Hello, dear friend,
I made a change in the way I introduce professionals I admire. I now invite them to write their own story the way they would like to share it with you. The story you will read today is written by Andreea Petrișor.
Andreea is a remarkable woman with outstanding experience in business. She was a management consultant for eight years in Roland Berger, then led foodpanda in Romania, growing the company from its early stage to over 250 employees. Now, she is the COO of GuestReady, a global leading and pioneer start-up managing over 5,000 properties listed on Airbnb and other platforms.
I met Andreea when I was applying at INSEAD back in 2015 as she had just completed her MBA there. Ever since, I have been inspired by her professional journey and touched by her kind and joyful personality.
“Leading with a smile” —these few simple, yet powerful words have had such a high impact on me. When Alexandra approached me with the invitation to write an article on my leadership style to share with her engaged and inspiring audience, I felt truly honoured and grateful. I’ve been thinking for a few days about what theme I should write about and how I can contribute to empowering other people, women leaders especially.
Like many other ambitious people, I was also raised as a high achiever. I am part of that generation that is driven to perfectionism by their parents: wanting more and striving to become better without settling for anything. This shaped one side of my personality. The other side was more related to my curiosity when trying something new, the passion I felt when solving a challenge, and the joy it brought me to be surrounded by people.
I have been fortunate to find my professional trajectory easy. Even before graduating from university, I was drawn to management consulting and never imagined there was a better job out there for me. The idea of working on different projects, always changing the industry, the topic, or the team and constantly growing felt like the best role I could fit into. Throughout my consulting years, I worked on restructuring large financial institutions, growing and expanding transportation companies, large energy deals, building strategies for Chinese and Western European law firms, setting the foundations for waste management programs, you name it! It was like a piece of a puzzle that fit me perfectly for a very long time—more than eight years, which we consultants like to call “dinosaur age.”
I have tremendously enjoyed my consulting years and have learned a lot, as planned, but there were a few things I did not anticipate. First, there was the fact that during many of my projects I would often be either the only woman or the youngest person in the room or both. This meant I often had to dedicate a lot of energy into not feeling the “impostor’s syndrome” coming over me or maybe feeling that I am in the minority. I would force myself to snap out of it and channel my energy on the results. Yes, it’s not always ideal when I am the only woman, and yes, I also wish we had women leadership examples, but this only opened the door for me to become that example I was missing. If the road is not paved yet, then why not pave it ourselves?
The second, more “internal” battle that I had was very close to my core: my personality. It was my very warm and smiling character. As a positive person, I love meeting new people and learning more about them. I enjoy teamwork and brainstorming. In a very professional environment, when I was working with large multinationals to help them solve critical challenges, smiling and being so approachable were not always something considered “mainstream.” And, given how much I wanted to succeed, I took this as a weakness, forcing myself to become more distant, poker-faced, less approachable. It took me many years of experience to come to terms with this, to actually understand and accept that these are the traits that set me apart.
My success came not just because of my hard work and intellect, but also because of these abilities: the power of creating trust with the client, to instil teamwork and sometimes even vulnerability with my team, and to drive collaboration with other external stakeholders. It finally became clear to me and brought me such a level of pride and distinction when the managing partner I was working with shared this with the entire leadership team of male partners in one of our recurring meetings.
The years that followed were all about building soft connections—sharpening and fine tuning my soft skills—not realising until Alexandra pointed out to me that I was only developing my “super power.” Despite all the preparation, when I accepted my first leadership challenge of becoming the managing director of a business that had already existed for a while but was still quite in the start-up phase, I was clearly still not prepared. I still remember the first day when I came to the office in a suit and was mirrored by a team dressed in jeans and t-shirts. In addition, I was used to an army of self motivated and high achieving consultants, whom I only had to drive in the right direction. Suddenly I needed to learn how to also “inspire” people, drive their motivation, create a sense of belonging, help them grow, develop, coach the team, beat competition, win the market, drive innovation, build trustworthy partnerships, and do all those amazing things that a leader is expected to do. I never felt so lost… and alone… so I started with a smile and positive energy.
The first and most important step for me was to build a team. It wasn’t easy, but I fired and hired many people who could help me build a culture centred around people, performance, and trust. We were competitive, yet “team” was more than a word for us. We had fun learning from each other, we took every opportunity to grow and develop, we worked hard to be the best. We were teasing each other, yet we were there to support each other when one of us was in difficulty. We were so diverse yet so alike when it came to the passion with which we were doing our jobs and the commitment we had to each other.
Even to date, this has been the experience I am most proud of. I never considered myself as their leader, “the boss,” or someone who has the final word (although sometimes I had to), but more the captain of our ship. We had our own song and personalised handwritten cards, and most of all, we were all transparent with each other when voicing our feedback and opinions. Each of us focused 80% of their energy on what they were good at and helped them thrive, and the rest on keeping their “weaknesses” in check. I was no longer alone and was able to achieve all those challenges highlighted above—with my team.
In my professional journey so far, I went from a time when I was avoiding smiling to look more serious and reliable to fully embracing my skills and competences, but most of all, leading with a smile. This attitude opened many doors for me and helped me pave my way forward, building teams and successfully leading them. I don’t know what the future will bring, but I feel ready to face it with my superpower.”
Inspired by Andreea’s story, how do you see your superpower? How do you inspire those who work with you?