sell…BUT, Prepare them for the Long Haul as well.

While you show the Digital Native that you aren’t their grandfather’s business coach, build a rapport that is based on results. Building a start-up into a viable company for acquisition is every entrepreneur’s dream. And it is a hot trend. BUT, teaching valuable business lessons that create a lasting legacy is far more important for the future of your business as well as theirs.

You see, we all work in the One Off environment. But how would you like to be rehired years later when that young entrepreneur is a leader at another company? Or creating a deep dive array of coaching services that grow as the organization grows? For myself I’ve had to add 9 month and one year programs to my consulting simply because I realized one workshop, a keynote or a 6 week engagement weren’t really enough to create a sea change. For a broad transformation that is felt throughout the organization, I needed a team, and my team needs to get inside the organization for 9 months minimum.

Long term, versus short term.
Which do you think is better?

Also, don’t wear a tie. Millennials like to be comfortable at work, and so should you. I wear a Hugo Boss suit with a fitted dress shirt and a silk handkerchief with expensive sunglasses. Even Millennials in flip-flops appreciate casual elegance.

So get in there. There’s money to be made, and companies to help build.

Click here to get started working on the ROI of your brand now: http://smithdurant.com/get-started/

See you next time...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's books...Liquid Leadership and the latest...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

Why are Valve & Zappos so Scary to Boomers?

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 13:30:00 +0000

When I was a young lad in my first professional position, I did my very best to learn the structure of the organization as quickly as possible. Who was in charge? Who was the CEO? How do I advance up the corporate ladder here? What are the rules around here? When can I get a raise?

These questions were important because hierarchy and advancement was important. Your position within any organization was based on age, education, loyalty to the company and (drumroll), experience. Which meant, the longer you were at a company, the higher up you went.

Advancement was based on time, effort...etc...people at the top had gray hair, while the people at the bottom had just started at the company. The influencers of the company were at the top.

Advancement took time.

But along came technology and a new generation. They entered companies with the latest technology and management methods, along with data and analytics and a new set of logistics. The influencers were now at the bottom of the company.

Now an organization must move faster. To do that, the management structure, even the environment and methods of advancement must change. Zappos, Google and Valve seem to be leading the way in this management revolution.

To a hierarchy junkie, these companies are a bit scary.

How do we get any work done when there are no managers?

Listen in as I chat with Jeff Smith on his Podcast Vroom, Vroom, Veer on this fun and controversial subject.

I hope you enjoyed that. Jeff works hard to find guests that think outside the box.

See you next time...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's books...Liquid Leadership and the latest...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

What Is Liquid Leadership?

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 13:30:00 +0000

Photo Credit: Shutterstock: Jirsak. ID: 376175704

Last month I received an alert about an article that bore my name in the French newspaper Les Echos. In the Business section reporter Valerie Landrieu grabbed me with the headline (I have translated the best I could for the non French speaking audience):

A New Measurement Tool
for Business Acceleration

The article breaks down a growing trend; global executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles worked diligently to diagnose the key vectors of success from twenty-three elite companies. These factors they discovered are the difference between uber-success and mediocrity in today's shifting economic environments.

Heidrick & Struggles took their findings and developed people management software that may rival Accenture and Atlassian, when it comes to productivity...but can we measure what we thought was un-measurable; human engagement?

Valerie looked past the software, bringing us back to the human question, and the quote that grabbed my attention:

H&S created a tool to increase the speed and productivity of a management team(s).

But, are their members leaders?

In short: do they know how to shape strategy, inspire and influence at every level of the company? Do they exercise "liquid leadership"?

The latter concept, borrowed from management consultant Brad Szollose, describes the ability to execute the strategy by reducing the complexity of the environment and by freeing the structures to set up a team(s) ability to be successful.

The French to English translation may not be perfect, but I am glad to see that someone has been reading my work;-) Thank you Mrs. Landrieu.

On another note, it is something I mention in a later chapter in Liquid Leadership; not only can technology now be used to measure machine productivity, but people as well. And it could get Orwellian if we are not careful.

The reason we MUST adapt to a new management style is because of 2 reasons; people have changed dramatically—from generation to generation, each has different needs, wants and goals, along with technology giving smaller companies the ability to compete with larger ones.

Figure out out to engage people in this day and age, and you shall be considered a genius.

So what does the term Liquid Leadership really mean? Here is MY definition:

Liquid Leadership is a fluid style of leadership that continuously sustains the flow of ideas (and productivity), within an organization in order to create and maximize opportunities in an ever-shifting marketplace.

Okay, that may sound like boring corporate-speak, but, we are facing an era of unprecedented change both domestically here in the United States and Canada, as well as globally in countries like China and Europe. We can see it in the protests as one generation stands up, questioning the status quo, while another more seasoned generation may stand befuddled as to what is going on.

As people and technology keep shifting at a rapid pace, instead of clinging to old ways of doing things—command and control environments, hierarchy and advancement based on age, and using the same strategies our grandparents used—don't you think it's time to explore something new?

Time to move past the Myers-Briggs and DISC® movement and embrace the possibility that we need something that engages people at their core. These are great tools for hiring people and understanding personality conflicts, but what about tools that help us get people engaged, excited and increase productivity? True leadership will always have a need to understand, interact and inspire their people.

That part of business will always
require a 'human touch.'

They used to say "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."...yet what we've started to realize is that the touchy-feely stuff is at its core the reason why people stay in an organization.

Check out this article from WIRED Magazine:

WHY are Happy Employees 12% More Productive?

Now with all the software out there that can help you choose your winners, don't forget; this is about people. That means every hire, every employee evaluation, every promotion still requires human beings to be involved with other human beings.

This is a skill we can't just hand over to software. A skill that only a rare few have innately. And that skill is the ability to spot talent, motivate, engage and inspire others, simply by their presence.

You've met a person or two like that in your business life.

They are rare indeed...

Now I am not delusional; some things in business will never change, but Liquid Leadership gives you the tools to adapt your leadership style for an ever-shifting world.

