The Domolosophy of Leadership with Dom Delfino – Ep 121

John Mark Troyer – The Geek Whisperers

Dom Delfino is not shy about sharing his opinions. Now the VP of Worldwide Sales and Systems Engineering for VMware, Dom joined us live at VMworld 2016 to talk about leadership. We touched on assertiveness, building trust, picking your battles, and delegation. We had a good time.

Previously on the Geek Whisperers: Be Great Right Now – Episode 85

• Inflection points in your career – evaluate bigger moves
• Put yourself in an uncomfortable position – you won’t know if you can do it until you try
• Take on new challenges
• Sometimes when you get really good at something, you can get bored
• Don’t be comfortable – be comfortable with being uncomfortable – that way you’re challenging yourself.
• Being Passive Aggressive, Aggressive, and Assertive
• Being Assertive is about asking leading questions
• Especially in group environments, this is a way to avoid throwing people under the bus
• Building trust and loyalty; distrust makes people less loyal
• Open and honest dialog make hard things easier
• Managing with uncertainty
• Fixing things under your control vs things outside your control
• Pick and choose your battles; prioritize; communicate that down
• Acknowledge the problems publicly
• The Three D’s: Deal with; Delegate; and Disappear
• The grass is always greener on the other side — because somebody took a crap on it
• Not every problem is fixable
• You will never be smarter than the collective intellect of your team
• You lead the team, you don’t do all the work
• If you ask (not tell), people will respond
• Delegation tells you about people
• Skills diversity is important
• Don’t hire people like yourself
• Being able to say No
• Some things take zero talent but tell you a lot about the person: being on time, being motivated, being a self-starter
• Technology can be taught
• You can’t have ego when you get into executive roles
• Why should I come work for you?
• Never make an emotional career decision; always have a long-term plan

Twitter @domdelfino and LinkedIn