Name: Geovane Rocha

Title: CTO

Organisation: Nestig

16y of experience in tech market, passing by a lot of projects and different contexts

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

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

Cheers,

Jonno White

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

Work well with expectations management, that’s always a challenge!

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

It came naturally, I started as a software engineer in the beginning, and 9 years ago I just started to be like a focal point in some roles, and then with that, the job scope grows with the role. The key was that I always helps the team as I could.

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

I wake up around 6:30AM, so I leave my son at school around 7:30PM, I start working at 8:30AM~9:00PM usually. My top priority is my team, I do a check with them as a daily ceremonie, to make sure that they don’t have any bottleneck, if they have I support them.

The other part is check stakeholder to keep the expectation management in a good level, their feeling about the project and how things are going…

After that I set my priorities in a way that I can add value to the business with less effort and faster.

And in the end of day, I try to do some exercises when possible

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

Take ownership.

It will reflect and how you receive constructive feedbacks, will make you reflect about yourself and always improve as person and as a leader

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?

Extreme Ownership, by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.

For me, it’s one of the bests leadership books ever made, with focus on raw and effective leadership, like a raw material that never will change, and you can use with flexibility and adapt with your leadership style and make it works even more.

I always keep it in mind, but this book just reforce my zero ego style, being together with the team, listening to them, empowering them and trusting them, and the most important, when things go wrong, the responsibility is mine and we face it together, as a team.

It makes all the difference.

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

Be humble, be always opened to learn and understand the other, independent of who… and if you leave your ego lead you, you will fail sooner or later

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

Strategy is important, but for me, culture is 100x important than strategy.

At least talking about Technology area, where the deliverable is basically software that help an internal area to work better, or help people lives if you area a product startup.

I am blessed and have a lot of meaninful moments, but one in special, was in 2018 in a Capital Markets company when we have a very junior team at the beginning, and we finishef the cycle delivering a first version of the new Investor Relations portal, with a lot of features and complex rules, and of course consequently, the team evolution eas amazing! with the same leadership standards, being humble and taking ownership :)