Merci...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management Consultant

Cross Generational Leadership Development & Workforce Performance Strategies

Executive Coach

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's books...Liquid Leadership and the latest...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

How Do You Motivate People in The Digital Age? Try Gamification.

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 13:30:00 +0000

Lately I've noticed a pattern in my work; whether it's a CEO, a small business owner, teacher or parent—the same question keeps popping up: HOW do I motivate today's young person?

Now they are NOT asking me how to motivate a 15 year old. They are talking about anyone who is 40 years of age and younger! This may be confusing to many a Baby Boomer...why is this generation so resistant to growing up? I explain it in detail in my award-winning book Liquid Leadership, but for now, let me give you a simple breakdown:

Remember Bruce Dern and Ann-Margret in the 1980 comedy Middle Age Crazy? Bruce Dern is a 39 year old man about to turn 40. This was considered Middle Age when I was a kid. I was 17 when I saw it and thought he was so old. 40 was light years away for me and I kept asking "why did I have to wind up like him?"

Although it has some pretty harsh language, Bruce Dern's Graduation Speech from the movie is worth watching. And it says it all about this next generation.

Anyone born after 1977 was not raised like Baby Boomers or Traditionalists. They were raised to follow their passion. Live life doing what they want. Question everything. And NEVER give yourself over 100% to a company that doesn't value your contribution. They've been encouraged to speak up and tell their personal truth. Working at one company for 25 years is a waste of time. Where Boomers worked hard and sacrificed to have the good life, Millennials believe that life and work should be in balance. And now we wonder WHY 71% of employees are disengaged.

If you want ENGAGEMENT...and I mean real engagement, I recommend Gamification.

So, what is Gamification? Here's my definition:

"Gamification is the use of game-like strategies and tactics to give end-users the incentive to solve problems and preform tasks in order to obtain specific rewards and goals. Many of these action/reward tasks are done without the realization of the person preforming the tasks."

Your credit card company and bank have used Gamification in their rewards programs for YEARS. Airlines use it as well: "fly this many times, redeem your miles for stuff." It's Gamification in action. Simple. It gives people incentive to do more because they get rewarded for their actions.

Now how does this apply to your business? Nicolette Beard says it best on her TopRank® Online Marketing Blog: Gamification as a Content Marketing Tactic — How Brands Are Engaging Consumers. Take a moment to read her work. She lays down the pros and cons of Gamification.

But for me, how can we apply Gamification as a management tool? In my own Cross-Generational work, I recommend micro-incentives to managers and executives. Let the team determine goals and rewards. Meet a deadline, the company pays for a weekend retreat.

What makes it different for us Boomers is we were expected to wait all year for an evaluation and a raise. If we didn't get it, we still stayed with the company. But today, research has found that most people want to be appreciated. If they do not feel so, they leave.

Time to GAMIFY Your Corporate Incentive Programs.

Gamification gives a shorter cycle of rewards and incentives. Unlike Boomers waiting all year for that raise, or Generation Y getting a trophy for showing up, the shorter Gamification life-cycle requires people to get the work done FIRST before getting a plaque to hang in their office.

Want to achieve what appears to be an impossible goal at your company? Lay out a map. Break it into simple achievable goals for each team. Let the team determine the strategies for getting there. And once achieved, determine the rewards. BEFORE you begin. And get a project manager to oversee it all.

Make it fun. Worth the effort. And EMOTIONALLY engaging!

Many Fortune 500 companies are using Gamification driven software over their intranets to keep project management transparent and on task.

In order to keep the Next Generation on task and engaged, try Gamification in your company. After all, they are used to it. They've played over 10,000 hours each on some form of video game: Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy, Halo, etc...

Gamification can be used for accelerated learning, ROI, tight deadlines or keeping people on task.

Let me know how it goes...and don't forget, I can help you set up an incentive program for your company.

Thanks for stopping by...

Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management Consultant

Cross Generational Leadership Development & Workforce Performance Strategies

Executive Coach

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Today the world’s leading business publications seek out Brad’s insights on Millennials, and he has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Inc., Advertising Age, The International Business Times, and The Hindu BusinessLine to name a few, along with television, radio and podcast appearances on CBS and other media outlets.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's books...Liquid Leadership and the latest...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

How to Truly Connect With Millennials,...and What It Will Do For Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 13:30:00 +0000

This article originally appeared on Alan Samuel Cohen's Blog. Big thank you to Alan for letting me be a Guest Blogger:

The term “Millennial” is being brandished about these days like a bit of juicy gossip at a high society luncheon. If any one group has gotten this generation so utterly wrong, it is the mainstream media. Stories seem to vacillate from coddled crybabies who need a safe space to toddler CEOs seeking billion-dollar unicorn status.

Even the New York Times jumped on the Millennial-bashing bandwagon with an article in March of 2016 entitled “What Happens When Millennials Run The Workplace?” It was nothing more than a caricature of an office being run like a frat house where traversing the halls on hover boards seemed to be their core business model.

All I can say is; “Dear Mainstream Media, PLEASE STOP! You’re embarrassing yourselves.”

Making a connection with Millennials starts with understanding them first. As the media starts another round of Millennial bashing, instead let’s dig in and get rid of the stereotypes.

Start By Taking Millennials’ Contributions Seriously

Boomers, remember when you were 25 and your boss hung on every word that came out of your mouth? You can’t remember because it never happened.

No one wanted to hear anything from us back when we were in our twenties. Boomers were expected to sit down, shut up and listen. As middle-aged adults, even when someone is only 3 years older than us, the ubiquitous phrase “Oh, you’re a BABY…” slips into the conversation.

Why were we devalued simply because of age?

Part of the reason for this was our generation had to work our way up through the ranks, gaining experience along the way. Boomers AND Generation X know this well. Experience took time. Lots and lots of time to earn your place in the company.

