Leadership Tips to Start In A New Job

Today, leaders are moving into new roles more frequently than ever before.

Often new leaders want to understand where to start, particularly if part of their new leadership role if to form a new organization.
It all starts with Planning and Prioritization.The first thing to do is to create your 30, 60 and 90 days action plan.

The first 30 days: Get Exposure
During the first 30 days, you should spend most of your time understanding the organization and defining the value that you will bring to the team (both your immediate team and the organization as a whole).
You want to find the answers to these questions:
- How does the organization operate?
- How does the business make money?
- What is the business model? Products? Services?
- Who are the customers?
- Who is the competition?
- What is the regulatory environment?
In order to get a realistic picture don't just stay inside your office reading a bunch of powerpoint presentations and financial statements. You must expose yourself and meet people. Talk to the employees, peers, business partners and internal clients.

The first 60 days: Attract The Right Talent
I was recently in Los Angeles attending a Women Leaders breakfast where each participant received a copy of "Connecting My Dots". One of the new female leaders asked me where I find the time for mentoring given that I have a very demanding job. I told her that the answer was very simple- I manage a high performing team !
One of the most important roles of a leader is to attract a right talent and then create a high performing team. On my next post, I will provide 5 Tips that will guide through the process of creating a high performing team.

The first 90 days: Develop a Plan and Start Executing

Planning Your Next Career Move

People often get tired of working on the same place or doing the same job over and over again for long period of time. In some instances, maybe you have outgrown your current role and want to look for new challenges. I see this happening every day. I had happened to me as I just went through a career change - after working for over 10 years in the eCommerce business I wanted to do something different and test my leadership skills in a different area doing something new where I could mobilize all the experience I have accumulated through my entire professional career.

Although I am not a career coach - I am a mentor and often people ask for my advice about career planning.

For some people the first step in the career planning process is to understand the relevance of their career goals in terms of their multidimensional Priority Wheel. But if you are like me and have already determined to make a change then let’s talk about some fundamental things that you should do.

1) Define your career goals. What are the things you want to do next? What attributes are you looking in your next role?
Sometimes career coaches in the organization will ask to mention what specific role you want next. However, I prefer to think in terms of attributes of the role rather than the specific roles because some of the roles you will enjoy could exist in another area of the organization that you are not aware of or will become available in the future.


2) Perform a self assessment of your abilities. Do you have the skills needed to perform this next role?
Good if you are already but if you don’t have all necessary skills then you will need to set realistic expectations and timeframes to develop these abilities or you will need to revise your goals.


3) Network with a career goal in mind. Do you know people that can help you or guide you to get into this new role? Do you have a mentor?
Do not underestimate the power of networking. Do your homework, develop a professional network and find connections that can help you get into your next role.

Last week attended the HITEC Latina IT Executive panel in Disney World where I shared my formula for success which I call the “4 P” and has helped me achieve multidimensional success.

4 P= Planning, Preparation, Perseverance and Passion

Develop a formula for success that will help you to connect your dots and plan for your next career move.

Managing Success during Recession

We tend to think about success when things are going well in our lives, but when things go bad we shift to the survival mode and forget to develop a plan and pay attention to our key priorities.

Planning for success becomes even more important during times when we are facing economic hardships and personal problems. During the years of my illness I did not stop making plans. Focusing on the future gave me the hope and strength to overcome obstacles. I began to understand a simple rule: “Success means to be ready when the opportunity comes”.

Successful companies have created new business models during times of economic downturn and many people have found their passion and a new career as a result of loosing their jobs.

How were they able to accomplish this? I think because of these two reasons:

1) They see opportunities when others see problems.
2) They never stop making success a top priority.

Over the years of learning from my success and failures, I have developed my own formula for success, which I call the 4P Formula:

4P = Planning, Preparation, Perseverance, and Passion

Your plan starts with a dream. The power of a dream is endless; however, you need tools that will help you in achieving your goals. In my book Connecting My Dots I share Five Leadership Lessons and a tool called the Priority Wheel which will help you define and achieve success on your own terms by keeping your key priorities in motion.

