EP036 - What is fractional leadership with Karina Mikhli of Fractionals United
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What is fractional leadership with Karina Mikhli of Fractionals United
About the episode
This episode focuses on fractional leadership. What is a fractional leader? How does it differ from a consultant or a part-time leader? Can you make an impact if you are fractional? Will this be the future of work for leaders? To discuss, I have Karina Mikhli, who founded a growing community of fractional leaders, the Fractionals United. She is also a fractional COO for growing companies.
About the guest
Karina is a fractional COO and workflow consultant who recently became the founder of Fractionals United, a fast-growing community for current and wannabe fractionals.
She had been a fractional COO before it was called that and had gone full-time with a previous fractional client. They parted ways at the beginning of this year, and she returned to a very different fractional climate.
On the one hand, it's more popular and well-known, and there are more like her. On the other hand, it's harder to get leads and, therefore, feels lonelier.
Since she had joined so many great online communities in the past 2 years, she started looking for one for fractionals and didn't find one that was community first. Like many founders before her, she built the thing she couldn't find, and here we are 10 weeks later with nearly 700 members. The community has almost 2,000 members at the time of our recording (May 2023).
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
Quotes from the show
Nobody goes into business to run a business. You have an idea, a passion, a purpose, and then when there's any modicum of success. You get overwhelmed with the day-to-day. You don't want to deal with the people, the systems, the operations. That's when a fractional COO can help.
Consultants are project-based, even if it's a long-term project. You don't represent the company, sit on the org chart, or have people reporting to you. You are external and meant to be external, which is the opposite of a fractional. A fractional is a part-time leader.
A dirty little secret no one wants to discuss is that very few full-timers work full-time. If you're good at your job, you are not putting in 40 hours. I almost think fractionals can be more efficient and effective because they don't have to deal with much politics and bureaucracy.