SELF EMPLOYEED

Coach

US Navy

Special Operations Medic

I help high-achieving professionals achieve peak performance in high-stress situations without falling victim to stress and burnout. From college dropout to Special Operations team, I share my lessons learned.

Hey, I'm Joel.

TLDR people

I spent 12 years on a Marine Special Operations team. I have dedicated my life to mastering the art of discipline, mental toughness, and resilience. I help clients to harness their inner warrior to conquer life's challenges and emerge stronger. 

The long story. 

I spent the first 22 years of my life lost. Dropped out of college, and worked dead-end jobs. No direction in life. Through finding discipline and mental toughness I was able to enlist in the military and build a career in Special Operations.

Mental toughness and discipline have allowed me to do things I never thought possible: 

- 50-mile runs
- 10 mile swims
- 20 Mile ruck runs

Plus much more.

Most people go through life never realizing what they are capable of. 

Come learn with me. 

You can find me on X here : https://twitter.com/TheSuccessCycle

Joel Blades

Therese Miclot LLC

I'm all about helping leaders up their game. I offer skills and coaching that accelerate results. I provide dynamic, top-notch facilitation and I can deliver it in-person or virtual. I collaborate with my clients to create custom learning experiences that shift behaviors and mindsets for maximum impact.

Leadership Development Consultant

Proteus International

Director, Facilitation Excellence

I worked with organizations to ensure their employees have the skills and knowledge they need to succeed, by supporting clients to build and then deliver Proteus' practical, skill-based learning solutions.

Practice Director, Building Skills and Knowledge

Rockwell Automation

Manager, Global Learning & Development

Manager, HR Strategy & Planning

Manager, Talent Acquisition

Brilliant at the job. Struggling with leadership.
That’s the gap that stalls growth, burns out top talent, and slows execution.

I’m an executive coach for technical leaders who want to stop firefighting and start scaling.

For over 25 years, I’ve coached 4,000+ managers and executives across technology, SaaS, pharma, banking, media, and manufacturing. Most were promoted for technical excellence and left to figure out leadership on their own. That’s when performance dips, timelines slip, and teams get stuck reacting instead of driving growth.

I close that gap.

I help technical experts become strategic leaders who can:
• Communicate with influence in high-stakes rooms
• Build authentic executive presence (without pretending)
• Delegate effectively to remove leadership bottlenecks
• Lead through constant change without burnout
• Align technical and business stakeholders for faster decisions

This isn’t theory, it’s leadership development built through executive coaching, peer group programs, and facilitation skills pressure-tested in real rooms where leadership actually happens.

💡 Follow me here and subscribe to [The Shift], my weekly LinkedIn newsletter for practical strategies on:
• Turning technical experts into strategic leaders
• Building executive presence that sticks
• Delegation, feedback, and accountability that drive results
• Navigating high-stakes moments with clarity and calm
• Scaling leadership capacity in fast-growing companies

If your top talent is technically brilliant but struggling to scale their impact, let’s talk.
If you want tools and insights that make you a better leader every week, hit 🔔 and join The Shift.

Therese Miclot

Some programs deliver content.
 
This one delivers a shift. In voice. In presence. In what women believe they’re capable to do.
   
This was the third Rising Leaders EMEA cohort and I’m struck again by what happens when women have the space, structure, and support to lead on their own terms.
 
It’s a privilege to facilitate this program alongside my Proteus International colleague Marie Holive and to partner with The WICT Network Europe and The WICT Network who’ve made it their mission to grow not just women leaders, but transformational ones. 
 
These programs matter because they don’t ask women to lead like someone else.
 
They ask them to lead like 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴.
 
To the participants (tagged in comments), you reminded me what that looks like in action.
 
Here’s to cohort three and to many more to come!

I help technical experts expand their impact, across teams, functions, and priorities. Believer that work moves at the speed of influence. Executive Coach. Facilitator. Leadership Development.

She thought she was being a great manager.
Until her team started avoiding her.

The fix?
She stopped helping.

One shift.
Zero hand-holding.
Everything changed.

🎥 Watch the clip. You’ll see exactly what I mean.

They got the title.
The team.
The trust.

Now they’re floundering and no one wants to say it out loud.

This week’s edition of The Shift is about what happens after the fast promotion when momentum fades, and confidence goes quiet.

He was the obvious choice. Promoted fast. Trusted to lead a large product team. Known for getting things done. The one leadership always counted on to

Open article: When Fast Promotions Backfire by Therese Miclot • 2 min read

It wasn’t a breach.
It wasn’t an incident.
It wasn’t a tool rollout or a long-awaited reorg.

The biggest unlock came from one cybersecurity leader who decided to show up differently.

