15 Years Already!!!

Today it would be another normal & regular day in my life... I would spend this beautiful Sunday with my family building great memories from those little moments I’ll never forget.

?However, something I can’t logically explained, happened very early this morning. By the way, I’ll never forget this day in my life!!! Something to explain in the years to come...

?The main point is that without remembering of my work anniversary, I woke up thinking of my life trajectory... things I’ve conquered, people that I’ve met, unbelievable moments I’ve had the pleasure to live, my precious family, friends and beloved husband and lovely daughters and the list goes on and on... Trust me it was a lot of things crossing my mind ??... a real brainstorming crossing my head without having the opportunity to stop them...

?Anyways, after a lot of reflection, I came to realize that today I was completing 15 years I joined Dell Technologies, and again, a whole lot of memories started to pop-up in my head... here it went another few hours thinking on my career, next steps, professional aspirations and again, the list goes on and on...

?Inevitably, with all these thoughts crossing my mind, the next thing that occurred was thinking on my purpose in life... It was when I remembered a kind of TED talking speech I gave a few years ago during my graduation on the Leadership Development Program I had the pleasure to be part of and decided to share it here today. Hope you enjoy knowing a little bit about me ??.

?“I’ll start my story to when I was about 8 years old. My parents used to give me a pocket money which I used to buy toys among other things. One day I realized my pocket money was not enough to buy some toys I wanted. So I had an idea to open my first business ??. I started producing homemade popsicles.

You know what I’m talking about, right? Those kind of ice cream that it comes on small bags and it is made of many different flavors.

?I used to sell these in the condo where I used to live and in some events at school.?At that time everyone in my family would be working for me to help me out to produce and sell my popsicles. My small business was doing ok till I realized there were too many competitors that also lived at the same condo, were selling the same thing at the same price with the advantage of living near the playground area. By the way, I lived on the 3rd floor and quite far from the playground ?.

?When I realized I had a logistics issue, I knew I had to come up with another idea to attract my “customers” to climb a bunch of stairs and go and actually buy things from my business. So I decided to also sell the real Ice Cream on the Ice Cream cone. I did very well with that for a couple of years till I had another idea to open another business related to a typing thing, which right now, I’m not going share with you. Probably a topic for another speech.

My second story happened a few years later when we were about to get the High School graduation. My class wanted to do something to raise money for our degree party. We did not know exactly what to do but I soon had the idea to promote a day trip. I was searching for the win-win situation where my class would be able to raise the money we needed and people that would pay for the trip would have a wonderful time with their friends and families. At the end we actually promoted two of these excursions. One it was to a very charming city that was colonized by Germans and that is located around 3h away from my hometown and the second it was a city that had rivers and waterfalls where people could do a lot of adventure activities like rafting.

?Both of these trips went ok, everyone had wonderful time and my class was able to raise the money we needed for our graduation party.

?However, what these two stories have in common besides of the fact I like to be in charge of things?

?The answer to this question is that I was actually finding solutions to the problems. The first story I was trying to solve my problem of how to get more money to buy a few expensive toys I wanted. The second story I was trying to raise money to fund our graduation party.

?What I wanted you to know today is that during all my lifetime solving problems was something that was very easy and natural to me. I’m a very practical person. I usually like to take the decision and move on. That is actually one of the reasons why I am a person that does not carry problems for long periods of time. I do not have big childhood traumas because every time I face an issue I just go there and find a solution for it.

?I think that is also the reason why many people that crossed my path did ask for help at some point of their lives. I always knew that helping others was something that I really enjoyed and that I always felt energized by. What I could not imagine was the impact my advices would actually make in these people lives.

?In different moments, people came back to me to say thanks for things I have said or advices I have given that helped them to overcome their own challenges.

?It took me sometime to realize the power my words were having in these people lives.

?I do have a high level of energy and I’m passionate about everything I do. I’m a very optimistic person and I can always see the good side of things. I’m also a people driven person. I read people quickly and I enjoy spending time with them. That is actually one of my main characteristics. I make friends very easily and I like to keep friendship over time. That way, you can imagine how many friends I’ve got hahaha.

?To me it was not a surprise when Hogan results were released saying that build relationships with a wide range of people was one of my strengths and competences for leadership.

?I think the turning point in my life was a few years ago where I was part of the leadership team of the Women in Action ERG at Dell and we were asked to deliver some package trainings to Dell Brazil site. I don’t know if you have heard about the “Taking the Stage” or “Embrace the Stage” trainings. They are actually awesome trainings for career development (outdated but still lessons for today’s world).

?The thing is that I was never very good to this public speaking thing however at that time I had highlighted as ones of my development opportunities to advance in my career.

?Then, I took all the courage needed decided that I was going to deliver these trainings for my own and personal development. I’d use that opportunity as a professional lab live experiment.

?I took the challenge and delivered several training sessions. At the end of each session we had a wrap up where it always come up the difficulty people faced when updating their IDPs (Individual Development Plans). So I also decided to held some IDP sessions so we’d go through the IDP template and I’d also show tools that were available at that time in our Dell Intranet.

?Do remember that I was only doing that for my own development in order to improve myself. But what I was not expecting is that after all these sessions people would start popping up in my cube asking if I had time for an 1X1 to discuss their careers. I then started mentoring a lot of people and I realized a lot of people were being inspired by me and by the things I’ve said in those training sessions. That was the time when I realized that something that I have done during all my lifetime, which was helping people, and that I enjoyed the most, I could also do in my professional life.

?One day, one of my previous manager asked me to prepare a team building for the team I was working with. I thought that was a good opportunity to myself to do something in which I could motivate others. So I did go to the HR team I asked for help, I read a lot material related to team building exercises. I enjoyed the whole process. The planning, the execution and the outcomes of that. At that day, I could feel people were being motivated when playing the activities I had prepared. At the end, I felt so good. It’s hard to describe now what I felt when I saw all of those people enjoying themselves.

?So to finalize, as an informal leader I’d like to keep helping and motivating others to achieve their career goals as well as helping them to develop their skills.

?As a formal leader I’d like to be remembered by someone that can be trusted, that listen to the people’s problems and help them to overcome them. I’d also like to be remembered by someone that encourage individual to do their best and that reward people for their good performance and accomplishments.

?Through my life experiences I learned that each individual is different and for that reason have different strengths. So as formal leader I’d also like to be remembered by someone that knows how to capitalize people’s strengths. I want to help people to show their best version by helping them to find ways to integrate those strengths into their professional lives.

Thank you very much!” (Angela Roberto, 2017)

?#IWork4Dell