My Story

Back in High School I was an eminent student, good grades, liked by teachers, making my parents content. I excelled in math, not so much in languages and literature; though I learned and read a lot, telling a story with fancy words was not my thing. When choosing the university to follow high school, after a back and forth between medicine and economics (which annoyed my father who wanted me to become a medical doctor), I chose to follow the latter. I remember even now watching a documentary, one day during my last year in high school, on the human brain and how it determines behavior; it seemed to be the most interesting documentary I ever saw. I knew then that I was attracted to this domain more than anything, but I also knew that Psychology was not a choice for me at the time. My parents wouldn’t have agreed – they wanted me to have a steady, well-paid job and psychologist was not one of them back then. Also, was not very keen to memorize psychology books for the next four years of my life. I decided to follow the Technologies section of the Economics faculty in Bucharest. Looking back now, it was a good decision as it allowed me to join one of the most flourishing industries in Romania, and especially in Bucharest, at that time, software development.

I got hired as a software developer and because the industry was expanding very quickly and the company was growing, I got promoted to a leadership position within two years, at 26 years old. This promotion was both an opportunity and a big challenge: an opportunity because I got to learn leadership through practice from a very young age and a challenge because the first year of leading a team is not easy for anyone and it’s especially tough if you are young and inexperienced. After the first years have passed, I was glad the promotion happened so early. I was not a lousy programmer, not by far, but rather a good one, a hard worker and a very responsible person, which is why I got promoted in the first place. But I knew then and I know it now that I could not have been the best at this, software development was not my passion. Working with people on the other hand was and this is how my 10 years journey in practicing leadership started. And what a journey it was!

I did not realize then, but I do now that I was fortunate to work in the company where I did at that time. It was an environment that fostered employee relationships and their development. I learned a lot during my time there, from colleagues, from trainings, by practicing and I made a lot of long-lasting friendships at that company. It was exactly what I needed at that time in my life. I am grateful to each person I interacted with and every experience I lived there, they all contributed to making me the person I am today. With time I realized that I, as a manager, influenced my team more than I initially thought: I was the one setting the rules in the team (spoken or implicit), what was the praised and rewarded behavior, what was acceptable and what was not. And more than that I was the one that could influence their growth as professionals and as human beings. I learned that people flourish, learn and work better in a safe and nurturing environment, where they feel cared for and have good relationships with colleagues. And I realized that the influence I was having on my team was more linked to who I was rather than what I was doing (same as with children, a lesson I learned much later in life). I was passionate to become the best leader I could be and I remember asking myself this question that I continue to ask to leaders today: ‘How should I, as a leader, be and what should I do differently so that my team works better today than it did yesterday and they will work tomorrow better than they do today?’ To me, the answer to this question, that every leader must answer for themselves, is the key to high, long-lasting performance that leads to accomplishments both on company’s objectives as well as each employee’s goals. The purpose is to help team members reach their potential, as they are in a culture where they can thrive, learn, work, connect with peers without the risk of burnout.

During this time, I attended several soft skills trainings aimed at making us better leaders. I found them so interesting that I said to myself this is what I want to do one day. It felt like rediscovering my passion about human behavior that I felt when watching the documentary in high school. At this time, I also attended an introductory training on coaching. I was mesmerized by how powerful yet simple it was, and I said to myself: I must dig deeper into this.

After less than 6 years since I was promoted to a leadership position, another opportunity arose: several projects, including mine, were being grouped under the same umbrella and I was promoted as manager of managers. Other challenges appeared: dealing with increased complexity, distributed teams, setting up the team of managers and influencing them so that they can influence their teams as well. New challenges meant new opportunities for me to learn which made me happy and fulfilled: I was building things.

I remembered recently that I stumbled upon a question that bothered me a little since I didn’t have an answer for: What was your biggest failure? I did not fail in anything in my life, I was a high achiever, and I did everything in my power to do things right and succeed. There were some mistakes I made, of course, but I could not call them failures. Even though it was a good thing I did not fail, I still felt there was an important and deep lesson for me there, a lesson I was not able to learn until many years later.

