Name: Fernanda Jordão Magalhães

Title: CEO and Owner Partner

Organisation: Fernanda Jordão

I worked for 30 years in the IT Area, in system and project development, and at least 25 years as a leader. I worked mainly for the financial market and big projects. Since 2015 I have worked with human beings development as well and I have used everything that I have learned during my daily day. Nowadays I'm making a change in my career to work more with human beings development, mainly with leaders from the IT area. But also I'm working with everyone who wants to know better themselves. I have studied a lot in the last 12 years. So I became a mentor, coach, holistic therapist, and facilitator. And of course, I'm always a system analyst.

The main approaches that have been used are TU, Integral Theory, Thinking Environment, Antroposofia, Rebirthing, Soul Therapy, Reiki, and Phytonergetics.

website - fernandajordao.com.br instagram - @fernandajordaomagalhaes LikedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernandajordao/ whatsapp - +55 11 996119666

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Fernanda's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

At the beginning of my leadership, the most challenging thing was learning to delegate, to trust that employees would handle the activities and I was there to support, and teach, but no longer to perform the tasks.

During my career I found out that the most challenging thing was getting to know people, knowing how to get along well with everyone, being present as much as possible, and helping people develop both technically and in their behavior.

The most important point became hiring, looking more and more at what the person was like, as the technical side can always be improved, but behavior is more difficult to change. In a few words, the most important thing is people and a good leader is the person who has the greatest number of people who know many times more than the leader himself.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

Nowadays I know that I have always been a leader since I was a child. At school, I always lead the group. But during my career, It was a manager who saw me and said to me that I was a leader and she offered me my first job as a leader.

And It was very challenging. I just was 25 years old and I needed to deal with a lot of people, around 150 people and I was the youngest.

The first thing that my direct leader said was I hadn't to do any operational tasks, I just needed to coordinate everyone and everything. It was very challenging.

And the company I worked for went into bankruptcy and then it became even more challenging. I was responsible for migrating the direct sales system and managing suppliers who were not paid and also employees who were no longer paid, including myself.

It was my greater challenging period as a leader and It was the first time official. I learned a lot from this situation.

I brought the lessons learned from that period into my entire life.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

The last 7 years were very challenging again. Unfortunately, I slept so and I worked a lot because the project was very big and important for the company and my country. My responsibility was very high. The consequence of it was burnout and I needed to spend 2 months out.

After that when I came back I started to care more about my daily routine, I started to do exercises in the morning, and only after the exercises I started my job and I tried to sleep and wake up at the same hour every day. Second I get to take care of my meals and rest. I learned more about the importance of balance rest and activities. And finally, I needed to change some things to recover better.

My suggestion is to be careful about yourself you are more important than anything. You need to care about your body and balance everything in your life and as a leader, your responsibility is bigger, your team needs your help, support, and presence all the time. And start listening generatively more and more to EVERYONE.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

As I mentioned before I believe the biggest lesson learned was to understand that everything is about relationships and you need to know how to build an amazing relationship every day.

Your team needs to feel they are supported by you. They need to be sure about it every day to work well.

As a leader, you need to spend most part of your time listening to your team, your peers, your clients, and suppliers. In short terms, you need to be present for everyone who you work all the time.

My experience showed me these things! That's the main lessons learned that I could share with you.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Presença - It's a book about TU (Theory U) this book was written by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworksi, and Betty Sue Flowers.

This book brought me the TU essence and there are a lot of dialogs about attention, presence, listening, and how important these things are for a team for everyone to participate and get to be part of something big.

This book showed me that what I always believed in my life would be real and there is a theory about it, that was studied at MIT.

And at that period I could use TU in my days, with my team and supplier. It was amazing and very important for my career.

It was a turning point in my career as a leader.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

First of all, knowing yourself, second, improving your listening skills, third bringing excellent people to work with you, being a person who creates an excellent environment to work in. Finally, be yourself always, but don't be in an egocentric way. Kindness turns more kindness! Walk to talk!

And if you need some help you can call me! I'd be very pleased to help you talk to you, and share more about my experience.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

When the entire team, key partners and I were all together on the weekend of the implementation of a huge financial market project here in Brazil. This was the biggest project I've worked on in my life! It impacted the entire country, all companies, and people who work with bank slips (a form of payment widely used in Brazil for purchases in any sales channel).

During the weekend, there were a lot of emotions, including jumping for joy, dancing, tension, and worries, and I as the leader of the project, responsible for it, stayed up all weekend and on Monday it went live! Yes, we had some problems, but it was a victory, and I know it was successful because I am a leader who cares about people and at all times works with the best technicians and everyone can express their opinions and build something better together.

I'm proud to have led this project in my country! And here's another summary, always take care of the people who work with you, whether in teams, peers, suppliers, or customers, EVERYONE is important to the success of service implementation and if you work together, truly listening to each other, it's possible to build the most difficult system on the planet! Be humble and know how to listen to.