But something shifted from 1977 to 1984. The next generation we call X as well as Millennials were exposed to computers at a very early age. At first we saw them as toys—video games, Speak & Spell, Teddy Ruxpin, etc…and eventually the Apple Macintosh entered our homes. That gave anyone born after 1977 the hard skills to work in the 21^st Century.

While you may believe Millennials were influenced by technology, that is only part of the puzzle…they also grew up working in teams, using groups and individual skill sets to get things accomplished. Online and video gaming taught GenX AND Millennials that leadership was rotational according to what was needed in the moment. Like commandos in the field, games taught them to be highly strategic, knowing the mission parameters and expected outcomes during game play.

Gaming also teaches something else that no one is talking about; Digital Natives cannot wait for a decision to go up through the chain of command. Speed requires communication bottlenecks be destroyed in favor of front line decision-making. This requires no authority figures that control workflow, but instead a peer-to-peer work environment that thrives on real-time decision-making.

The last piece of the puzzle is parenting. Millennials grew up in households where their parents were not authority figures to be feared and obeyed but trusted mentors, advisors and career counselors, as well as friends—my father is rolling in his grave over that last one.

Ask a Millennial if they see their parents as a friend or mentor and most will say yes without hesitation. Not all, but most.

This is why Millennials may see the CEO as approachable. Of course they know you are important, but they also see you as someone they can have a casual chat with, or someday become a CEO as well. Easy peasy. And if you are unaware of what is happening in the real world of business and technology, they can see you as a Noob, bringing company productivity to a standstill. And you wouldn’t know it, which frustrates them.

In other words, your 30 years of experience may be what is holding the company back in the Digital Age.

It is time to see Millennials as contributors instead of young entry-level workers who need to stay on the 16-year trajectory you and I were raised with. That ideology simply doesn’t exist anymore. The corner office is a 20^th Century status symbol my friends.

Speed and contribution to a team is the 21^st Century model…even if your team members are scattered throughout the country in three different time zones.

I hope that helps. Understand this; Millennials, Gamers, Digital Natives, whatever you wish to call them, do not know why they are different. Instead of treating them the way we were treated at the same age, try opening up and make peace. You’ll be astounded what is happening inside that young mind.

If you haven’t asked your Millennial team members for their input, or defined what is expected of them, don’t be surprised that they leave.

And next time the media calls Millennials ‘Generation Snowflake,’ remind them that UFC champions Conor McGregor, Demetrious Johnson and Jon Jones are all Millennials.

Thank you to Alan Cohen for this guest blog spot. An honor.

See you next week...

Brad Szollose
Global Management Consultant

Cross Generational Leadership Development & Workforce Performance Strategies

Executive Coach

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's new book...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

Millennials in The Workplace: How Different Are They, Really? Vinnie DiSalvo: Guest Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 13:30:00 +0000

Last week I had the chance to watch Simon Sinek's video on 'Millennials in The Workplace.' I liked what he says simply because it is exactly what I've been saying since 1996; if you wish to understand the next generation, you have to start with HOW they were raised.

I discovered FOUR major influences that caused Millennials and even Generation X to act the way they do...if you can answer WHY, then all the data on Millennials begins to make sense.

So naturally, I reposted Simon's interview on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. It took all of two days before people started going "hey Brad, did you see this?" linking of course to Simon's most excellent interview in Australia on the television show Inside Quest with Tom Bilyeu.

The following also crossed my desk...from professional colleague and fan of my work Vinnie DiSalvo. The original post is on LinkedIn.

"A lot has been written over the last several years on generations in the workplace. The last 24 months has led American businesses to see something that has never witnessed: up to five generations working together at the same time.

From HBR’s article: (Click Here to View)

They include:

Traditionalists, born prior to 1946

Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964

Gen X, born between 1965 and 1976

Millennials, born between 1977 and 1997

Gen 2020, born after 1997

*Note there are varying thoughts on the “born between/after dates” associated with each generation.

Faced with this unprecedented occurrence, organizations have been scrambling to get their arms around how to better understand the needs and goals of those different generations. There is another great article from HBR.org with some insights into some principles to remember. (Click Here to View)

For those curious, I’m a student of Brad Szollose, and have adopted several his ideas in my own work on understanding the “21st Century Workforce Culture and Customer.”

In this article, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on a video making it’s rounds on social media. “Simon Sinek on Millennials in the Workplace”

In the interest of full disclosure, two quick points: 1) I am a huge Simon Sinek fan and have been since his 2010 TED Talk on How Great Leaders Inspire Action. 2) I’m going to be “painting” with a very broad brush with my comments and while it should be understood, I will say, there are certainly people and situations where my thoughts might not apply.

Onto Millennials – shocker, I couldn’t agree more with some of the thoughts expressed by Simon in his “millennial” video. The one caveat I would insert is that much of what he discussed can also be applied to multiple generations.

In this video, Simon constructs his lesson around 4 main pieces that he describes as key to understanding the disconnect between business and millennials. (Those born 1984 and after, according to the video.)

Those four are:

Parenting
Technology
Impatience
Environment

As I mentioned above, while characteristics can be imposed on broader groups, we can most certainly find outliers within each generational group that these lessons can be applied.

For example – Technology – While Millennials are said to be the first truly “Digital Native” generation, the impact that technology has played on all the generations, more specifically Baby Boomers and Gen X, is far reaching.

Simon goes on to draw the parallel between the dopamine induced high an addict experiences when they get their “fix”, to the experience we all feel when we get a “text”, a “snap” or a “like” on social media. Here is where I think the overlap is in our generations, or really anyone who is “addicted” to technology. Whether you’re a digital native or not, you can easily become addicted. I know plenty of senior leaders who fall strongly in the Baby Boomer or Gen X range that can’t or won’t stop staring at their devices.

I think we can all learn something from Simon’s message, in some cases we must learn for the first time and in other cases we need to re-learn how to interact with people on a deeper less superficial way. That said, my own thoughts diverge slightly. When it comes to customers, (and make no mistake about it, we are all in sales, and everyone is our customer, no matter what we do for a living - See Dan Pink’s work in his book “To Sell Is Human”) I’m a big proponent of the idea that we need to go where the customer/audience is or where they are going to be, but certainly not where they were 10-15 years ago. While these social skills may be lacking and I do agree that we should do our part as organizations to help develop those skills, I think we also need to learn to engage people where they are, and within their comfort zones.

