Tomorrow is International Women’s Day (IWD), March 8th. I want to celebrate it with you. Not with a long post about what we should do or how we should lead.
Not with a list of frameworks or action items.

Just… us. Talking. Connecting. Pausing together for a moment.

Because sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is simply pause and be present with each other.

We’re Hosting a Live IWD Meetup

Join us tomorrow, March 8th at 11:00am CST (17:00 CET):
, , , and I are meeting online for a 1-hour Coffee Chat and Show & Tell.

I want to Join

Just a space to:

• ☕ Have a break

• 🌸 Talk about what we are building

• 🌟 Connect with other women in tech

• 🪄 See what happens when we simply show up for each other in this special day

Will you join? This event welcomes all who celebrate or support women in tech.

Why This Meetup

As a woman in tech, I really enjoy this day. I learned to celebrate it at AWS Berlin: It’s a day full of events and in Germany it’s a bank holidays. At AWS, I taught little girls to program robots 6 years ago, and yesterday I attended to a self-defense class.

In my opinion, there is still a big gap on women in tech. Although things are getting better, the difference is real. Yesterday, in a meeting lead by a Senior Principal Engineer, I looked at the audience and realized that I was the only woman in the call from a total of 10 people. Even though my team has several women and I don’t ofthen think about it, that moment felt lonely.

I wonder if AI will change this.

And now, more than ever, with layoffs around us, return-to-office pressure, and uncertainty with our jobs, we need connection. There are days that I am in a dip, surviving. On tough days, what helps the most is a conversation with another person in tech who looks at me and said: “I feel that too.” Like my recent conversation with , when we were sharing career challenges and shared how we use AI. Or being part of the community has built.

That’s what we’re creating on Sunday. A space that remind us that we’re not alone.

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In the WonderLead community, we talk a lot about emotional intelligence and leadership. But the foundation is connection. And connection happens in moments like these. Unplanned, unstructured, real. Like this event that started 4 days ago in Substack Notes.

Join Us

👉 RSVP here!

📅 When: Sunday, March 8, 2026 at 11:00 CST / 17:00 CET
⏰ Duration: 1 hour
💻 Format: Online Coffee Chat (Google Meetl. Link shared after RSVP)
🆓 Cost: Free — bring your coffee ☕

We’ll begin with a short check-in, and then talk about our latest challenges: will talk about DraftKit, will talk about CarouselBot, will talk about her MCPs, and I will talk about a new app I’m building. Without much planned, wherever the conversation takes us.

Join the Coffee Chat!

You can come and say hi in the chat, demo or ask questions at the end of the session. No pressure to share anything. Just come as you are.

An Invitation for International Women’s Day

This day is a reminder to celebrate where we are!

In WonderLead in Tech, we don’t sail the journey of our careers alone.

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Share and tag your friends

• Are you joining us? Register and let us know it in the comments!

• What would you love to talk about in our meetup?

• Tag a friend or colleague who should join!

Let's make this an awesome International Women's Day. Together. 💜

Thank you to everyone who answered the note and can’t attend like , , . Fingers crossed for to join!

If you enjoyed this post, please tap the Like button below ♥️ Thank you!

This post’s opinions are my own and may not reflect the opinions of the company I work for.

💡 How to identify if you are currently surviving and how to move back to thriving.
💡 How to create goals aligned with your vision.
💡 The power of accountability and community.

I’m scared too. We need each other.

Layoffs every 3 months at Amazon are draining me. Return To Office killed my choices. AI is deprecating my beloved job as Frontend Engineer. What else is coming?

We’re bouncing between FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out, such as on the latest tools and opportunities) and the hustle of our day to day lives. Many times there is too much. Many of us are in survival mode.

But now, more than ever, we need to thrive.
We need to be grounded and stop chasing shiny objects.
We need to just pause.

Breathe.

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From AI Excitement to Surviving

At the end of last quarter, I got very sick. And without realizing, I went into survival mode again. Even though over two years ago, I created a framework for staying in thriving at my team in AWS, I ended up surviving.

I was too excited about my new AWS AI goal and role. I needed to meet the deadline. I needed to deliver asap so that hundreds of internal non-tech users would become more productive. Then, I didn’t care about my body signals, my health. I was sick and had stress at home and at work, but I needed to execute. So I stopped pausing.

When the only thing I needed was:
Stop overthinking and keep following the framework.

In survival mode, you don’t see when you’re in it. Tunnel vision takes over. You skip the reviews and don’t self-correct.

After self-reflecting, I believe I didn’t have the right tools to help me stay on track:

1. WonderLead Obsidian Vault? The UX was too complex. Too many plugins, too much friction to reflect when I was sick.

2. WonderLead Digital/Printable Planner? Got lost. No tracking. No accountability.

3. AI Assistants? Hard to see patterns or prioritize by myself and at a glance. Not designed for deep, emotional reflection.

I needed something that would force me to pause, reflect, prioritize, and stay aligned with what matters.

So I started building it with AI. Not as any other product. As the WonderLead Thriving tool.

But this post isn’t about what I’m building. It’s about the year reflection and plan I executed that drove me into this decision and that through the years helped me thrive.

You can use it right now, with whatever tools you have following the guidance in this post. Or you can reply this post with the word THRIVE and I will give you access to the beta version. Feel free to ask me also any questions about it.

🌟 The WonderLead Thriving Framework

Before setting any goal, we need to understand what happened with reviews and where we are through self assesssments. Then, we are able to realistically plan our top priority goals (Big Rocks) aligned with our values and current situation. Finally, we need to execute within an accountability system that helps us stay thriving.

Review → Assess → Plan → Thrive

Here it is in summary:

• Step 1: Review to Discover: Look back to understand what happened.

• Step 2: Assess: Understand where you are right now

• Step 3: Plan: Set goals aligned with your values and current reality and self-manage yourself to achieve them.

• Step 4: Execute: Take action with curiosity, emotional intelligence, and agency using productivity and AI tools that allow you to thrive.

This framework helped me to go out of survival mode. But even if your team, health, and family are in amazing shape, stI recommend you to still follow this framework. Because when we identify that we’re surviving, it’s usually too late. And right now, it is not the time to survive.

Last month, I published the Step 1 which includes how I reviewed last year:

The next step is to assess and plan. But it’s not enough with just setting goals. Instead, I am improving my system for succeeding during the execution. The system and an accountability community that will enable your goals success!

What to do After your Year Review

Step 2: Assess Your Current State to Adapt Your Plan

Your values and situation change over time. Your unmet goals from 2025 might no longer be aligned, nor might be achievable today.

Use your year review to identify patterns. Then dive deep to understand where you are right now, based on your circunstances, energy, alignment, and emotional state.

Ask yourself:

1. Your Energy: What energizes you? What drains you? When are you at your peak? Identify your Chronotype (Lark, Owl, or Third Bird) to answer better.

2. Your Values: What matters most to you? What must be present for you to thrive?

3. Your Thriving Score (1-10): You can rate it considering your 1) physical energy, 2) emotional energy, 3) mental clarity, and 4) alignment with your values. You can also consider the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If basic and psychological needs are unmet or you are misaligned with your values, you likely are surviving.

