Gema Sánchez's testimonial about Leadership Workshop
Gema Sánchez, Financial Advisor and Life Coach, shares her experience in the Leadership Workshop. Gema studied the Master in Manegement Coachig and Leadership at OBS.
"My experience has been very good and I would definitely recommend it to everyone. We are all leaders in some area in our lives. We can all contribute to others and help others in what we are strongest and most gifted at. It's a cross-cutting thing, it's for everyone."
Tell us briefly about your career
My name is Gema Sánchez, I am 49 years old and I am from Madrid.
I have a Law Degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, a Master's Degree in Human Resources Management and Planning from the Universidad Complutense, a Certified Financial Advisor EFA (European Financial Advisor) from CUNEF and IEAF and a Diploma in Legal Practice from the Universidad Complutense.
I am currently in the middle of a change of sector, as I made the decision a few months ago to leave the banking and financial world to take a Master in Management Coaching and Leadership and "return to the world of people".
Tell us briefly about your career
I have worked as a HR technician, Labour Relations technician and Financial Advisor at CaixaBank. I am currently studying for a Master in Executive Coaching and Leadership.
I began my professional career working in HR in companies of a banking group, then I moved on to the world of finance and sales in banking and now I am returning to the world of people, with all my experience in high-performance teams, and with a lot to contribute for all that I have experienced and learned in my different professional profiles over the years.
This Master will allow me to complete my training and professionalise something that I have already practised innately: leadership and coaching.
Why did you decide to join the service?
I am interested in everything related to leadership because I feel like a leader in many facets of my life, and I believe it is necessary to keep growing, knowing myself and developing skills to help others grow, to promote them vitally and to bring out the best in them and know how to communicate it.
Thanks to this service, how have you managed your emotions?
I think I have learned a lot in this Workshop because Pau and Josep make you participate from the first moment of the training, so we all learn from each other and at the same time we have fun.
We have learned that we cannot do business without taking people into account in their totality: mind, body and spirit, and that as leaders we have strong points and others that need to be further developed and strengthened.
Thus, feedback, for example, is a very good tool to grow oneself and help others to grow, based on respect and with certain foundations from which we must start. In order to give and receive feedback it is important to take into account the emotions involved, empathy, and also people's capacity to adapt.
Have you been able to identify the tools you need to be more efficient?
Yes, of course, as I said before, we cannot be more efficient without considering that we are people and not instruments of production. Putting the person at the centre is the most humane and intelligent thing to do. Developing our emotional intelligence, for example, will save us a lot of time and many other resources and will enable us to reach our goal faster.
What has been your experience with this service?
My experience has been very good and I would definitely recommend it to everyone. We are all leaders in some area in our lives. We can all contribute to others and help others in what we are strongest and most gifted in. It's a cross-cutting thing, it's for everyone.
In my experience, having recently taken the not easy decision to leave the financial sector in which I was comfortable to return to the world of HR and now coaching, I had to go through an inner process of self-knowledge, management of emotions and my own limits, management of relational skills and leadership to be able to meet the challenge and leave in the best possible way. In reality, I have realised that I have put into practice, in a natural way, much of what we have seen here and this fills me with optimism and hope.
At the same time, I have learned a lot more to complete what I have learned in my professional experience, the expertise acquired in all these years of intense dealings with clients and teams.
The workshop has taught me that it is important to create awareness of the meaning in the team and not only in oneself, the Why for which we do everything and to remember it frequently. I believe that without this Why I would not have been able to take any of the steps I have taken recently at work.
This is why this Workshop is especially relevant for me, because it has confirmed that I made the right decision, and that it is possible to take "controlled risks" and create safe, personal and working environments where I can work in a different way, growing and making people grow. It is worth betting on this dream and pursuing it.
Now you know Gema Sánchez's opinion about the Professional Careers service, Leadership Workshop. If you want to know more experiences of OBS Business School alumni, do not hesitate to consult them.