Engaging people in the spaces where they are comfortable is the first step in making this transition. Does it “really” make sense to force someone who is use to, and comfortable with, texting to stop and engage face-to-face. Certainly not, I think. However if you can utilize that modality to begin the engagement process, it can be a jumping off point for deeper more long term connection.

The third area that Simon discusses is impatience. Sure, there are millennials that are riddled with this scourge of a trait. But I ask you, who among us wasn’t when they were in their early 20’s, filled with optimism and vigor. I think it may be exacerbated by many of the factors that Simon mentions, but I’m going to chalk a big portion of this up to immaturity on a business level or lack of business experience. As a whole however, I do think that impatience is a real problem in today’s organizations and I’ll try here to connect the concepts of impatience and environment from Simon’s talk.

Since the recession of 2008-09, many organizations bowed to their lesser instincts (fight or flight) and have become more reactive than proactive in nature (pardon my anthropomorphizing of companies).

Monetary constraints along with a deeply lowered tolerance for risk has created an environment that is represented by cultures of “CYA”, find cost cutting at any expense, if you act it should have a profound, deep, and immediate impact. Now, while in the thick of it almost 9 years ago, this mindset was needed if you were going to come out intact on the other side of the recession. But something was lost in the intervening years. The idea that a project, initiative or employee might require investment, development, tolerance and most of all time to produce a tangible ROI, has almost vanished. Today’s leaders want results at all costs and they want them now. However what most don’t see is how at odds these two stories are with each other. On one hand, they want what they want and now, but in the same breath say that Millennials are unrealistic and want too much too quick. The hypocritical nature of the two is lost on them.

I believe, similar to what we’ve seen in politics, a race to the extremes has occurred in business since 2008. And what any good political scientist will tell you is that very little progress is made at the extremes. If we want five generations in the workforce to work together, we have to stop focusing on the little that divides us and learn to build on the vast majority of things that unites us. Companies with good leadership that have the tolerance for long term planning and execution can easily win the war for top talent. Establishing a clear vision, purpose and values and taking the longer term approach to executing on these will propel an organization deeper into the 21st Century. Those that simply react in the marketplace and look for short term gains will lose talent at a furious pace and will ultimately languish and die with their purse strings clutched tightly in their hands. "

___________________________________________________________________

Vinnie DiSalvo
Mr. DiSalvo has 15+ years in the Organizational Development space; managing, design and implementation of workplace solutions for companies with over $2.5 billion in yearly revenue.

Vinnie has a track record of achieving substantial increases in operational efficiency, generating a 300% increase in retention of high performing staff and an annual revenue increase of nearly 75% during his tenure.

He also has a career history of developing key systems and processes which impacted over 3,500 employees nationwide, consistently working to ensure the highest caliber of operational systems and training offerings.

___________________________________________________________________

Vinnie, I cannot thank you enough for your interest in my work, and I LOVE the way this article ends. The last paragraph sums it all up nicely.

Thank you. See you next week my friends...

Brad Szollose
Global Management Consultant

Cross Generational Leadership Development & Workforce Performance Strategies

Executive Coach

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's new book...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

How To Work With Millennials: David Burkus interviews Brad Szollose

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 13:30:00 +0000

I was interviewed by David Burkus' on his show Radio Free Leader.

We had a fantastic time discussing my favorite generation; Millennials—and what caused you guys to be so radically different from previous generations. As Simon Sinek says, "Let's start with WHY?" Then we move into what today's modern company needs to do NOW to prepare them for leadership.

Here it is...enjoy.

Brad Szollose is the foremost expert on cross-generational leadership development strategies and the award-winning author of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia.

Brad is a former C-level executive of a publicly traded company that he co-founded which went from entrepreneurial start-up to IPO in less than three years.

In this interview, we discuss the new generation of business leaders, and how to help them maximize their cross-generational corporate culture, management expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

[Listen in iTunes] [Listen on Stitcher]

In This episode, You’ll Learn:

The Influential Wave of Technology on Millennials

Why Autonomy Leads to Working Harder

How to Separate Presence from Productivity

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia

Why We Wait So Long To Train Our Leaders – Harvard Business Review

Valve Software Employee Handbook

Enjoy This Episode?

If you enjoyed the show, please rate it on iTunes or Stitcher and write a brief review. That would really help get the word out and raise the visibility of the show.
_________________________________________________________________

Who is David Burkus?

David Burkus is a best-selling author, an award-winning podcaster, and associate professor of management at Oral Roberts University. His latest book, Under New Management, challenges the traditional and widely accepted principles of business management and proves that they are outdated, outmoded, or simply don’t work — and reveals what does.

He’s delivered keynotes to the leaders of Fortune 500 companies and the future leaders of the United States Naval Academy. David is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and Inc.

Check Out his TEDTalk Here:
Why You Should Know How Much Your Coworkers Get Paid.
_________________________________________________________________

I hope you enjoyed the interview. David was an astounding interviewer.

See you next week...

Brad Szollose
Global Management Consultant

Cross Generational Leadership Development & Workforce Performance Strategies

Executive Coach

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's new book...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

My 2016 Year in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 05:30:00 +0000

Well here we are, another trip around the sun
as "they" say, and what do I have to show
for my efforts?

I thought 2014 was a breakout year considering all the travel I did...but this year surprised the heck out of me.

Out of Gratitude, I wish to share the many milestones that I've reached with friends, fans and clients. I have laid bare for all to see what IS possible if you keep working hard and stay on target. It HAS been a bumpy ride...

And like I always say...
"If I can accomplish these milestones, so can YOU."

