Leadership style

Is your leadership style fitting with the digital era?

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

In the attached article we can find a very interesting reflection on how the leadership style has changed over the years. Command and control, we know, does not work anymore an open approach is now needed.

"Advancement in digital technologies has disrupted everything, including leadership styles, according to Barry Libert, Jerry Wind and Megan Beck Fenley. Employees want more ownership rather than to follow instruction; customers want to participate in the marketing and development process; and leaders are finding that open and agile organizations are able to maneuver more effectively than organizations where “all insight and direction comes from the top. In short, the autocratic Commander, whether brilliant or misguided, just won’t cut it anymore,” they write in this opinion piece."by "World economic forum"

Read more here

Are you curious to know what we are doing at:

Marco Polo Consulting?

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

We are co-creating  a better working

environment & more engaging/ 

adaptive organizations

How to create trust in a team

Vulnerability for  team effectiveness

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

 

 

The only way to create trust in a team is creating the right environment where people can feel free to put down the mask and be vulnerable.

 

 

 

Usually when at Marco Polo Consulting, we consult on the team effectiveness we work on the 5 dysfunctions of a team.

 

The first one is exactly the lack of trust.

 

On this aspect we do half day workshop:

 

1) people are requested to bring their personality profile at the workshop

 

2) after some icebreaker and explanation on why trust and vulnerability are important for the team, they share some "personal information" that make them known better by the other team members

 

3) each of them present to the others his own profile 

 

4)  they do an exercise helping them to receive feedback from the others and know their blind spot (we call it "cornice" - "frames")

 

5) in the afternoon we do individual coaching or peer coaching

Usually it works very well and people really open up.

 

After that each month we work on the other 5 dysfunctions and cross-cultural skills (if needed) with workshop and coaching + action learning de-briefing and people work together to co-create labs and prototypes on aspects important for the team's health.

 

We meet them regularly and do coaching circles to help them overcome roadblocks 

Multicultural skills

Managing a multicultural team- tips

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

How to manage multicultural team? interesting tips in the link below

Read more here

Personal development: paying attention

Success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always to the capacity of delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

Julia Cameron

New forms of organization

New form of organizations are emerging.
At Marco Polo Consulting we are exploring it

Platforms of purpose.

Read more here:

https://trohan.com/2014/09/15/platforms-of-purpose/

Team working

It is about "co-creation"

Mindfulness for co-inspiring and personal development

(Dis- Engagement)

A new way of working is emerging: more innovative and collaborative

Getting inspiration from Renaissance

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

 

 

Co-working spaces are rising, the concept of craftmanship is at the base of a new form of people engagement, art is a channel to access wholeness and co-creative space and inspiration: it will be interesting to see if with our cultural pillars we (Italians) will be able to take advantage of our heritage. It seems fitting well with the emerging trends of a new way of working.

Inspirational question from the article you can read on the below link:

"What can those who want to create more innovative and collaborative workplaces today — whether that’s a better office in a traditional organization, a coworking space, a startup incubator, or a fab lab — learn from the workshops of the Renaissance?"

Read more here

Leadership styles

Emergent Leadership

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Very interesting article on a new emerging style of leadership.
The external environment is pushing to adapt to new form of leadership which can bring fast adaptation to continuously changing conditions and co-creative engagement.

Emergent

• Catchphrase: Be here now
• Source: Care
• Strategy: Co-create safety for change through dialogue and improvisation
• Pioneers: David Bohm, Keith Johnstone

Read more here/

Organization development: new emerging organization models (B-Corp)

B-Corp in Asia

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

At Marco Polo Consulting we are trilled by new forms of organizations.
We believes that the way we are organized today in corporations does not answer to the needs of people and business. 

Business needs:

•  organizations able to adapt to continuous change and this can be achieved only with more agile organizations and approaches

People want:

• a different type of engagement and we believe this can happen in organizations that are based more on self-managed team and co-creation principles
• More attention to sustainable business and social responsibility. For this B-Corp can be the answer

A B Corp is essentially a sustainable business or social enterprise that voluntarily meets higher standards of transparency, accountability and performance. It has earnings in mind – unlike a non-profit – but considers stakeholders other than just investors and shareholders. So its aim is to make money, but in a long-term sustainable way.

Will be the future better than today? it seems that also in Asia there is a fertile ground for B-Corps. 

Read more here

Leadership skills: networking

Some tips on how becoming a "pro" at networking 
By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

We all know networking is not necessarily easy: entering a room full of people we do not know, understand how to approach people that are already talking and  trying to say something without being too embarrassed....
The attached article gives some interesting tips on how to handle all this. If curious: 

Read more here

China: building trust in a relationship based culture

How to make business in China?

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

One of the cultural traits we always discuss while delivering our training workshops on China Culture is the need of building trust before any attempt of doing business in this country. This happen because China is a relationship based culture and because the level of trust among people tends to be quite low. We found interesting the attached article explaining how a "cold" approach as an email introduction does not work, if interested on the topic: 

Read more

Future trends

How will the workplace change?

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting



The way we are used to work today will change. These the trends based on 10 entrepreneurs interviews:

1. There will be more flexibility for employees

2. There will be more consultants than employee

3. The office will be more like a home

4. Workplaces will become less formal, and more fun

5. There will be a shift towards on-demand services

6. More businesses will outsource their work

7. There will be more fluid and transparent ways to engage stakeholders

8. UX thinking will be applied internally

9. There will be more opportunities for remote work

10. There will be more ways to interface

Read more on: Inc.

Read more

Are you following your purpose?

Purpose

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Leadership skills: Empathy (Put your feet in my shoes)

What is Empathy?

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting



The concept and the behavior of empathy are not the easiest ones, but more and more often we hear that the ability of being empathic is a critical one in our complex world, especially if we are leaders or change maker or simple human being looking for improvement. I collected from different sources some explanation that seems to me very effective:

• A very simple and effective video where Brene' Brown explain the difference between simpathy and empathy: Watch the video
• The website of the Empathy museum created in London, a powerful and inspiring initiative: Empathy museum
• The video of Otto Sharmer (founder of U-Theory and professor at MIT University - Boston) explaining how listening with empathy can affect the effectiveness of our conversation with other people: Watch the video

Story telling for interview

The art of story telling during interviews

By Giorgia Madonno - Marco Polo Consulting

Many people ask me how to improve their way of approaching a recruitment interview. 

The most important aspect is being able to tell your experience using story telling. If you are able to give a meaning to your path and to present it from a learning point of view  it would be much more interesting for your interviewer: read more opening the below link: 

http://narrative.com.sg/storytelling/blog/storytelling-for-interviews-2/

People management - Does your leader make you feel safe?

How to build trust

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

What makes a great leader? Management theorist Simon Sinek in this TED video suggests, it’s someone who makes their employees feel secure, who draws staffers into a circle of trust. But creating trust and safety — especially in an uneven economy — means taking on big responsibility. Watch the video

Recruitment - What is a bad hire?

[A bad hire is] someone who is a chronic complainer, who is not happy, who blames others, who doesn’t take responsibility, who’s not honest, who doesn’t trust other people. A bad hire would be someone who needs specific direction and waits to be told what to do. A poor hire would be someone who wasn’t flexible and who says, “It’s not my job.”

"Reinventing organization"
F. Laloux