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/

Coaching - How to do (Basic)

Coaching sessions - examples

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Many managers asked me learning material about coaching. 
Here we are. 
Some example of coaching sessions:

• Video coaching 1
• Video coaching 2
• Video coaching 3

Self-empowerment

Going out of your comfort-zone

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

In order to learn new things it is important to go out of our comfort zone.

Not easy right?

Let's see a nice video about it.

Open here the video

Self-empowerment

Transition: after retirement

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

For the people who retire it is always difficult to cope with the new identity.

That is why I like the below perspective by Bridges William in his book Transitions

"The transitions in life’s second half offer a special kind of opportunity to break with the social conditioning that has carried us successfully this far and to do something really new and different. It is a season more in tune than the earlier ones with the deeper promptings of the spirit"

Expat experience

The dark side of repatriation

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Often re-patriation is harder than expatriation and we pay less attention to prepare it. 

This is very dengerous. 

Read more on this article.

From literature

Living abroad

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Changed

From the outskirts of the town,
Where of old the mile-stone stood,
Now a stranger, looking down,
I behold the shadowy crown
Of the dark and haunted wood.
It is changed, or am I changed?
Ah! The oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
By the years that intervene.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What a beautiful poem describing the feeling of someone visiting back his hometown while living abroad.

Because  we are all in transition and changing all the time:

Who are you?” said the Caterpillar. . . . 

“I— I hardly know, Sir, just at present ,” 

Alice replied rather shyly, 

“at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, 

but I think I must have changed several times since then.”—

LEWIS CARROLL Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Steve Jobs @ Standford

Stay hungry, stay foolish

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

• If you are at the beginning of your career, watch this video
• If your not happy with your life and you are looking for your path, watch this video
• If you are facing a difficult professional time, watch this video
• If you are just curious, watch this video

Inspirational as Steve Jobs can be. 

See the video by clicking here: VIDEO

CV tricks

What you can put on your CV when your experience is still short or you are in career transition

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

When just graduated you may find challenging writing a meaningful CV, the same when you plan to change career path and you have not matured important experiences in the new field yet. How to do? In these cases the extracurricula experiences are the key and the way you explain and link them to your future career journey. read more on "thedailymuse"

Exapts or local managers in emerging countries? see the third option

Beyond expats: Better managers for emerging markets

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

The CEO of Manpower, in an interview published by Mckinsey Quaterly, proposes "revers expatriation" approach - rotate local managers through some of the company’s more mature operations instead of sending expat to emerging markets.

For sure the localization of leaders is a trend and the proposed approach can help to develop leadership skills and build bridges across the company locations.

However, based on my consultancy experience on this topic, this has to be done wisely and with a medium-term perspective:

1) recognizing the gaps that local leaders still have (for some key and complex positions balancing with foreigners' expertise and managerial approach is still needed)
2) having very well structured programs for "reverse expatriation", involving both the host and the sending organization in preparing it
3) ensure a strong "buy in" of the host organization. Too often local managers sent to mature market operations are "abandoned" and no-one take charge of their learning path
4) consider to assign a organizational position to the "revers exapt" while abroad in order to challange him/her with responsibilities that can faster the learning pace
5) providing cross cultural coaching and support before, during and after the expereince, in order to capitalize it

And for foreign expats, which is the professional perspective? The number of opportunities for foreigners in emerging markets is decreasing and we assist more and more to a localization of contracts for foreigners (Local contract + benefits).

In the medium term the point is to see if signals for a tird approach, that usually follow the localization trend, will emerge: globalization for diversity improvement.
The sequence is often the following:
1) Expatriation from Corporate for internalization of the company
2) Localization for the adaptation to the market
3) Globalization for diversity improvement and global competition

When companies succed to localize the management they start to feel a need of diversification of leaders in order to better compete in a globalized market and they may start to rotate people across markets to build diverse management teams. So in the future it may happen to have a bright Chinese leader sent to Europe, a Brasilian talent to China, an European to US and so on.
Let's wait to see.

Read more on mckinsey quaterly

During an interview, how you explain your experience is key for success: tell it as a STORY

What's your story?