So let's dig in on 2016, my year in review....thank you, thank you, thank you for the following:

1. Spoke at TEDXTarrytown.

On the Friday a Memorial Day weekend began here in the USA, I received 2 emails that just blew me away; The first was I received comfirmation that I had been 1 of 5 speakers chosen to give a TEDX Talk in Tarrytown NY, July 12th 2016. It took place at Temple Beth Abraham.

Here is the final video from that night...

The Age of Radical Disruption
Brad Szollose | TEDxTarrytown

How Millennials and Serious Gaming Will Transform the Future of Everything:

I want to thank everyone so much for your support. This is a dream come true.

Here is a link to the speakers that shared the stage on July 12th, 2016 TEDxTarrytown: http://bit.ly/TEDx2016vids

2. Tony Robbins asked me to Develop a Webinar.

The same weekend I heard about the TEDX talk, I received ANOTHER email...from Tony Robbin's company. Turns out, while having dinner with Tony Robbins, a friend of mine recommended me to lead a Podcast training for Tony's Business Mastery Graduates!!!

"Hi Brad,

We would like to feature you as a guest speaker for one of our monthly Business Mastery Webinars..."

Mind-blowing am I right? The hard work, the networking and the marketing are all starting to pay off. We had a few training sessions and I delivered the goods in my Webinar entitled "Cracking The Millennial Code: How Understanding Each Generation Will Make Your Company Thrive!!!"

July 26th, 2016
Chad Cooper was a tremendous host and we had a ton of fun...

Here is the link to watch or listen in:

Or go to this link: https://goto.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1111473

I apologize as the platform didn't support my video but DID support my PowerPoint and allowed me step through everything...you just can't see me.

Enjoy watching and as always, I enjoy your feedback.

Anyways, lessons learned to NEVER give up, and sometimes you get blessed with something amazing.

Thank you for your support. See you on the next post...

3. Became a Faculty Member at The American Management Association.

In the summer of 2015 I was asked to give my Cracking The Millennial Code workshop in upstate NY at the Leadership Forum at Silver Bay.

Several people in attendance asked me to give presentations at their individual companies.

But what really became a mind-blowing experience for me is unbeknown to me one individual in attendance created curriculum for the American Management Association.

One thing led to another and I started helping with their Next Generation leadership training. So grateful...dates are already solidified across America for 2017.

4. Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition

My dream has been to put together an awesome book that breaks through the Generational Stereotypes that are prevalent today...mainly to present Millennials in a new light; hardworking entrepreneurs who are crushing it not just in business, but in work/life balance and even spiritual unfoldment.

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition did just that. We released the Kindle version on November 13th 2016, it hit number 1 on Amazon by the end of the day in 2 categories. BUT, it was the following three weekends that astounded me...the paperback edition reached number 3 for 3 weekends in a row!!!

#1 Bestseller on Amazon for the 4th book in the Journeys to Success series isn't half bad. And it continues to outsell the other titles in the series.

From The Amazon overview:

"Journeys To Success: The Millennial Edition is the fourth volume in this extraordinary book series. If you are looking for real-life stories that break the stereotype of today's younger digital natives, this is the book for you.

Time to get rid of your Generational Stereotypes.
Each author recounts their personal experiences, and sacred moments of complete and utter failure...and the wisdom gained and the lessons learned that gave them the strength to dramatically shift their mindset.

Based on the success principles of Napoleon Hill, each author begins their story from the worst moment in their lives--the turning point--revealing the driving force behind what they do today to make this world a better place.

Award-winning business author Brad Szollose and Napoleon Hill Instructor Tom Cunningham bring together 21 of the most extraordinary Millennials ever assembled for a deep dive into what it takes to be successful.

Believe this is a generation of coddled brats that need emotional stroking to get through life? Guess again.

Get ready for an eye-opening journey. Whatever your current circumstances or life situation, the stories in Journeys to Success: Volume 4: The Millennial Edition will deeply connect and shed light on the fact that this generation is mentally tough, unwilling to play it safe and doing big things.

And we warn you in advance: this book contains strong language and intense situations that would crush a less developed soul. A must read gift for anyone who wants to understand Millennial Thinking.

Authors include: Lacey Ann Moen-Rubleski, Ryan D. Kelly, David Benzaquen, Chad De Luca, Andrew Fayad & Simon Casuto, Katrina Lockard, Sebastian Edmond, Mark Jackson II, Sara Gabriella, David Torres, Danielle Rubenfeld, Gabriel Garcia, Adam Hommey, Kristi Crum, Lee Constantine, Sania Jamil, Chris Ake, Jay Patel, Kirk Holmes and Carmelo "Scotty" Ramos.

Foreword by Brad Szollose
Introduction by Tom "too tall" Cunningham"

Hope you pick up a copy and enjoy the stories...

Audio Book is on its way;-)

5. Published 7 Books in 2016.

At the beginning of this year Tom Cunningham approached me and asked if I could design the book cover for a book he was working on. This was his third book and he wasn't happy with the caliber of design he was getting. I was supposed to design ONE book, but wound up being creative director for a bigger project.

Working with Tom and John Westley Clayton of John Westley Publishing, we've started to realize after that first Journeys to Success, we were onto something BIG.

EACH has been a #1 Bestseller on Amazon and Journeys to Success Volume 1 contains a story of mine (struggling to form a startup), Journeys to Success Volume 2 contains a story from my wife Norma. Along with the above mentioned Journeys to Success The Millennial Edition which has the stories of 21 of today's Millennials including my nephew Sebastian.

2017 titles are already in production.

I know this sounds cliched but let's have an even more amazing 2017....

Thank you for your support my friends.

Brad Szollose
Global Management Consultant

Cross Generational Leadership Development & Workforce Performance Strategies

Executive Coach

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

TEDX Speaker, Web pioneer and the author of the award-winning, bestseller Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia, Brad is a former C-level executive of a publicly traded company that he cofounded that went from entrepreneurial start-up to IPO in three years; the first Dot Com Agency to go public on NASDAQ. His company K2 Design, experienced 425% hyper-growth, due in part to a unique management style that won his company the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices in Fostering Innovation.