Remember to dive deep or use the 5 Whys to identify the root causes and understand yourself better. At this point, you will identify which areas of emotional intelligence you should prioritize developing in order to thrive.

My Assessment:

I’m energized and at my pick when helping others and get drained when I identify lack of inclussion. My values are kindness, family, achievement, and integrity. My thriving score now is sometimes 5 because of low physical energy and values alignment. But I’m working on it. The most important is to be resilient.

Step 3. Plan Your Path - From Vision to Intentional Goals

Vision changes overtime too. Unfortunately, today it might be influenced by fear (FOMO) more than our values. So we might end up doing projects not aligned with ourselves if we let FOMO take control. When these fears appear, we must name and carry them forward with curiosity and courage. Accepting them. Then you will be able to identify your real purpose.

Ask yourself:

1. Who do you want to BE by December 2026? What will you accomplish? What is different?

2. What are your 3-5 Big Rocks goals aligned with your core values? Pick 3-5 that matter most. Make them (1) specific but independent of how you will achieve them, (2) measurable considering what you can control, (3) achievable but ambitious so that if you achieve 80% it will be a success, (4) relevant for your purpose, and (5) time bounded to make progress with balance.

3. What milestones, tasks, and habits do you need to achieve your Big Rocks?
   Use AI to scale but make sure to use critical thinking. Prioritize based on the impact, cost, and how aligned each task is with your values and your energy level.

My Vision

I want to inspire and develop others, create large products, and foster emotional intelligence through my own products.

My Goals for WonderLead.tech

1. Grow WonderLead in Tech newsletter to 10,000 Subscribers with Balance.

2. Launch WonderLead Thrive tool and community to support others careers.

3. Strengthen Executive Presence Skills While Supporting Others.

Step 4: Thrive with an Accountability System

In WonderLead, we don’t sail our careers alone. We achieve our goals together.

Create a Personalized System

1. Build Your Habits

2. Schedule Reviews

3. Use Tools that Fit Your Needs

4. Make it Enjoyable

When I check in weekly, I stay on track. When I celebrate wins with others, it’s more fun and easier to keep progressing. And I want to do it with wonderleaders in tech.
That’s why I launched mentorship, coaching, and monthly free workshops.

Connect It to Community

When we connect with others who share similar goals, we build trust, exchange insights, and hold each other accountable. Seeing others’ progress inspires our own journey.

Community amplifies individual practice and turns isolated efforts into collective momentum.

🌟Own Your Growth

This post is about taking ownership of your growth and be ing intentional with your goals. It’s about moving from reacting to life to proactively shaping your future.

When we:

1. Set goals aligned with our values.

2. Break them into actionable steps.

3. Build systems that support us.

4. Share them with our community.

We move from surviving to thriving.

How am I going to achieve my Big Rocks? The same way you’ll achieve yours if you subscribe and join: One intentional step at a time, with community support, and with a system that makes it visible and sustainable.

If You are Not Ready to Review and Start Planning

A year ago, we did the Thriving Challenge with 5-20 minutes activities for 7 days. If you follow it, it will help you to get started. You can sign up here.

Remember, you don’t need to be ready or ask for permission to start.

You don’t need to wait for the perfect moment.

Start today. With a small step. Be intentional. Own your growth.

Tasks for the Week:

☑️ Review and Plan 2026: Wins, challenges, lessons learned.
☑️ Do the first task of one Big Rock: Ask yourself how you feel afterwards.
☑️ Schedule your first monthly check-in: Mark it recurrently in your calendar.

Share in the comments: 💬

• Who do you want to BE by December 2026?

• What is your #1 Big Rock?

• What change are you going to make this week?

Leave a comment

Let’s move in this AI era from surviving to thriving. Together. 💛

🎁Bonus: Free Monthly Workshop and Beta App

I created a solution to the friction that caused my own survival. A Monthly Review & Plan with Accountability Workshop and a tool designed to make this “Thriving Framework” automatic. I’ll be sharing a full walkthrough of the WonderLead Thriving Tool once I validate it with users. supported the first testing round. Now, I’m looking for volunteers to test it live with an interview!

1. Want to be at the front of the line for the beta? Just reply THRIVE to this email.

2. Want to join the monthly workshop? Register here.

3. Want to start thriving right now? Sign up for the 7 days Thriving Challenge email course and start meeting your goals!

Recommended Resources:

1. The Power of Moments — Chip Heath & Dan Heath
   (For understanding what makes experiences meaningful)

2. Think Again — Adam Grant
   (To question your own beliefs, embrace being wrong, and become a "scientist")

3. Atomic Habits — James Clear
   (For building sustainable practices)

(*) By purchasing affiliated books, you will be contributing to WonderLead in Tech.

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If you enjoyed this post, please tap the Like button below ♥️ Thank you!

This post opinions are my own, and may not reflect the opinions of the company I work for.

Hi! 🙋🏻‍♀️ Can you believe we’ve already ended 2025?
I prepared for you three things: 1) Career Plan template, 2) AI Prompts, and 3) Workshop with me to fill it. I wish you had a Merry Christmas and Happy new Year! 🎄

What You’ll Learn:

💡 Why year review and planning matter for your career
💡 What to include in your professional review (with templates!)
💡 How to acknowledge mistakes and set improvement actions

From Reactive to Intentional Career

For years, I dedicated a few minutes each December to review my personal goals and set new ones for the coming year. But I never did this professionally. I treated my career like something that just happened to me. Rather than something I could intentionally shape.

Everything changed when I started managing my career the same way I manage AWS projects. I began by setting clear professional goals, success metrics, I tracked progress, and reviewed frequently. That’s when I added intentionality to my career. Suddenly, I wasn’t just reacting or just going towards a single end goal, I was leading all my own journey.

Last year at this time, I set two clear goals: (1) improve my networking and (2) strengthen my communication skills. To achieve my big rock of moving to Spain and likely leaving Amazon, I defined milestones for each. But they were not just vague wishes. I actually drafted measurable goals with planned milestones to achieve them.

Life happened, and I had to reprioritize things, but I made progress on both goals! 🎉 I haven’t moved to Spain yet, but I feel more prepared!

I didn’t do it alone, and I didn’t just “try harder.” I used a structured system that I developed. I tracked my progress in Obsidian, reviewed the progress, and adjusted monthly. I improved my communication skills with the help of a mentor, and I held myself accountable by sharing my goals with people who cared about my growth.

This year, I want to share that system with you. Because we shouldn’t drive the journey of our careers alone.

Why Year Review and Planning Matter

We plan product launches, sprints, and project milestones with incredible detail. We track metrics, analyze data, and adjust our approach based on results.

Why don’t we do the same for our careers?

A proper year review helps us:

✨ Celebrate real wins, not just the big ones; the small victories matter too!
✨ Identify patterns in what worked and what didn’t.
✨ Learn from setbacks without shame or judgment.
✨ Align our actions with our values and long-term vision.
✨ Set intentional goals based on data, not just wishes.
✨ Build momentum by seeing how far we’ve actually come.