By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

How well do you introduce yourself and your experience to recruiters? Do you just explain listing facts or you  present your professional journey as a compelling story? 
Continue to read the related HBR article

Understanding better your self means better career choices and development

A useful (Free of charges) personality test

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

You can find here below a link that you can use to make a test and understand better your personality. It gives you useful insights to better plan your career or develop your soft-skills. Continue on Findingpotential.com

Self-management

The "workaholic" syndrome is bad for you and also for the company

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

 

As many executives and entrepreneurs I have the tendency to be "workaholic" expecially because (luckily)  I am passionated about my work. Long working hours are the norm for me: passion, research for excellence, pressure from market, clients, project deadlines, iperconnection are only some of the reasons. During my career I learned that this is very dangerous because we do not have unlimited energy and we need to re-charge our batteries in order to have a long-term sustainable job performance. How about you?
On this topic I recommend an interesting article by HBR Continue on HBR

Self-learning

Career abroad

The Smart Career Move You Haven't Considered: Working Abroad

By Giorgia Madonno - Marco Polo Consulting

Like the writer of this article in Forbes  my experience abroad has been one of the most interesting choices  in my life. Working and living in 3 continents (America, Europe, Asia) I could cultivate new connections, more open mindset, the ability to see things from different perspectives, a stronger CV and in my case also an entrepreneurial experience that I would never expect to have befor going abroad. Let's see what's more in the below Forbes article

 
Read this article on Forbes by The Muse

Leadership & Career management books - recommended by us (2)

Working identity: unconventional strategies for reinventing your career by Hermina Ibarra



 


How Successful Career Changers Turn Fantasy into Reality Whether as a daydream or a spoken desire, nearly all of us have entertained the notion of reinventing ourselves. Feeling unfulfilled, burned out, or just plain unhappy with what we're doing, we long to make that leap into the unknown. But we also hold on, white-knuckled, to the years of time and effort we've invested in our current profession.

In this powerful book, Herminia Ibarra presents a new model for career reinvention that flies in the face of everything we've learned from "career experts." While common wisdom holds that we must first know what we want to do before we can act, Ibarra argues that this advice is backward. Knowing, she says, is the result of doing and experimenting. Career transition is not a straight path toward some predetermined identity, but a crooked journey along which we try on a host of "possible selves" we might become.

Based on her in-depth research on professionals and managers in transition, Ibarra outlines an active process of career reinvention that leverages three ways of "working identity": experimenting with new professional activities, interacting in new networks of people, and making sense of what is happening to us in light of emerging possibilities. Through engrossing stories-from a literature professor turned stockbroker to an investment banker turned novelist-Ibarra reveals a set of guidelines that all successful reinventions share.

She explores specific ways that hopeful career changers of any background can: " Explore possible selves " Craft and execute "identity experiments" " Create "small wins" that keep momentum going " Survive the rocky period between career identities " Connect with role models and mentors who can ease the transition " Make time for reflection-without missing out on windows of opportunity " Decide when to abandon the old path in order to follow the new " Arrange new events into a coherent story of who we are becoming.

A call to the dreamer in each of us, Working Identity explores the process for crafting a more fulfilling future. Where we end up may surprise us. Herminia Ibarra is Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

Become a good people manager: lesson 3

When you move from an individual contributor role to people manager, what is different?

 

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

 

When an individual contributor is promoted to people manager she/he cannot expect to perform well using the same skills than before. This is a common mistake. A new people manager needs to shift her/his values too, because taking care of others become critical and the time spent for it is significant. If this is not perceived as valuable, it is a big problem.

 

Become a good people manager: Lesson 2

Help your people to become great managers

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

In this second lesson dedicated to people management skills, I propose you an article that I recently read, intitled: " Help your people to become great managers" by Peter Economy.

The article is useful for senior managers who want to develop their staff to acquire people management skills and for new people managers who want proactively ask for support to their boss for their skills development. Continue on inc

Become a good people manager: Lesson 1

How to know if being a manager is for you?

By Giorgia Madonno | Marco Polo Consulting

Being a manager is not for everybody. Many high performing and competent specialists, who have been promoted to managerial roles, did not succeede in this new role. Moving from individual contributor to people manager is not easy. How to know if it is for us? We can ask feedback to our boss, to our staff members or we can test our attitude. Try the test posted by Netplace: it is interesting. Continue on netplaces

INSEAD Professor Herminia Ibarra on facing career crossroads

Leadership & Career management books - recommended by us (1)

The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership by Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, James Noel



An updated and revised version of the bestselling The Leadership Pipeline - the critical resource for how companies can grow leaders from the inside. In business, leadership at every level is a requisite for company survival. Yet the leadership pipeline -the internal strategy to grow leaders - in many companies is dry or nonexistent. Drawing on their experiences at many Fortune 500 companies, the authors show how organizations can develop leadership at every level by identifying future leaders, assessing their corporate confidence, planning their development, and measuring their results. New to this edition is 65 pages of new material to update the model, share new stories and add new advice based on the ten more years of experience. The authors have also added a "Frequently Asked Questions" section to the end of each chapter.

The book describes very clearly which are the different requirements from each  Leadership career step in terms of skills, values, Time focus and suggest learning actions aimed to develop people for the next transition

Leadership career steps:

1) Individual Constributors
2) Manager of others
2) Manager of managers
3) Functional Manager
4) Business Manager
5) Group Manager
6) Enterprise manager