Today the world’s leading business publications seek out Brad’s insights on Millennials, and he has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Inc., Advertising Age, The International Business Times, and The Hindu BusinessLine to name a few, along with television, radio and podcast appearances on CBS and other media outlets.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's new book...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

Keys to Advising The Millennial Owned Start-Up

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 13:30:00 +0000

Photo Credit: Bigstock #86408645 Millennial Teenage Girls through agreement with Smith Durant

Telling a Millennial that they need to stick to a five to ten year business model will be met with complete skepticism. Here’s why:

The reason the business development cycle is three months out instead of five years is due to several influences: digital devices, email and big data have given us the power to get more work done in less time with more accuracy.

Technology has also given us the ability to work from anywhere we want regardless of location even on a modest budget. Skype for instance gives a small business access to international videoconferencing for pennies. This allows smaller startups to compete for the same low hanging fruit that well-established behemoths used to ignore.

As Olympian Vince Poscente puts it, like it or not, “
we are in the age of speed.”

And with that said, any coach, regardless of generation who is still clinging to the 20^th Century models will not survive the milieu of coaches about to join your ranks.

And besides, Millennial business owners want to move fast.

Inside EVERY Baby Boomer’s head is something I have labeled the Career Path Paradigm. At 20 a person was to start in the mail room. Know your place in the organization. Sit down. Shut up and listen. Hard work and sweat would get you noticed. No one is interested in what a 20-something has to say. At 30, you might get noticed and move up in rank. Stability starts at 30. You were supposed to get married and buy a house and start a family. By 40 you get a middle management position and 50 gets you the corner office and a title and keys to the executive washroom.

Although this model is over, Millennial Coaches will have to overcome this very real belief still sitting in the nooks and crannies of anyone over 50.

If you are a Millennial Coach selling to a Boomer, I suggest you enter with a diverse team made up of Gen X and Boomers. Even if it is just your advisory team, do it f you want to make the boomer comfortable.

___________________________________________________________________

Learn more about this topic:
Watch an exclusive webinar from Brad Szollose & Nathan Smith on Are Millennials Destroying Business As We Know It?

___________________________________________________________________

What about coaching the Millennial-owned startup?

My job is to groom this young man for the C-Suite. I have one year to get him ready.

Since I have a deep understanding of Millennials, my job will be simple. For the rest of you, here are a few tips;

1) Millennials are friends with their parents.
Use that to your advantage.

What that means is as children they were privy to conversations that previous generations never had with their parents. This included getting career advice and mentorship lessons since they were 5. In other words, Millennials weren’t raised by parents, they were raised by advisers. The hierarchy in the household was flattened in favor of collaboration.

To work with this generation, become a partner in their success. Sounds exhausting but a Millennial will need far more "hands on" than other clients. Why you may ask? Well, although they had deep relationships with their parents and teachers growing up, they may not have the same business polish that was expected of Gen X and Boomers at the same age.

Huge chunks of knowledge is missing from their experience. And you as a consultant, a coach, (or mentor), will need to explain why things need to get done in a certain way in a particular order.

2) Harness their innovation before they get cynical.

Because Millennials are not trained in traditional business methodologies they break the rules. BUT, they don’t know they are breaking the rules. This is a good thing because like any breakthrough entrepreneur, innovation is what wins the day.

But show them that creating cool products can also go hand-in-hand with traditional business structures. A Results Only Work Environment is best for creating an environment that Millennials respect, but at the same time, celebrate the importance of deadlines and systems. In a ROWE environment output is 32% higher than traditional business hierarchies.

Celebrate Innovation and counter intuitive solutions. THAT is what Millennials do best.

The new Holacracy trend is great and all, but unless you have money to burn through before that first product takes root, I suggest sticking to a ROWE model.

3) Build Fast and Sell…BUT, Prepare them for the Long Haul as well.

While you show the Digital Native that you aren’t their grandfather’s business coach, build a rapport that is based on results. Building a start-up into a viable company for acquisition is every entrepreneur’s dream. And it is a hot trend. BUT, teaching valuable business lessons that create a lasting legacy is far more important for the future of your business as well as theirs.

You see, we all work in the One Off environment. But how would you like to be rehired years later when that young entrepreneur is a leader at another company? Or creating a deep dive array of coaching services that grow as the organization grows? For myself I’ve had to add 9 month and one year programs to my consulting simply because I realized one workshop, a keynote or a 6 week engagement weren’t really enough to create a sea change. For a broad transformation that is felt throughout the organization, I needed a team, and my team needs to get inside the organization for 9 months minimum.

Long term, versus short term.
Which do you think is better?

Also, don’t wear a tie. Millennials like to be comfortable at work, and so should you. I wear a Hugo Boss suit with a fitted dress shirt and a silk handkerchief with expensive sunglasses. Even Millennials in flip-flops appreciate casual elegance.

So get in there. There’s money to be made, and companies to help build.

Brad Szollose

Global Business Adviser and Consultant
on Millennials and Workforce Performance Strategies

This Blog Post originally appeared on the Smith Durant Blog:

Thank you. If you wish to know more about Smith Durant, Nathan Smith, Michael Durant, Lee Constantine and the work we are doing together...click on their logo below:

___________________________________________________________________

Learn more about this topic:
Watch an exclusive webinar from Brad Szollose & Nathan Smith on Are Millennials Destroying Business As We Know It?

Leadership IS a Generational Issue these days. Why you may ask? Well, what motivates Millennials will NOT motivate a Boomer. Setting up an environment where all generations can thrive is what I do...

Brad Szollose
Global Management Consultant

Cross Generational Leadership Development & Workforce Performance Strategies

Executive Coach

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's new book...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

Decoding Trump By Dov Baron. Our Liquid Leadership Guest Blogger Series.

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Szollose) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 13:30:00 +0000

Before we go out to vote for President of The United States tomorrow, I've asked a good friend of mine, one of Inc. Magazine's TOP 100 Leadership Speakers, Canadian and fellow keynote speaker, to weigh in on the phenomenon that is Donald Trump.