Without this reflection, we risk repeating the same mistakes and missing opportunities for growth. Additionally, doing it at the beginning of the year allows you to restart with more positivity. Everyone is planning their resolutions, and starting a new year feels like a fresh start.

With the WonderLead Framework, we’ll continuously refine our approach with accountability to ensure we keep working on our goals through the year.

What to Include in Your Year Review

Based on the WonderLead framework and my experience at AWS, here’s how I do it:

1. Highlights and Wins

List your top 5-10 achievements:

• Projects delivered successfully

• Promotions or role changes

• Positive feedback received

• Problems solved

• Team impact created

• Communities built or joined

Tip: Include both work achievements and personal development wins. Your personal development wins outside your job may impact your professional identity.

Action item: Share them with your manager.

2. Goals Review

Look back at the goals you set (or meant to set) for 2025:

• Which goals did you achieve? Celebrate them! 🎉

• Which goals are still in progress? That’s okay too.

• Which goals did you miss? Let’s learn from them.

• Which goals changed? That’s good; adaptation is growth.

For each goal, ask yourself:

• What specific actions led to success or challenges?

• How did you feel about them? What causes those feelings?

• What people or resources made a difference?

• What would you do differently next year?

Tip: If you didn’t have goals, think about 2025 and assess themes through the year.

3. Challenges and Lessons Learned

This is the most valuable part. What didn’t go as planned? Think in technical, interpersonal, personal, and organizational challenges and ask for each challenge:

• What was within your control?

• What was outside your control?

• What did you learn?

• What will you do differently in 2026?

Tip: Careful with the white bears!

Cognitive distortions (White Bears) are negative or irrational patterns of thinking. There are 10 types: 1) All or Nothing Thinking, 2) Overgeneralization, 3) Mental Filter, 4) Discounting the Positive, 5) Jumping to conclusions, 6) Magnification, 7) Emotional Reasoning, 8) “Should” Statements, 9) Labeling, and 10) Personalization and Blame. Per white bear, create blue dolphins which are “Go-to” positive thoughts that you personally find inspiring, engaging, interesting, and fascinating.

4. Values Alignment Check

This is critical. Look at your core values.

• Which values did you honor consistently?

• Which values did you compromise?

• Where did you feel most aligned?

• Where did you feel misaligned?

When our actions don’t align with our values, we feel it. Burnout, resentment, and frustration are often symptoms of misalignment.

Reflection question: If you could change one thing about how you worked this year to better honor your values, what would it be? Make it a goal!

5. Strengths and Growth Reflection

What are your strengths? Have you leveraged them through the year? What new skills did you develop this year? Which growth areas became apparent?

• Technical skills (e.g. new languages, tools, frameworks)

• Leadership skills (e.g. communication, delegation, mentorship)

• Your Company Cultural Principals (e.g. Amazon Leadership Principles)

• Emotional intelligence competencies (e.g. self-awareness, empathy, compassion)

• Domain expertise (e.g. industry or business knowledge)

My example: In my annual review at Amazon I will use Amazon Leadership Principles to described how I delivered to customers this year. I will write that I demonstrated Customer Obsession and Ownership by interviewing internal customers of the MCPs I delivered internally. However, delivering the MCP was a challenge because stakeholders didn’t understand the technology and I could have demonstrated more Earn Trust by making it easier to understand. Double communicate always!

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Remember: Acknowledge Your Mistakes, Learn, and Plan

While reviewing, practice self-awareness and self-compassion.

Mistakes aren’t failures. They’re data and help us to grow.

In my career, I’ve made plenty of mistakes:

• Said “yes” to too many commitments and burned out

• Avoided difficult conversations, and problems grew

• Focused on perfectionism instead of progress

• Worked in isolation instead of asking for help

Each mistake taught me something. Each one shaped how I lead today.

A Framework for Processing Mistakes:

1. Name it and Own it: What actually happened? What was your part in it?

2. Learn from it: What does this teach you?

3. Plan for it: What will you do differently? How will you trigger the change?

4. Release it: Rephrase. You’re not your mistakes.

Example from my year:

Mistake: I took on too many high-level leadership responsibilities right after joining a new team, before learning the mechanics from the team and consistently building their trust.

Learning: Trust is earned through consistent delivery and understanding team dynamics first. Taking on leadership responsibilities too early can undermine credibility and team cohesion. I should have focused on earning trust from the team as early as possible before taking on multiple leadership responsibilities.

Action for 2026: Focus on one major commitment at a time and prioritize earning trust from my new team. Before taking on additional leadership responsibilities, ask: “Have I earned the team’s trust through consistent delivery?” and “Does this help or distract from building strong team relationships?”

My Recommendations

Books

1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen R. Covey
   (Especially Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind)

2. Dare to Lead — Brené Brown
   (On values and vulnerability)

AI Prompts

AI Chat (ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini) as Reflection Partner:

1. Paste your calendar/projects and ask: “What patterns do you see in how I spent my time?”

2. Upload performance reviews and ask: “What are my recurring strengths and growth areas?”

3. Share your goals and ask: “What potential obstacles should I prepare for?”

I will share more AI prompts in the chat, stay tuned!

Your Action Plan for This Week

Don’t wait to review your year and define action items from your learnings. This week, I will share how I am planning 2026 and how to define your new goals.
Start reviewing now while you have the momentum!

Let’s Do This Together

I did a year review and plan of 2026 in a working group of 9 people last Friday. and joined. This Saturday, I will do it again (this time Japan friendly ). The audience will get the career plan I use with my mentors for free. If you can’t join, you can get it from here.

I’m inviting YOU to reflect and plan 2026 with me. Join now, it is limited to 12 slots.

Get Worksheet and Workshop!

Because we shouldn’t drive the journey of our careers alone.

Share in the comments: 💬

• What’s one big win from your 2025?

• What’s one lesson you learned from a challenge?

• What’s one Big Rock you’re considering for 2026?

Let’s learn together and support each other. Let’s make 2026 the year we all thrive, not just survive. The next post will guide you to create a plan and system that will enable your success.

Join the Conversation

💬 Comment below with your reflections
🔗 Join our Chat for ongoing discussion
🌟 Subscribe to WonderLead Working Groups (coming in 2026)

Share

—If you enjoyed this post, please tap the Like button below ♥️ Thank you!

This post opinions are my own, and may not reflect the opinions of the company I work for.

You can replicate my tips because it’s not about tooling or models. It’s about knowing how to collaborate with AI.

In the Thriving Challenge, what started as a commitment to move from surviving to thriving has become something even more powerful. What we learned can be used as a foundation for the future of leadership with AI.

“We can’t be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode.” — Jeff Bezos

The leaders we’ve grown through this challenge inspire and motivate, make resilient and thoughtful decisions, spark innovation, nurture strong team culture, accelerate growth, and leave lasting legacies. Those exact strengths matter even more now when you’re not just leading humans but leading teams that include AI agents.

This is what I learned while trying to adopt AI from my previous team and from the new one.

What is AI Collaboration?

AI Collaboration is a new type of partnership where we work alongside AI as our thinking partner. You can collaborate with AI in different ways:

1. Personal companion and assistant for daily productivity. Where you ask for targeted tasks and expect quick solutions.

2. Team colleague for complex problem-solving. Where you collaborate through multiple tasks, humans and agents in your project.