Here’s what changed:

For 30 days, he practiced one simple habit:
→ Slow down before stepping in.

And as he did, he started noticing things he normally missed:

• Was I reacting, or actually leading?
• Did I explain the “why,” not just the “what”?
• Did I adjust to how others think, not just how I think?
• Did I move the work forward or just move it faster?

Not a checklist. A 30-day habit.

Here’s what shifted around him:

✅ Alignment happened early, instead of after the fact
✅ Fewer escalations, fewer interruptions
✅ Decisions held, even as new information came in
✅ His team stopped managing him and started managing the work

In his words:
“I finally created the clarity my team needed to stop spinning.”

This is what happens when a technical leader stops jumping into the weeds
and starts leading at the level their team actually needs.

Because when senior technical leaders stay stuck in execution:

• Teams overwork the wrong priorities
• Cross-functional efforts drag
• Rework multiplies
• Progress slows, even when the people are talented

Multiply that by 3, 5, or 12 leaders...
and the system slows down from the inside.

I’ve coached dozens of high-performing technical and security leaders through this exact shift. It’s not magic.
It’s a behavioral reset that drives real business outcomes.

If 2026 needs to move faster than 2025, make sure your top people aren’t unintentionally slowing the system.

👇 Where do you see leadership habits costing your team clarity or speed?

No alternative text description for this image

Your leadership program isn’t broken.
It’s just allergic to pressure.

In the room? Everyone agrees on what “good leadership” looks like.
But when the tension hits:
👻 Feedback vanishes
🧹 Conflict gets swept
🧍🏻♂️ Silence wins

We fixed that.
Not with more frameworks.
With one habit, repped daily, under real heat.

👇 Here’s how it worked.

YuR2ZJMnv

A leader once told me, “I’m never wrong about people.”
That was my first red flag.

Ever feel like you’re shouting into the void after flagging a risk to stakeholders?

You raise the red flag.
Everyone nods.
Then, nothing.

Crickets.
No next step. No reply.
But the problem is still sitting in your lap.

Here’s the line to crack the silence (steal this):

"Appreciate the convo, [Name]. I’ll sketch a quick summary with options impacts, something you can gut-check. Let me know if I’ve missed the mark."

Why does this work?
→ It keeps things light, but moves the ball forward
→ Shows you’re a partner, not a nag
→ Makes it simple for them to take action (or at least say yes/no)

In security, the real power move isn’t escalation.
It’s making the next step painless, so people want to say yes.

Stakeholders aren’t ignoring you on purpose.
Most are just overloaded and allergic to friction.

So next time the thread goes quiet, drop this line.
Watch the conversation pick back up.

Got your own magic line?
Share it below.

Cyber Leadership Coach | Security work moves at the speed of influence, not expertise | Helping Directors & future CISOs lead across teams, functions, and priorities.

I had a three-second cringe moment.
It stayed with me for hours.

Here’s why it matters and what it taught me about leading in high-pressure environments.

👇 Read this week's edition of The Shift

I had a moment this week. A small cringe. Barely a half-second long. But enough to follow me into the night. At 3:07am, my brain hit replay. Again. Ag

Open article: The 3am Leadership Trap by Therese Miclot • 2 min read

He was getting everything done, except what mattered most.

A technical leader I coached was known for execution.

🚩 And that was the problem. 🚩

He’d become essential for output, not for leadership.
People came to him for answers, not alignment.
He was solving problems, not shaping direction.

I’ve seen this pattern across the technical leaders I coach:
When their impact plateaus, it’s rarely a capability issue.
It’s an altitude issue.

So we focused on one habit over 30 days:
→ Set the altitude. Then lead from there.

That meant:
•Zooming out before weighing in
•Leading cross-functional conversations early, not reacting late
•Getting clear on the business priority before deciding on the team activity

He didn’t need more tools. He needed a shift in how he showed up.

And here’s what changed:
✅ Buy-in came faster
✅ Resistance dropped
✅ His own words: “Collaboration across peers got easier and faster.”

I work with fast-moving technical orgs to help high-performing leaders shift from doing to driving.

Because execution won’t scale your business. Leadership will.

If you’re watching someone on your team work twice as hard to have half the impact, they’re not underperforming. They’re just leading from the wrong altitude.

👇 Seeing this in your org? DM me and I’ll send you the habit we started with.

li_at

JSESSIONID

Talks about #leadershiptips, #leadershipskills, #executivepresence, #facilitationskills, and #presentationskills

You could feel it, even if no one dared to say it.

One leader’s communication style had quietly reshaped how the whole security org operated.

He never said “my way or the highway." He didn’t have to.