_______________________________________________________________

“Just Grab Them by Their P***y”

It was just one in a long line of outrageous and potentially career-destroying statements from Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. It was hardly the first and even as I write this, he may have said something equally if not more shocking. As the final days to the November 8 election countdown, I can assure you that there will be at least one more to come.

Although this particular statement created chaos in the Republican establishment, including some big time names leaping off the Trump train, I doubt it made much, if any difference in his base of supporters. After all, how many times have we heard some version of “Well this is the one, this time he has destroyed his candidacy”?

He Said What?

Let me remind you of just a few of his statements:

John McCain “is not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

“It doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”

In reference to Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists…and some, I assume are good people.”

“Rosie O’Donnell, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say ‘Rosie, you’re fired.’”

“It’s freezing and snowing in New York – we need global warming.”

The list gets added to almost every day.

What’s Going On?

Let me be clear, this article is not aimed at condemning or condoning Donald J Trump, but rather to wake people up. I chose to write this because due to my training and background I’m seeing some things that just wouldn’t be obvious if you don’t know what you are looking for.

One thing I hear from many intelligent people–Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike—is curiosity and confusion as to why Trump can say such outrageous things and not have them negatively effect his campaign. People are baffled as to why no matter what Trump says, his popularity doesn’t take a hit and, in fact often goes up. This same question can be heard either approvingly or disparagingly by the media, who are equally bewildered.

The most common argument for Donald Trump is that he is not ‘politics as usual’, and that is inarguably true. However, Trump is not just a step away from politics as usual; he is in many ways the polarity, and that’s part of his magic; Trump is a polarizing character, people either love him or hate him, but very few are on the fence. Many of his statements are assessed by experts as the ravings an unintelligent mad man, while others see him as quite calculated in his rhetoric and focus. He’s The Real Teflon Don

So can Trump be “decoded”? Can the secret to his success be uncovered? Yes, if you know where and how to look. I believe there are three key reasons Trump appears to be “Teflon.”

He claims to be the voice of the disenfranchised:

This for me is one of the most brilliant manipulations to ever be perpetrated on the American people!

Think of it: Donald Trump a garishly wealthy, silver spooned one percenter who lives a lofty gold-plated penthouse high above the plebeian masses has convinced the American working and struggling middle class that he understands and represents them. He points out how the things he says are not politically correct (and often deeply offensive) because he like his audience is not a polished politician. By doing this he taps into the psyche of those who feel that they are not heard by those in power, particularly those in Washington. His voice becomes the externalized voice of a deeply frustrated, and often vile, racist, and misogynistic voice of those who feel shushed by an overly politically correct society.

The need and desire to belong

When a person feels disenfranchised in some way, they experience an unconscious desire to belong. This is the unconscious pull for the safety of the tribe.

Therefore, if a leader is able to show or manipulate the disenfranchised individual(s) into believing that they as an outsider “fit” in the leader’s tribe, there’s a good chance that the individual will ferociously defend anything said by the leader. Furthermore, if the leader uses doomsday rhetoric based on an “us and them” mentality (creating an enemy) followed by Messianic messages about “Only I can fix this” (save you); no matter how ludicrous or outrageous the leaders statements are the unconscious need to defend and protect the leader only increases.

And finally, and perhaps the most revealing:

His speech patterns

Late night comedy will often show a 30-second clip of Trump apparently rambling on somewhat incoherently about something and then make fun of what he said. However, for those of us who are highly training in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programing) it’s what comes directly after that 30-second ramble that reveals his true power.

First off, you need to understand that NLP says that when presented by chaos, the conscious mind becomes distracted and effectively shuts down. This leaves the unconscious (and far more powerful) mind wide open to receive what are known as “installed commands.” In stage magic this is called ‘slight of hand’; the magician get you to focus on one hand so that you don’t notice what he’s doing with the other.

Therefore, when Trump appears to go off on a word salad tangent about something no one, not even his most ardent supporter can follow, his audiences’ minds become totally vulnerable to whatever he says next. Consequently when his “rambling” is followed by a installed command statement, that he will very effectively repeat two or three times in a row, the statement not only lands, it sticks!

The audience doesn’t remember the ramble, but you can bet that the “command” will be retained. And what sort of “commands” is he giving? “Crooked Hillary.” “Lock her up.” “The election is rigged.” Don’t believe me? Watch the Trump speeches and you’ll be amazed how many times he uses this technique. This is known as ‘slight of mouth’.

Trump has constantly used each of these three strategies throughout his campaign. However, let’s be clear. This is a sincerely calculated process that requires constant and consistent upkeep and testing.

Of course, I cannot verify if Donald Trump has actually studied these techniques or if, over his 70 years of life, he stumbled on them and realized their power. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. He uses them and uses them more effectively than any other American politician in modern history. His followers, many of whom are not the uneducated voters that comedians likes to poke fun at, but rather people who are highly educated and intelligent rally around him even more after he says things like “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose voters” because it is true.

Nothing New

Now, note I said that he has used these techniques more effectively than any other American politician has in modern history. I said that because these techniques aren’t new. They are the methods that every dictatorial leader in history has used. All it takes is an environment like that of pre-Revolutionary Russia, China, Cambodia, Uganda and so many more places where the wealthy have all the power, and corruption is rampant for a Stalin, an Idi Amin, a Marcos, a Franco to arise, garner support and take over a country.

You may think it can’t happen in America, but it can and it is. The Cult of Trump is on the rise!

Please share, like and comment below!

With gratitude,

____________________________________________________________________

Meet Dõv Baron

One of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speaker to hire, Dov Baron is an international leadership catalyst!

Dov is the leading authority on Authentic Leadership, and Leadership Succession or, as he prefers to call it, “Full Monty Leadership.”

The world’s only Corporate Cultural Momentum Strategist, Dov works with leaders and executive teams to build the bonds that create corporate cultures that become Fiercely Loyal.