3. Coach and mentor for skill development. Where you ask for help and your agent helps and supports you.

In all of these roles, AI is supporting and collaborating with us, and we get the same collaboration benefits we’ve been practicing throughout our Thriving Challenge, but amplified!

But, Is AI Collaboration Only for Tech People?

Absolutely not! While the user experience is still evolving, you don’t need a technical background. The foundation is composing workflows through prompts, context, and agents with clear guardrails. The market is focused on technical solutions, but you can use them for your own use cases. And in this post I will help you.

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What’s the Cost When Collaborating with AI?

Besides the high energy cost, just like in our daily work, interruptions and distractions have a cost. Therefore, you must choose your battles wisely when solving problems with AI. Be responsible with its usage, consider the energy it requires, and the time it gets you to do it manually.

The 20-Minute Threshold: If a task takes me less than 20 minutes, I don´t do it with AI. Setting up AI, providing context, and reviewing output takes time, and our brain needs about 20 minutes to refocus of switching context.

Pick the right moments to leverage AI collaboration for maximum impact. Read more in 4 Tools To Become a More Productive Leader.

Your AI Thriving Toolkit

Just as we used specific tools during our challenge, here’s your transition toolkit for AI collaboration:

1. The WonderLead AI Framework

Structure your AI collaboration to stay aligned with your values:

1. Planning: Align AI agent goals with your prioritized values and objectives, as we practiced with personal goal alignment in <link>.

2. Daily Check-ins: 15-minute daily check-ins to review and plan the day with AI companions. Check in with both human team members and AI agents.

3. Weekly Reviews: Assess your team’s progress and collaboration effectiveness. Assess if your team (humans + AI) is surviving or thriving.

4. Journaling: Reflect on human-AI interactions and continuously improve.

5. Gratitude and Celebration: Appreciate both human contributions and be transparent on the AI capabilities used.

6. Self-Care: Maintain human well-being while managing AI-augmented workloads.

7. Discover with Community Support: Join others navigating the human-AI leadership transition. Create AI learning sessions or recommend WonderLead.tech. In the next post, I will share how I am driving AI learning sessions at Amazon in Berlin between organizations.

   

2. Emotional Intelligence in AI Era

Apply each EQ pillar to AI collaboration:

Self-Awareness Tools:

• Monitor your comfort level when using AI.

• Identify when you’re avoiding vs. over-relying on AI assistance.

• Recognize emotional triggers about AI from yourself or colleagues. AI is causing FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

Example: When I joined my new team at AWS, I decided to experiment with AI for onboarding. With self-awareness I identified that I over-relied on AI, I didn’t have setup all the tools that I needed, and many times it was taking me more time.

Self-Management Tools:

• Set boundaries for AI usage that align with your values. Enforcing responsible AI practices is essential for organizations to build trust, ensure positive impact, and comply with evolving regulations.

• Practice decision-making frameworks that incorporate both AI insights and human judgment. Human input is what makes AI output outstanding.

• Maintain work-life balance when AI enables 24/7 productivity potential. Set background systems, but with balance. Not every tool will give you the same impact and the time invested might block your progress.

Example: After recognizing my AI execution mistakes, I identified gaps in my tooling and created clear guidelines for my team on when and how to collaborate with AI. Tasks requiring empathy, cultural context, or strategic judgement are better when led by humans, while others need only reviews and small changes. For instance, communicating with customers vs development of AI features.

Social Awareness Tools:

• Observe team reactions to AI integration.

• Monitor whether AI is enhancing or hindering human connection.

• Sense when to emphasize human collaboration over AI efficiency.

• Capture feedback from your team on how they need to learn or use AI.

Example: In my team, I discovered that some members resisted AI because they didn’t succeed in their first tests. But AI tools have evolved a lot in the last year. Adding a mechanism for the team to share their wins made the AI skeptics change their minds. The key wasn’t forcing adoption. It was creating social proof from trusted colleagues.

Relationship Management Tools:

• Facilitate transparent communication about AI decision-making.

• Create psychological safety for questioning AI.

• Build bridges between AI-enthusiastic and AI-cautious team members.

• Bring Collaboration - Your Trust Framework Evolved:

  • Building Trust with Humans: Be transparent about AI usage. Share your learnings and tools.

  • Building Trust with AI: By understanding AI capabilities, limitations, how, and when to use it.

Example: My organization had a very low AI adoption rate. To help, I launched weekly AI Learning Sessions led by Individual Contributors, not Managers. It’s a safe space where we run workshops and learn from each other about AI. Two months later, team members are actively sharing their custom agents and have created more efficient team workflows.

3. My AI Collaboration Workflow

Every week and day, I plan my tasks for myself, team, and AI collaboration. I create the agents that I need, define their roles, and plan together with the AI. Then I open the sessions for each agent, and they start or continue the execution of their tasks. During the day, I check with AI if there are changes in priorities or if there are agents blocked. I unblock them and continue with my tasks. At the end of the day, I review the progress and update notes for the next day’s execution. This is my 5-10x multiplier.

Individually, this is the workflow that each agent runs:

It is very similar to how you would collaborate with your team or colleague, right?

How to Create an AI Collaboration Workflow

Ask to create an agentic workflow for your AI tool and import it in the next execution.

Let me know if you want to learn more in the comments.

AI Tools for Workflows Automation

I tried creating workflows with different free AI tools (Claude, Gemini, GPT), but the message limitations and lack of context were frustrating. Those tools’ free tiers work well for AI as companion or assistant with small defined tasks, but not for bigger and more complex projects. I needed something with flexibility that allows me to focus on human productivity and team interaction.

Claude Skills is an improvement. We need AI tools less focused on tech users that help everyone to be more productive. , a follower from WonderLead is another example, focused on a human-first solution.

Connecting AI Execution to Your North Star

Remember, the discipline of building your career gives you the freedom to become the leader you want to be. These new AI execution tools must always serve your roadmap. Use the insights from your Weekly Reviews and Journaling to ensure your AI agents, together with your actions, are continuously aligned with your prioritized values and goals. Now that we are equipped to thrive, it is time to continue with our discovery journey and define our career next steps in this AI era.

We must use AI to achieve our long-term vision, not just to move faster without direction!

The Future Is Human-AI Collaboration

The organizations that thrive in the next decade won’t be those that replace humans with AI or those that ignore AI entirely. They’ll be led by individuals who’ve mastered the emotional intelligence skills we’ve been practicing and learned to apply them in human-AI collaborative environments.

✅ What We’ve Learned (Thriving Challenge):

• Thriving leaders inspire and motivate others.

• Emotional intelligence drives better decision-making.

• Community support accelerates growth.

• Daily practice creates lasting change.

• Self-awareness is the foundation of all leadership.

🌟 What This Means for AI Collaboration:

• Inspiring humans while optimizing AI performance.

• Making EQ-informed decisions about when to use AI insights.

• Building communities that include AI as thinking partners.

• Daily practice with AI will multiply your impact.