❌ He jumped in with answers before the team finished their thought.
❌ He re-wrote decisions at the last minute.
❌ Always had the sharpest take in the room.

So the team adjusted:
 •Escalated every decision
 •Softened every update
 •Spent more time managing his reactions than managing the business

From the outside? It looked like high performance.
Incidents handled.
Audits passed.

But under the surface:
 •Decision quality dropped
 •Cross-functional meetings doubled
 •Trust quietly dried up

We spent 30 days building a single habit:
→ Lead from the right altitude.

He stopped jumping in to solve.
Started asking better questions.
Stopped being the exception everyone had to work around.

What changed?
✅ Faster incident response
✅ Tighter alignment across IT and business units
✅ Meetings ended with decisions and not more questions

His words:
“I thought I was protecting the org. I was actually limiting it.”

In security, the cost of invisible influence is real:
👉Latency
👉 Burnout
👉 Risk exposure

If you’re the technical expert everyone trusts, make sure you’re not also the bottleneck everyone’s tiptoeing around.

High-performing leaders don’t stall because they’re unmotivated.
They stall because the system lets them stay siloed.

One org brought me in when it became clear:

“We’re not having the conversations we need to have.”

The issues weren’t obvious at first.
But under the surface?
 • Priorities kept misaligning
 • Decisions were getting reworked
 • And leaders were busy, not connected

So we tried something simple and different:

🟢 Each person chose one visible leadership behavior to practice
🟢 They got paired with a peer for accountability
🟢 They tracked their progress weekly, in real conversations, not hypotheticals

Here’s what happened:

✅ 70% made a clear commitment
✅ 100% with an accountability partner followed through
✅ Those who worked on “flexing” saw an 80% behavior shift

But what mattered most?

Their teams felt it.
 • Meetings moved faster
 • Direction got clearer
 • Less time spent decoding leaders who didn’t know how to adjust

This is the gap most leadership programs miss.
You don’t just need smarter leaders.
You need them to build new habits that the org can feel and trust.

👇 If your leaders are still being rewarded for speed, but not for how they lead, you’re not building capacity. You’re burning it.

🟢 I build behavior systems inside high-pressure orgs so leaders don’t stall growth.
If that’s what you need in 2026, DM me.

If you’re praising all-nighters, you’re rewarding your own broken system.

Watch this before your next ‘hero’ story goes viral inside the company.

Cyber leadership changes quietly.
 
 
One day, what got you promoted
 
is no longer what you’re evaluated on  and no one tells you the rules changed.

Accuracy Trap_Dec 15

Most high performers don’t burn out from the work.
They burn out from being the only one who can do the work.

Grateful to Teresa Conroy-Roth for inviting me into a conversation on why over-performance often makes leaders invisible and how to change that narrative.

This one’s for anyone feeling stuck between doing the work and leading the work.

Trusted Advisor - Board Member - Executive Engagement - Coach

⚡ Lightning Leadership - Therese Miclot - “Is Excellence Limiting Your Leadership?”
Therese challenges a belief many CIOs and senior executives hold: that excellence always accelerates your career. But what if being exceptional is actually making you invisible?

Far too many high performers become the “go-to super-doer”—the person who quietly carries the weight of the organization, delivers flawlessly, and solves every problem… often at the cost of being seen as a leader rather than a workhorse.
 🔹 Why excellence can become a trap—and how over-performance hides your strategic value
 🔹 The turning point when being indispensable actually limits influence, growth, and opportunity
 🔹 How overwhelmed high achievers can step out of execution mode and step into leadership identity

Therese offers one powerful step you can take today:
 👉 Stop saying yes automatically.  Create space—mental, emotional, and strategic—by pausing before you commit. Leadership requires capacity, clarity, and the ability to operate above the work, not inside it.

This episode is a must-listen for CIOs, executives, and emerging leaders navigating the tension between excellence and elevation.
#LightningLeadership #ExecutivePresence #CIOLeadership #HighPerformance #LeadershipGrowth

You look at your team and think,
“They’re good. But are they ready?”

Every growth-stage company hits this point:
The business scales faster than the leaders.

And suddenly, you’re stuck managing the people who were supposed to help you scale.

This edition of The Shift is for the founders, CEOs, and execs who’ve locked in next year’s budget but are staring down a bigger question:

Who’s actually ready to carry this?

Most leaders set goals to do more.
The smart ones set goals to be different.

If you’re mapping development goals for yourself or your team,
this question will change the conversation
and that’s exactly the work I help leaders do.

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The Battle

Joel Blades

Therese Miclot

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The Battle

Joel Blades

Therese Miclot

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Therese Miclot's LinkedIn Performance

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