Dov is a bestselling author of several books. His latest book is Fiercely Loyal: How High Performing Companies Develop and Retain Top Talent. (In-Phase Publishing, 2015 ©)

He also writes for and has been featured in many industry magazines including CNN, CBS Small Business Pulse, SHRM, Yahoo Finance, Boston Globe, Business in Vancouver, USA today, CEO, Entrepreneur and many more.
____________________________________________________________________

Now some of you may be upset by what Dov said, but let's stay neutral as business professionals and analyze what is happening. And if you are a Trump fan, and MANY of my friends are in BOTH Hillary and Trump CAMPS, you have to admit, Trump is the most unpolished speaker I have ever seen.

Let's keep the faith and keep moving forward as we evolve into the 21st Century of politics.

Brad Szollose
Global Management Consultant

Cross Generational Leadership Development & Workforce Performance Strategies

Executive Coach

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Liquid Leadership: The Official Brad Szollose Blog - Preparing The Next Generation for Leadership

Welcome to the Liquid Leadership Archives.

Welcome.

My passion is my podcast Awakened Nation®.

_____________________________________________________________________

Becoming Enough With Panache Desai

Leadership Lessons #1: Obtaining The Consciousness Of Leadership

Part 2 of 4 in my Leadership Lessons Series:

Leadership Lessons #2: Establishing Your Own Management Style

Part 2 of 4 in my Leadership Lessons Series:

Where was Mr. G during all this chaos?

In his office with the door closed only 50 feet away from the production station. I guess he was strategizing his big walk.

What did I learn? Here are my top three lessons:

1) Integrate Your Management Style into Your Workforce Culture.

2) Never Assume Your Staff Doesn't 'Get It.'

3) Loosen Up.

Leadership Lessons #3: Work on Being Respected, Not Liked

Part 3 of 4 in my Leadership Lessons Series:

Here is what have I learned in 30 years of managing people:

1) Respect Your Team.

2) Be Firm, Fair and Consistent.

3) Reward Winners.

Most of you do not have the budget to fly people to Costa Rica, but try some sort of 'effort gets rewarded' program.

Leadership Lessons #4: Become a Resource, Not a Know-It-All

Part 4 of 4 in my Leadership Lessons Series:

And then I realized what had taken place. The doctor had assumed the role of the One Who Knows All and stopped listening to the patient.

The old way of hierarchy does not work anymore.

Handling Problem Employees in The Digital Age

94% of all lawsuits in the world take place in the United States. Suing companies is big business here.

It seemed so cut and dry - employee can't do the job so fire him. But why can't he be fired before he starts?

If I had it to do all over again, Davy Jones would have been let go at the first sign of a problem.

#1 First Offense Documentation

#2 Second Offense Documentation

#3 Final Documentation and Termination Notice

May I suggest the following publications?

The 5 Richest Payoffs for Fired CEOs by Michael Brush

What is a Brand?

It Is SO Easy To Create a Personal Brand These Days...

That's why I asked myself why no one was doing it?

It was the first use of brand recognition. The power of the symbol represented the reputation of the brand.

Branding is a huge part of your sales paradigm. Your reputation proceeds you, so why not work hard at creating a great perception?

That's the power of a top tier brand and marketing manager.

May I suggest these sites and publications?

Death to Diversity "Diversity" has the same root as the words divide and division. So why are we shocked and not fully recognizing that its implementation is polarizing?

Death to Diversity!

"Diversity as we know it is officially a good word gone bad." @KarithFoster

Karith Foster

Follow Karith on Twitter: @KarithFoster

Why Are Millennials Changing the Way We Work?

It’s All Because of ‘Star Wars.’

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 1 of 5

Step 1: Flatten Your Hierarchy

Simply put, you are not speaking the programming language for a new generation of worker. A generation Baby Boomers raised.

With all these changes, management models haven't really changed much since the turn of the 20th Century.

Imagine picking only the people you need? That would make you really efficient, right?

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 2 of 5

2: Create a 'Truth Telling' Environment

"For progress to be made, people need to be able to tell the truth; even if that truth is uncomfortable to leadership." — Brad Szollose

And just an FYI: Millennials get a bum rap in most organizations for one simple reason; they will be the first to call you on your own BS.

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 3 of 5

3: Modern Organizations Support Creativity

Everyone is complaining about Millennials these days. But managing these new wunderkinds is actually an easy task when you give them a chance to unleash their creative nature.

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 4 of 5

Step 4: Give Employees Responsibility For The Success of Your Organization

Rebirth of the Badass Bike

"Innovation can thrive only in environments where it is safe to tell the truth." - Brad Szollose

Truth is the cornerstone of great leadership, and great leadership faces the truth—head-on.

Even if it is uncomfortable.

5 Steps to Creating a 21st Century Organization: Step 5 of 5

Step 5: Create a New Set of Rules for Talent Recruitment

What do A-Players expect from other A-Players? Intensity in all they do.

So that means you need a new way of managing people's behavior and workflow.

How Do You Manage Winning Teams? Teams that INCLUDE Millennials!

Brad Szollose on Kelly Roach's Unstoppable Success Radio

Listen in on iTunes:

Brad Szollose (pronounced zolis), is a globally recognized Management Consultant and the foremost authority on Millennials and Cross-Generational Leadership Development Strategies.

Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.

Pick Up Brad's books...Liquid Leadership and the latest...

Journeys to Success: The Millennial Edition.

#1 Bestseller on Amazon in Hot New Releases!!!

And then I realized what had taken place. The doctor had assumed the role of the One Who Knows All
and stopped listening to the patient.

The 5 Richest Payoffs for Fired CEOs
by Michael Brush

That's why I asked myself why
no one was doing it?

"Diversity as we know it is officially a good
word gone bad." @KarithFoster

Brad Szollose on Kelly Roach's
Unstoppable Success Radio

Long term, versus short term.
Which do you think is better?

A New Measurement Tool
for Business Acceleration

That part of business will always
require a 'human touch.'