• Self-awareness about your unique human value is your advantage in an AI era.

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Let’s Learn Together

I want to hear from you, Wonder Leader!

💭 Share one way you used AI this week. What worked? What didn’t?
The best learning happens when we share our breakthrough stories. Your failure might save someone else hours of frustration.
Ready to continue this journey? Comment below with your AI collaboration story!

Self-Awareness Thriving🌟Challenge Practice

Ask for feedback about your AI collaboration from your team (humans+agents)

Now that you are collaborating with AI, you need 1) human feedback to ensure your new workflow is truly building trust, not hindering connection, and 2) AI feedback to ensure your workflows are successful.

3 Activities:

1. Ask a human peer or report for feedback on your AI collaboration:
   Am I over-relying on the AI? Is my use of this tool making communication easier or harder? Is my code easy to review or lows the bar?

2. Ask AI for feedback on your tasks and how the workflow can be improved:
   Review the workflow you executed and propose changes so that the issue you faced doesn´t happen again.

3. Reflect on the feedback. Use it for continuously improving your performance and detecting blind spots in your new AI adoption. Getting feedback is a gift.

This post concludes our WonderLead Thriving Challenge. It was a pleasure to practice it with you. Let me know what path you want to take next in our journey. I am also considering opening paid subscriptions to give you more value and ensure consistency.

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Leading with Emotional Intelligence

EQ vs IQ

I got feedback about high IQ but low EQ: Suppressing my emotions was stopping my growth and even risking my job at the staff level. Embracing Emotional Intelligence allowed me to understand myself and connect better with others. Emotional Intelligence makes us more human and is the multiplier that transforms good engineers into exceptional technical leaders. — from in How to develop EQ as an engineer or a manager.

Self-Awareness

If I hadn’t been self-aware, the meeting would have gone downhill from there. That day instead of reacting, I caught myself. I paused. I looked away, opened my notes app and started writing my thoughts. This allowed me to process those thoughts better. With my emotions in check, I could now think clearly: How do I get the outcome I want without escalating this further? — from in Self-Awareness in Tech Leadership.

After returning from maternity leave, I struggled with impostor feelings and leading a high-stakes launch while in survival mode, caused my team to overwork and lose perspective. I addressed this by advocating for my team’s needs and applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to support well-being.
As a result, I regained confidence and enabled my team to deliver sustainably and successfully. — from WonderLead in Tech in Thriving: With Consistent Emotional Intelligence and Goals Alignment.

Self-Management

I became a bottleneck by taking on too much, missing deadlines and sacrificing quality. With mentorship and practice using WonderLead Framework, I learned to choose the right battles, manage priorities effectively, and use self-awareness to align goals with their values and vision, resulting in more focused and reliable leadership. — from in How To Achieve Your Goals With Balance.

Building Trust

Early in my career, I was eager to learn but hid my questions out of fear of being exposed, creating self-doubt and isolation. To address this, I recognized my lack of trust in the team and the need for openness. As a result, I broke the cycle of anxiety and created space for learning and growth with others.
— from in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.

By doubling down on delivering excellent work and relied on my creative problem-solving to prove myself, I built trust and eventually earned a leadership role. As a result, I learned to value both effort and results as foundations for building trust within a team. — from in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.

As a foreigner in Japan, I faced daily challenges with a mixed Japanese–English work environment, neither of which was his first language. I hadn’t expected language learning to be a leadership tool but discovered its power when a teammate relationship offered the opportunity. By embracing empathy and improving my own communication, I learned that investing in language skills could help build trust as a leader. — from Tokyo Tech Lead in Lead with Compassion - Case Study on Overcoming Language Challenges.

Collaboration

Working at startups, I experienced poor leadership that bred distrust and unhealthy competition, making collaboration difficult. I realized I hadn’t felt empowered to speak up or help change the environment. Looking back, I saw the importance of taking initiative and communicating with managers. As a result, I learned to call out issues constructively to build healthier, more collaborative teams. — from in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.

As a director, I faced the challenge of building trust across teams without daily interaction, especially when collaborating with a team in a different time zone. To overcome this, I fostered transparency, asked what ideal collaboration looked like, and co-created a documented strategy with recurring check-ins. As a result, trust was strengthened, alignment improved, and the partnership became a model for future cross-team collaboration. — from in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.

I observed silos forming even at the team level through “Us vs. They” language and restrictive leadership practices like forbidding inter-team communication and relying on bottlenecked Single Points of Contact. To address this, I emphasized avoiding divisive language and promoting open, direct collaboration. As a result, teams can build stronger relationships, improve workflows, and become more resilient. — from in Breaking Down Silos in Tech

Career Transitions

🔜 Coming Soon

Impostor Syndrom

🔜 Coming Soon

Returning from Leave

🔜 Coming Soon   

Meet Our WonderLeaders

This selected collection of breakthrough stories were shared in posts, chat, and notes by , , , , and . We collaborated together to create unique posts that can help you thrive and find success in your career as a leader.

You can add yours by commenting or sharing this post with a note telling your story.

Thank You!

💡 How to identify and break down common collaboration barriers
💡 Practical strategies for fostering cross-team communication
💡 Steps to become an agent of positive change

In today's fast-paced, ever-evolving IT business, the ability to collaborate effectively has become a critical skill for leaders.

Recently, in my team at AWS, leadership suddenly changed our vision, and multiple projects that were in progress had to stop overnight. The uncertainty and unexpected change impacted the motivation of almost everyone in all the teams. However, what could have been a crisis became an opportunity for growth. Our leadership suggested doing multiple hack weeks while reshuffling the roadmap and increasing 1:1s to rebuild trust. The collaboration fostered by the hack weeks raised motivation, innovation, and performance. Within a few weeks, people started to smile back.

Benefits on Collaboration in Leadership

Thriving leaders cultivate an environment of mutual understanding, psychological safety, and a shared sense of purpose and empower their people to collaborate together.

Open collaboration creates space for exploration, diverse perspectives, and creative risk-taking. It brings the best decision-making, problem-solving, conflict resolution, innovation, motivation, performance, and stronger relationships.

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The Collaboration Barriers & How to Break Them

1. Misaligned Objectives

During the first months of any year, the company’s objectives are communicated top-down with a high-level strategy full of buzzwords to achieve them. Projects are allocated, and the staff’s year objectives are cascaded down, losing granularity and real meaning by the time they reach the IT engineer. At the higher level, the outcomes of the projects are translated by fulfilling or delivering a specific well-identifiable set of objectives.

However, the reality sometimes looks like a stand-up comedy sketch. Imagine being in a meeting and being instructed to find ways to be more cost-efficient for an entire IT department. In practice, this means we need to decrease the budget somewhere while maintaining the same output, or we need to find ways to reduce headcount without impacting key projects. While in the same meeting, I was told to onboard a new project related to infrastructure migration, whose outcome will increase the run costs by 20-30%. To make everything even more wonderful, this needs to happen without assigning specific investment budget lines for each application (aimed at hiding the true cost of the investment by diluting it across the same cost centers as day-to-day activities). Situations like these are a bad joke but, unfortunately, occur openly in any large organization.