When I think about success, I think about a wheel that is always in motion because what will make you successful today will not make you successful in the future. Here is where the Priority Wheel will help you identify and focus on your key priorities so you can connect your dots at each stage of your life.

Success is always a moving target and we need to recalibrate our priorities or the weight of each priority within the wheel. Using the Five Leadership Lessons and the Priority Wheel, you will be to stay focused on your goals and also be flexible and willing to try different approaches.

Do you have a formula for success that you use to connect your dots?

Five Leadership Lessons

We use leadership skills every day at work. Why not apply these same skills to our personal lives?”

How can we draw the correlation between leadership skills and personal effectiveness in balancing career, family and relationships?

In the book “Connecting My Dots”, I am sharing lessons that will empower you to apply your leadership skills that make you successful at work to your personal live. I will also tell you that there is not a formula you can flawlessly replicate to achieve success, because life is complex, relationships are unique, and each situation is different. Sometimes we need to make mistakes in order to learn how to assess a situation the next time it comes around.

I once thought that career success would be the main challenge I would have to face in my life. With that said, I was ready to focus my energy and strengths into achieving professional excellence. However, life showed me that raising two kids and preserving a cross-cultural marriage for twenty-five years, which entailed two immigrations and the numerous hardships caused by distinct personalities and backgrounds, could be at least as challenging as achieving career success.

Here are two of the Five Leadership Lessons for Multidimensional Success:

Lesson 1- Define Success on Your Own Terms: Achieving your dreams begins with a definition of what success and happiness mean for you.

Lesson 2- Don't Wait Too Long for What You Want

Lesson 3- Find the Right Partner

Lesson 4- Play Multiple Roles

Lesson 5- Don’t Give Up during Bad Times: How you handle difficult situations is what defines who you are. During bad times, couples have the opportunity to really show commitment to each other, to their relationship and their children. While marriage life is not a “perfect picture”, marriage is full of memorable and unforgettable moments. However, those priceless moments will come with a daily price tag.

Read this book at learn how to increase your personal effectiveness and use simple tools to balance career, family and relationships.

Dots2Connect

Welcome to my Blog: “Dots2Connect”
I am calling my Blog “Dots2Connect” because this conversation is about You and Me and We all have many dots to connect in order to plan and achieve our goals and dreams.

First let me tell you few things about me that my professional and leadership profile will not tell you. I like to travel and discover new things. I have traveled extensively and lived in three countries. I also enjoyed writing including writing poetry. In my 25 years of a professional career I have worked across many different sectors and enjoy roles where I need to overcome obstacles and can create new things.

I am passionate about many topics and I will write about them in my blog. Sometimes I will talk about emerging trends, social media, mobile, and emerging technologies but most of the time, I will share my thoughts about Mentoring.

The last two weeks, I have been very busy reviewing, editing and formatting my book: "Connecting My Dots" - A woman's leadership guide to multidimensional success. This is because I decided to do “self-publishing” instead of waiting for an agent to knock on my door.

Women and Multidimensional Success - I think it is important to talk about multidimensional success because many young women want to achieve career, family and personal success but are afraid that they will not be able to have a family if they choose an executive career when they see that a large percentage of high achieving women do not have children or a long lasting relationship. For many women success means achieving not just professional recognition but also a fulfilling family life and personal happiness.

But the question is at what cost? Success does not come without making trade-offs or personal sacrifices. However, with every obstacle you find in your road it comes an opportunity to define your plan and determine what achieving multidimensional success means for you.

From my involvement in mentoring I have learned that people like to connect lessons and advice with real life stories. My inspiration for the book came from mentoring young women who want to plan for career success, but to my surprised I found out that many men also expressed interest in reading the book.

The way I plan to host this blog is to do small posts on different topics. I will probably update the blog once a week. And for a quick update you can always find me on Twitter under: twitter.com/curiosidad

I hope that you will find my Thoughts = helpful and my Perspectives = refreshing.

I would also like to hear your personal stories on how you are “Connecting Your Dots.”