Name:  Yael Tari

Title: Project manager

Organisation: NewCombin

As a seasoned project engineer with 7+ years of experience bringing creative projects to life. I´ve been working on several technological projects in different fields such us mobility, healthcare, mining, oil &gas, agriculture and others.

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

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

Cheers,

Jonno White

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

Well, that´s a really nice question. To be honest, being conscious that my position involves dealing with “social situation” rather than “technical problems” in 80% of the worktime at least.

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

As soon as I got my degree in Civil engineering 7 years ago, I found a “civil position” in really big company in Argentina, I realized (during the first day) that It was not my place. That this kind of not open-minded environment was absolutely hostile and bored . So, I quit my job and started a “new life” in a really small technological company in Mendoza, Argentina. It was such a huge change!

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

I wake up early in the morning. Then, I practice a short meditation and 1 hour of sports (Every single day) .Yoga twice a week. (So to start: my body, my person, my mind) also.

Generally, I check my agenda while I upgrade my kan ban board. If I have meeting or something like this, I prefer to focus on think about the person I ´ve to face but principally what I need to do to get what ´m really looking for. Just to be clear.

During my working day I´m starting check how I feel (Bad or good feelings) and I´ve like 5 minutes meditation playlist that helps me to encourage challenges. It´s really awesome.

Finally, I have the evening for social time.

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

As engineer, schedules and long-term plans were like mandatory rules that we are supposed to chase. But, along my career I learnt that what is more important is to have enough skill to deal non predictable thing that happens in All projects. (Not matter which kind of project. Personal also).

Every time we are focus on what is supposed to happened this week or this month, we are building the future. Spend long time trying to analyzed the different scenarios It´s not as useful as some "preffesionals" say frequently.

We need to have strong skill on dealing with unpredictable situation knowing that not matter what situation appear we will ready to stop, think and execute.

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?

“Start with Why” (Simon Sinek) is definitely a bible for me. This book showed a nice and so effective way to face each of the situation. Simon, explained a tool that I use in every single task, meeting and in my personal life.

I mean, If I know “WHY I should have a workmate cooperation in a specific task for example, then I know HOW I can get it and WHAT are supposed to do to achieve the goal comes easily.”

This a really powerful tool. You just have to try it and you´ll see the results immediately and how the stress starts to disappear.

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

Deal with present situations first. This is the only thing you can manage as a leader.

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

As a technological project manager, I started to manage big projects with international clients. However, the compony were I´ve been working on my previos job, was really small and It were in the middle of a big transformation. So, one year big projects started to come to the company but when I turn to manage my development team I found a team members of an average edge of 28 years old and It was their first job. So I panicked. Stress came to my body again hahaha.

Fortunately, I stopped, thought and decided to change the way I see this present scenario. I decided to encourage my “non experienced” team to face this challenge it with passion. (I was pretty sure that Knowledge and experienced were on the www).

And this how a “teen teem” from the "third world" deployed really big technological projects in Argentina and Europe also. We are living in a world on which having PASSION is better than EXPERIENCE (The knowledge is on a constant change and it´s imposible to be updated all the time). Passion is a skill that Argentinians seems to have in the DNA.