This is due to feedback not being passed through higher management and not being aware of how some details are dealt with, also the fact higher management is a difficult silo to reach a lot of times. However, these silos can have multiple forms. One of the most popular is having the sales team closing contracts with clients based on features that product teams are not even aware of. Let alone the IT department have started development on those features.

How to address this?

It starts from the top!

Cascading objectives is not a straightforward operation. In the same way the C-Level management defines objectives for the coming years, (1) these objectives need to be aligned with each department in the organization, and (2) the plan needs to be coherent between the strategy and objectives.

Based on the example given above, if the directive is to reduce costs for the IT department, how will the approved projects contribute to the different kinds of objectives? How to tackle a project whose outcome will make some problems even worse for a specific period?

2. Us / They Mentality

Not all problems are to be fixed by the C-Level management. Some of the Silo mentality happens at the very base: The Us & They kind of conversation. Sometimes the “They” are the team seated nearby at the office, and barely there is any communication between them. And when a communication happens, it is typically to make some last-minute request due to an unforeseen dependency.

Once I worked in an office where some Team Leaders were openly forbidding interaction with colleagues from other teams. Like they were professors teaching kids from kindergarten to avoid those bad boys from the hood impacting their day. A way these enlightened leadership folk found to control communication, was by assigning Single Points of Contact (SPOC) that became bottlenecks for everything important.

These kinds of leadership will result in weak teams and fragile workflows. True Leaders should avoid the “Us/They” language at all costs.

How to address this?

Cultivate synergies between dependent teams. The easiest way to cultivate synergies is to organize a workshop for people to present themselves (Boring, I know! I did this almost 10 times in a week once).

In the teams presentation workshop, start by breaking the ice and letting people organically talk with each other, with the clear goal of letting information flow and cultivating collaboration in the form of help, technical insights, and allowing learned experiences to be shared among peers.

3. Insufficient Feedback Loops

Once I was tasked to define a set of tools to be used for the Project Management Office (PMO) scope of the company. I was “invited” to a demo of a Project Management tool that is very popular in the internet realm. However, my testing showed the tool was missing some key features someone would expect from a Project Management software, like automatic scheduling based on task durations and ways to understand if a team member was over-allocated on projects or tasks (basic resource management).

During the meeting, the salesperson was having difficulties understanding my feedback and complaints about the tool. I was trying so hard to hide my surprise (moreover, shock), since the features I was referencing are standard for Microsoft Project or even Open-Source Project Management software.

Once the meeting was over, I didn’t believe the tool didn’t have the most basic features, so I went to Mr. Google and figure this one out for myself. The vendor has a very interesting community forum to which I was granted access. While I investigated the forum further, I couldn’t believe what I found and I was even more shocked. It was clear they were having multiple people giving the same feedback as I and their support engineers were having the same challenges understanding the problem. Nobody at that entire company had a look at Microsoft Project and its basic features. No benchmarking study, no feedback loops between Support, Sales, and Product Teams, nothing! Each department is a silo.

How to address this?

Organize workshops to share feedback about pain points and common complaints between different departments.

⋆｡°✩ Become an Agent of Change ✩°｡⋆

Breaking these silos is a responsibility of each of us. The most important aspect of breaking a silo is for every one of us to become what I call an “Agent of Change”. It starts by talking with a colleague of a nearby team and sharing challenges and solutions. Understand what every team’s goal is and the people that might help unblock a future issue. Also, take the initiative to organize small conversations or forums to get insight from different colleagues.

An Agent of Change is someone who starts to understand the landscape and sets in motion a set of actions for promoting positive change.

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Special thanks to for sharing his collaboration tips in this 4th milestone of the Thriving Challenge. Follow him in .

To increase collaboration in your teams, follow Artur’s tips.

Key Takeaways

1. Align objectives across All Levels.
   Company goals are communicated top-down, often losing clarity and becoming contradictory when they reach the IT engineers. Aligning these objectives at the higher level with solid team feedback is the first step.

2. Break down silo mentalities through regular interaction.
   Sometimes we don’t know whose team is seated next to us in the office. Workshops, fostering dependencies and connections between teams, allow letting the communication flow.

3. Create robust feedback loops between departments.
   With feedback mechanisms, departments will share information, understand the competition, and strategize together on ways to build a better product.

4. Take personal initiative to become an agent of change.
   Increase your social awareness of your organization and company to thrive.

My Recommendations

Tasks for the Week

☑️ The 5 minutes Favor: Each day, identify a small action you can take that will add value to someone you work with. This could be something as small as sharing an article, making an introduction, or recognizing someone for a job well done.
☑️ The 15 minutes 1:1: Choose someone you didn’t talk to in a 1:1 for a long time. Send them a message or meme, ask for a coffee or lunch, or go to their table and ask what they are working on this week.

Books

1. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us — Daniel H. Pink

2. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together & Others Don't — Simon Sinek

3. Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team — Patrick Lencioni

Self Awareness Side Thriving🌟Challenge Practice

Ask for Feedback and Reflect

We have blind spots, the people who we think we are might not be the people others see. What you say or you ask others, might not be aligned with your actions. We need feedback to uncover what we don't see and increase our self-awareness.

3 Activities:

1. Ask for feedback from a peer, direct report and/or supervisor. Start with vulnerability. Reflect on it. Use it for continuously improving on performance and detect blind spots. Getting feedback is a gift.

2. Take the Insight Quizz to identify how self-aware you really are. Tells us the amazing results!

3. Keep taking note of how you feel and enumerate 5 things you are grateful for.

2 Resources:

1. Read The Power of Self-Awareness in Tech Leadership with

2. Watch The Power of Self-Awareness which illustrates the transformative potential of giving and receiving feedback.

Get in Touch

You can find me on LinkedIn and X.

If you wish to make a request on a particular topic you would like to read, you can reply or send me an email to patri@develagora.com.

💡 Ways to lead with empathy and compassion
💡 Practical strategies for creating psychological safety
💡 How to build trust across language barriers

Language was the first barrier I found when I moved to AWS in Berlin.

I still remember my exhaustion after 5 hours of interviews. I started to mix Spanish words in the very last hour. To my surprise, I got hired. But during my probation, the senior engineer told me I needed to improve my English skills. He gave me some tips to follow, and after the probation period, the company paid me for English lessons. How did I improve? Controlling my emotions by not feeling discouraged. I studied and practiced more with my English teacher, who helped me land AWS, my dream job.

What is Empathy and Compassion

Empathy is caring about our coworkers, feeling with them, and wanting to help them. We are open to change our perspective while being focus in the purpose and not where to go or battle to win. It allows us to connect. However, it may cloud our judgment, encourage bias, and make us less effective at making wise decisions.

Compassion occurs when we take a step away from the problem and ask ourselves how we can really help. Then we act to overcome the challenges.

How To Master Leading With Compassion

1. Notice: Slow down. Observe team dynamics. Stay aware of communication challenges and watch for signs of frustration or hesitation. When focused on something, don’t lose awareness of everything else. Noticing can prevent you from making careless mistakes and enable you to become a present and engaged leader.

