13 Jun INSPIRATIONAL INTERVIEW WITH ADELA IEPURE SENIOR CONSULTANT AT ASSOCIATED IN HUMAN INVEST
Adela Iepure is Senior Consulting Associate at Human Invest and has over 7 years of experience in the banking sector, where she was responsible for developing and facilitating training programs for employees. Today he is an entrepreneur and facilitates individual coaching sessions, teamwork, but also management. More specifically, it develops and supports training on topics such as motivation, communication skills, coaching for managers, feedback and conflict management. And she does it well. So well she is Associate Certified Coach at the International Coaching Federation. About entrepreneurship and motivation in the following:
If you were to come back during your studies, knowing what you know today, what would you do differently?
I’m going to start with an entrepreneurial story. When I was in high school (right after the revolution), my mother became an entrepreneur, she opened a fastfood, using the experience gained during communism as a store, pastry shop and pizzeria manager. It was very courageous and I admire it a lot for it. Only an unfortunate event, a fire, made the ash business one night. It has been an overwhelming experience for all of us, and that has made me avoid entrepreneurship for years, being associated in my mind with great potential for risk.
Turning to your question, if I were to go back to school, knowing what I know today, I would probably have dared to think about entrepreneurship and better use the creativity of those years and the freedom to have a family before . However, we have chosen the apparent safety of the employee role.
Why this area of activity?
I went to what I could do better, and within the organizations I was training, coaching, consulting, it’s a field that I like.
What surprised me was that it was not enough to be a good professional in my field. In entrepreneurship, you also need other skills: you need to be a salesman and an influential person in every interaction you have, know how to build relationships and gain people’s trust quickly; to make decisions sometimes in areas that are outside your area of competence (and here you have to learn to trust those who are better than you in different areas, if you have access to expertise), to take responsibility (you do not have too much whoever blame if something goes wrong), to manage your own motivation (no one comes to push you from behind or lift you up in difficult moments), to manage your time and energy (you become more careful about what it’s worthwhile to do and what not), to develop resilience (there are many things that you can not control, but that does not have to scare you or make you quit trying), have uncomfortable conversations with partners, suppliers , etc.
What was the first step in fulfilling your dream?
The first step was the simplest: I gave up my resignation one day from the multinational company I was working in. What came after: the avalanche of thoughts, emotions, worries, sometimes regret was harder to manage. What helped me in difficult times: make small steps. I went to sleep more comfortable with me knowing that I had ticked small actions, even if the final result was not clear and I was not always sure I was on the right track.
What were the fears / angst of the beginning of the road?
Most fears were related to stability and predictability. I remember that at first it was difficult to predict how things will be in six months or a year. There did not seem to be a predictable pattern of how projects are going to be in the consulting, training, coaching area: this month you can have many interactions or even signed deals done, the next month nothing; with a customer you can strike a deal very fast, with another one you can talk about 10 months before you manage to contract; a project that started can be stopped by the beneficiary for reasons that have nothing to do with you.
How do you see yourself in 5 years?
In response to this question, Steve Jobs says: “You can not connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. “
I think five years ago I did not dream of being where I am now, so in five years I will surely be in a place I still can not anticipate. I am creative, I have ideas and fine people around, I like to learn, so I expect to do something that I do not see or think yet, and then connect the points looking back. The last entrepreneurial project came out of a “what if …” conversation with a coffee.