My journey to become an international trainer and coach focusing on helping management to lead their people in global environment with mixed cultures, started probably in 1996 when my parents sent me for a year long exchange program to US to learn English and experience life in America. At that time Slovakia was still in the stage of discovering what democracy is and how to make it work. Thus the experience was truly eye opening. It was my first time flying, first time leaving home for a longer period, first time many things.
Not only I survived, but I had an amazing time; learned countless practical skills, made lots of friends, realised how big the world is; how to deal with different cultures and keep your mind open. As for English- I was even having dreams in that language at the end of my stay.
After my return home; I knew I want to be a global citizen and see as much as possible from this huge amazing world out there. I finished my high school and got admitted to the university of economics; faculty of trade, which was believed to be best in my country (at least by us).
Graduated EUBA after 5 years in 2003 and after school I tried several jobs where I could use my English and have the vision of traveling; till I ended up as a sales executive in a small Slovak company with huge ambitions.
Shortly I realised that except sales, I am generally good with people, that I can equally sell the product to our clients; sell my ideas to my superiors and get the buy in from my team.
First real opportunity to both prove and test my skills on a larger scale came when my employer needed to build an office in Barcelona. So I became a managing director at the age of 25.
Being on of the youngest people in the office and the only one from „Eastern Europe“ I soon realised, that waving my job title around and shouting „you do what I tell you- I am your boss“ I wont achieve much. Therefore I developed my own democratic and participative leadership style I promote till today.
The purpose of hiring is not to get robots who blindly follow instructions. It is getting people who know more than you do and who can push the organisation forward.
Luckily this worked and I earned the respect of my people and Barcelona office has become the most efficient and most innovative office in the group.
During this time in Barcelona I started studying everything about leadership; started going to regular trainings, got a coach to support me in my growth and tried to become the Best leader I can be for my people and for my company.
From Barcelona I started to move around the world and opening and developing new subsidiaries and offices. Netherlands, USA, Slovakia, Hungary; I was running teams in India or UAE until I reached Malaysia which was chosen for our Asian HQ.
Huge lesson in leadership and crisis management was the year 2009.
I just started to nicely grow the operation in US when the stock market crash hit pretty much every business in the country and around the world.
I did go bankrupt in US. But the process of failure that can not be reversed is one of the most valuable lessons I got. Managing the company in crisis; communicating with your people and even letting them all go when there is simply no other way; all this is a true test of someone’s leadership.
This knowledge came to use when I returned from US to rebuild our European operation which was hit almost as much as the US market and needed to be resurrected almost from scratch.
Once this task was accomplished I started looking for new challenges and Asia has become choice. In Malaysia I built a solid and stable company with almost 80 employees and I started turning my passion for developing people into my competitive advantage.
I became a certified trainer, acknowledged by government body HRDF that covers part of the training expenses on approved trainers; certified professional coach through local ICF training provider and a whole lot of other knowledge and certificates connected with professional leadership development; which in combination with real life experience I use today to help my clients succeed.