2. Understand: Seek the perspective of others by asking direct questions to understand them. Thank them for answering. Sometimes answering questions that allow us to understand them requires vulnerability, so create safe spaces.

3. Act: Look for ways to help to overcome the pains or challenges of your team. These compassionate acts might bring a smile or prevent burnout, even your own. Remember that some problems just need to be heard and acknowledged. Just listening or coaching can help them to find their own solution and grow.

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This is what from applied successfully with Peter. He helped Peter to overcome his language challenges through psychological safety. He normalized mistakes and fostered learning from each other. With psychological safety, Peter felt valued, and his team was encouraged to address language problems, take risks, and help others. Read his story below.

Adler, over to you:

As a foreigner living in Japan, the language barrier is always a challenge for me. The working environment here is usually a mix of Japanese and English, and neither is my first language.

Since I deal with it every day, I never expected language learning to be a tool for building trust as a leader. But one of my team members, Peter (not his real name), gave me that opportunity. It was unexpected, but it worked out better than I imagined.

Let me share how language learning can be surprisingly useful for leaders.

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Language Barriers and Conflicts

Peter was my team member, and he didn’t have a great relationship with others. There were constant conflicts.

When I took over the team as the Engineering Manager, I quickly realized that the team didn't like Peter. The biggest complaint I heard was that he could come hostile out of nowhere. This has been bothering the team for a while.

The first thing I did was try to understand the root cause. After talking to him and other members, I found a mix of factors:

• He treated people differently depending on whether he saw them as "friends."

• He was overly insistent on certain design principles and coding styles.

It seems like there are a lot of issues to work on. But luckily, I found one easy entry point that allowed me to build trust with him.

Both of us are non-native English speakers, and I noticed that he struggled to express himself accurately. His words often sound blunt or rude, but it was mostly because he couldn't find the right expressions. As someone who has also learned English as a second language, I understand how frustrating that can be.

Empathy is a choice. And it’s a vulnerable choice, because if I were to choose to connect with you through empathy, I would have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling. — Brené Brown

For example, once someone asked him a question: “Hey, Peter. Has that feature X been deployed?”

He replied: “Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

That sounds rude. However, what Peter wanted to say was: “Yes. Is there any issue with feature X that I can help with?”

His colleague misunderstood and thought Peter was being hostile again, leading to another conflict.

I asked Peter about his struggles with English and whether he found it difficult to express himself. I also offered to help correct any unclear or misleading phrasing when I noticed it. He was happy to accept, and from then on, we worked on this every week in our 1-on-1s.

He still had conflicts with others from time to time, but it became easier for him to listen when I stepped in. Since we had already built trust, discussions about improvements were smoother.

Creating a Language-Friendly Workspace

That experience with Peter helped me develop a few more strategies. Most of them are aligned with core leadership principles. The following is how managers can help create a language-friendly team environment:

Normalize Language Mistakes

Language learners make mistakes all the time.

You probably have run into the following situation: a foreigner tried to explain something in your native language, they struggled, and you started to lose your patience.

The same thing happens in the workplace. Everyone’s busy, and slow communication can kill productivity.

But this is where your leadership skill comes in. Leaders should create an environment where people are free to make mistakes. Language is a skill, just like coding. Working with language learners is like working with junior engineers. When they make mistakes, you help them learn, and you encourage everyone to do the same. It creates a healthy and positive environment.

And for those who don’t want to make the effort? You can include it in the feedback. Everyone should contribute to building a healthy team environment, including the language learners themselves.

Speak Their Language

If you live in a foreign country like I do, learning the local language helps not just in daily life but also in the workplace.

People give you more respect when you try to speak their language, even if you're not very good at it yet.

Speaking a foreign language in team meetings can be intimidating, and using it in casual conversations could be awkward too. In my experience, 1-on-1 meetings are the easiest place to start.

Here’s how I usually approach it:

I ask if they’re okay with me trying to speak their language. I also let them know I’d like to try it once or twice as an experiment. This gives both of us a way to adjust or stop if it doesn’t work.

When I speak, I try to use the easiest words and grammar. This minimize the risk of misunderstanding.

When listening, I clarify anything that I don't understand. And I skip the parts that don't seem important, because there's no way I'll understand everything.

And yes, sometimes conversations get stuck. When that happens, I switch back to English, write down what did't work, and study it later.

Trust me. You will earn a ton of respect, and you will see your own improvement quickly.

Encourage Learning

Depending on the language setup in the workplace, language learning can be a powerful tool for building trust. Leaders should encourage team members to learn the main communication language if they are still in the process.

Mastering a language takes time, but demonstrating a willingness to learn is a great help. The following section will explore how to demonstrate a positive learning attitude as a language learner.

Building Trust as a Language Learner

It’s much more challenging for language learners like Peter who struggle to express themselves.

As someone who has gone through the same process, I've found the following actions helpful in building trust early on:

Be Clear about the Learning Process

At an early stage, communicate the idea that you're still learning the language. This helps set the context that some mistakes may simply be due to the language barrier.

Learning Through Actions

Show a learning attitude and actively learn. For example, during one-on-one meetings, write down points you struggled to understand or express. At the end of the meeting, take a moment to ask your manager or team member about those points. This reinforces that you're actively learning, while also giving them an opportunity to support you. Through these interactions, it becomes easier to build trust and integrate language learning into the team dynamics.

Be Consistent

Avoid merely stating that you're learning without taking concrete actions. It's easy to forget language learning when work demands increase. However, if you don't actively work on it, people may forget, and they might not factor the language barrier into consideration during potential conflicts.

Final Thoughts: Language as a Leadership Skill

As a leader, it’s important to remember you don’t need to be good at everything, including languages. You don’t need to be fluent in all the languages your team speaks.

Instead, leadership is about enabling others, so language is a tool to build trust and understand the team better. You can create an environment where people feel safe making mistakes, and encourage everyone else to help. These helps build a culture with diversity, empathy, and compassion.

Have you ever worked in a foreign country and had to learn the language? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments. — Adler Hsieh

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Special thanks to for sharing his building trust story in this 3rd milestone of the Thriving Challenge. Follow him in . In the 4th milestone, we will talk about Collaboration with and wonder leaders.

My Recommendations

Tools

1. WonderLead Building Trust Bundle for free for Wonder Leaders.
   Assess your team’s psychological safety and use the sheets as tools or to track progress on building trust.

Books

1. Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence Paperback — Daniel Goleman

2. The Fearless Organization — Amy C. Edmondson

3. Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion — Paul Bloom

4. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High — Joseph Grenny

Self Awareness Side Thriving🌟Challenge Practice

Stop Cognitive Distortions with Blue Dolphins

If we believe that our thoughts and feelings are true, it risks our self-motivation and self-esteem. Instead of turning off negative self-talk (White Bears), get mindful and make thoughts and emotions work for you with “Go-to” positive thoughts you find inspiring (Blue Dolphins).

There are 10 types of White Bears (Cognitive Distorsions): 1) All or Nothing Thinking, 2) Overgeneralization, 3) Mental Filter, 4) Discounting the Positive, 5) Jumping to conclusions, 6) Magnification, 7) Emotional Reasoning, 8) “Should” Statements, 9) Labeling, and 10) Personalization and Blame.