During this time, I also went to my first solid coaching training, it lasted six months from November 2014 to May 2015. I fell helplessly in love with coaching by the end of the program, the love continued to this day and it will probably continue till the end. I also remember feeling like I have found my pack, the coaches, people with whom I shared the same passion for human beings, our thoughts, emotions and behavior, what drives us and what makes us withdraw, what motivates and what heals us. Oh, I was so happy with this training! I continued to practice coaching and in November 2016 I become Associated Certified Coach by the International Coaching Federation, the biggest coaching organization in the world and the one with the largest presence in Romania as well. I also created and delivered with a colleague of mine a few soft skills trainings in the company and they were a success.

As happy and fulfilled as I was, after a while, things started to become stale at work, the teams were working fine by themselves, they were independent. There was not much for me to do, no more challenges and I was also losing interest in the technical stuff, nothing interesting to learn at work: I was getting bored. After several attempts to change my job, I finally succeeded, and changes came tumbling down on me after that. With my new job, I spent 3 months in Paris: new people, new learnings. A year after that, I left the company and entered maternity leave. A whole new chapter in my life was about to begin.

Maternity is hard, especially in the first years, no surprise there, I guess. What felt particularly hard for me was the fact that there was no intellectual stimulation during all this time. It is a lot of human connection, babies are very good at that, but all the tasks were mundane. And the whole experience can be quite lonely if you do not have another adult to talk to and who can relate to your experience.  With all the difficulties, parenting comes with a lot of fulfilment and joy. As I like to say, my children have given me a purpose in life, one I did not know I missed before having them.

Three and a half years and two baby girls later, it was time for me to decide whether I return to the corporate world as an employee or I follow my passion and try my luck as a self-employed coach and trainer. After giving it a lot of thought and consulting with my family, I chose the latter. It felt like the time was right, like it was now or never, and I knew that I would regret it if I didn’t at least give it a try.

And here I am, on the road again, learning, doing, being. I am not going to lie: self-employment was a bumpy ride so far. On the positive side, I am happier and more fulfilled with my career. I get to make my own schedule and most importantly I get to follow my passion. It feels like I am doing what I was born to do: accompany people in their journey through life.

On the negative side, it is very challenging. I would say this part of my life has been more about unlearning than about learning, it made me reconsider many of my beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Receiving coaching as a client has never been more beneficial for me. There were a few things I particularly struggled with and with some I still do.

The first thing I struggled with was starting over again; this was so much harder to grasp now in my early forties than it was in my twenties. As a leader in the corporate world, I had a status that satisfied my ego. I had knowledge and experience in the field and taking over a new leadership role meant no challenge for me. I was ninety percent confident I could succeed no matter what was thrown at me.  In my new job, coaching and training, even though I had some experience, I was still a newbie, especially with finding new clients. The people I interacted with in this new field were so much more knowledgeable and experienced than me. It was a tough pill for me to swallow. But, bit by bit, things started to improve and I started to feel more confident in my coaching and training craftmanship and in my abilities to deliver good quality to my clients. Still on the path I would say, but definitely better.

The second thing I struggled with was the fact that, as a freelancer, I had a lot less control over the outcome of my actions than I did as an employee. The corporation works a lot like what I was used to in my life until then: I got some objectives set by someone else (manager as an employee, teacher or parent as a child), I learned and worked hard to reach them and after that I got the validation and benefits I was hoping for. Sometimes I did not get all the benefits I wanted, but at least I had somebody else to blame for this 😊. As a freelancer this is completely different, I need to learn to set the goals for myself, work for myself and hope to get the benefits. Even though it seemed easy from the outside, deciding what to do and where to invest my time and energy proved to be particularly difficult. It is a lot like shooting in the dark, especially at the beginning, seeing what works and what’s not, wasting a lot of resources and taking responsibility for my mistakes.

Which brings me to the third challenge I faced and still facing. As I mentioned above, as a student and later as an employee, I have never failed at anything. I have never had to deal with real failure when I also needed to face the consequences, at least not until now. I always managed to fix my mistakes and I think I was careful not to risk too much so that I would not face failure. Failure was not an option for me as a child, it was like the end of the world if I failed at something. I will not go into details here, but until my freelancer journey, I did not learn how to deal with failure. As freelancer, I had successes and failure and I know I will continue to do so in the future, it’s what life’s all about. And beating myself down for every failure is not productive at all. I know how important resilience is in my new professional career and that recovering fast after a failure is the key to success. Yet, it still proves difficult for me sometimes to just let it go, stop judging myself and move forward.

And this brings us to here and now.