Create blue dolphins 🐬 to conquer your white bears 🐻‍❄️!!

1. If you identify a cognitive distortion, defuse it by naming your feeling:
   “I’m noticing I’m having the thought that [thought] that makes me feel [feeling].”

2. Reframe by 1) reinterpreting (they might have unmet needs), 2) reordering (will you care in 1 day/month/year?), 3) repositioning (how can this make me a better leader?), or 4) normalizing (it’s ok to feel anxious/overwhelmed..)

3. Dive deep and keep a log in your journal 1) the thought you had (white bear), 2) its new reframed version (blue dolphin), and 3) the why and reframing technique used.

Get in Touch

You can find me on LinkedIn and X.

If you wish to make a request on a particular topic you would like to read, you can reply or send me an email to patri@develagora.com.

💡 What is building trust, why it is important, and how to apply it daily.
💡 Difference between “sympathy,” “empathy,” and “compassion” when leading.
💡 How to build trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director from Gabriele.

Tasks for the Week:

☑️ Apply one of the tips for your job role/level. Apply another tip next week.
☑️ Practice the self-awareness activity on the bottom of this post with your team.
☑️ Practice one of the productivity tools from the previous post in your job.

Building Trust at the Workplace

Building trust is hard. It includes bringing our emotions and unique experiences through vulnerability to the workplace. But it creates safe environments that allow us and our teams to be our full selves at work. By building trust, we deepen engagement, help our team manage change, and inspire creativity and growth.

We build trust by being curious, empathizing, and consistently seeking and actively supporting the overall well-being and needs of others.

It’s not enough with being nice or connecting with empathy.
You need to lead with compassion which is the active intention to help others.

Gabriele, over to you.

Early in my career, I was eager to find a place to learn and grow with others, feeling comfortable enough to admit my mistakes and weaknesses. Instead, I crowded my mind with a handful of: "I hope they won't find out I don't know how git rebase works.", "Ugh, I don't know half the acronyms everyone uses.", "What was a left join again? I need to look this up quickly!", and so on. I second-guessed every move and was anxious to admit when I didn’t know something. At the time, I didn’t realize I didn’t trust the team enough and would rather keep all these questions for myself. These daily thoughts were not a sustainable way to start a career. They were trapping me in a cycle of self-doubt and isolation, hindering my growth.

Building Trust As an IC

My impostor syndrome held me back, brushing away any chance to be part of a community. I felt the constant struggle of having to do it all by myself. Then, with a glimpse of mental clarity, I drove back down memory lane. I remembered that I had been the one building communities before, but not in a professional setting. It all came back. Building this environment requires deliberate work; it doesn't just "happen" over time.

I went through ups and downs when I worked at startups or smaller companies. Poor leadership often caused a lack of trust between peers. You would try to outshine your teammates and hoard knowledge to sound brighter. Not only did this make me feel lonelier than before, it eventually fostered unhealthy competition.

Collaboration was a second-class citizen. It created uncomfortable dynamics because you wanted to take credit for the work done. It was hard to make good, lasting decisions; everyone wanted to push for their idea even when it was not the best. Only one could win and get the trophy! (Spoiler alert: there was no trophy.) I didn't know how to change this, and I didn't feel empowered to try.

Looking back, I should have taken the initiative and talked to my manager. I was blown away by how people could run a company or manage a team at such a young age. I was sure they had it all figured out. How come they couldn't fix it? There was no way someone like me could help, right? It turns out they were also figuring it out. They didn't intend to create this environment and could have used someone to call it out.

At this point in my career, I thought I could gain trust only by delivering excellent work. I was uncertain about many things but was confident in my creative problem-solving. I doubled down on that and was eventually offered to be a leader at the company. Since I found myself trusting people who were either delivering or were trying hard to do so, I figured that’s how I should behave to gain the team’s trust.

My tips for building trust as an IC:

☑️ Deliver excellent work.
☑️ Go out of your way to help others.
☑️ Communicate openly and frequently with your manager.

Building Trust As a Manager or Senior IC

As I advanced to managerial and director roles, I've been committed to creating a safe space. If I didn't feel empowered to lead those changes before, others likely felt the same. I knew it was a leadership problem then, so I wanted to be part of the solution this time. It all began with establishing a simple yet effective group chat for the team to focus on collaboration. It allows for exchanging ideas, asking for help, calculated risk-taking, and cultivating good rapport and trust.

I led the effort by showing my weaknesses and knowledge gaps. Doing so gave the team a clear signal: not everyone needs to know everything. I promoted the idea that, as a team, we need to support each other in overcoming our individual limitations. This approach helped foster conversations as equals where every member not only shared their ideas freely but also discovered how to serve the team more effectively, thereby building lasting trust.

At this stage in your career, you have the power to make a difference. Don’t hesitate to try different approaches. Observe how your team handles each change and adapt accordingly. Most importantly, collect feedback!

My tips for building trust as a Manager and also beneficial for Senior ICs:

☑️ Show up when your team needs it.
☑️ Listen openly and act quickly to resolve issues and blockers.
☑️ Ask for feedback frequently.
☑️ Create a safe space for the team.

“A Safe Space” means any place where:
🌟Anyone can openly challenge ideas without fearing repercussions.
🌟They feel comfortable disagreeing with one another.
🌟Anyone can admit when they make a mistake and know the team will be there to help.

Building Trust As a Director or Staff IC

As a director, the challenge of building trust extends beyond your teams. It goes across the entire engineering organization, which inevitably carries a different weight. In a way, this feels less natural. You must actively keep the trust level high, or project collaborations will fall apart quickly. You might lack day-to-day interactions, so you must plan how trust can be managed consistently.

Not too long ago, we needed to collaborate with a team in a different time zone. We both intended to make the relationship work, but we had to overcome the difficulties of having only a few overlapping working hours. There was a lot of transparency in surfacing concerns and challenges each team faced, which made the conversation simpler and more focused. I was eager to learn from them what an ideal collaboration looked like. This helped build trust and align us on goals. We eventually documented our strategy, which served as a reference for the future. We also settled for recurring check-ins, which helped maintain trust.

My top tips and habits for Directors and Staff ICs that I served my teams well:

☑️ Ask for feedback, listen openly, act on it, and follow up. Communication channels should be open, especially for skip-level 1:1s.
☑️ Encourage cross-team collaborations. This can take the form of a roundtable, a happy hour, or anything that helps avoid silos.
☑️ Help and support your managers so they can iterate on trust-building within their teams.
☑️ Be transparent by letting the team understand how decisions are made, the priorities, and what obstacles stand in the way of success.

Conclusion

Key strategies for building trust and collaboration include creating a safe space for team growth, clarifying alignment and challenges, and promoting open and transparent communication. As one's role grows within an organization, the scale of trust-building changes, significantly impacting the business and team's success. I hope it’s clear that you can make a change for the better, no matter where you are in your career.

A team with individuals who trust each other will outperform a team that doesn’t.

Special thanks to for sharing his leadership insights. Follow his journey on LinkedIn and also on .

Self Awareness Side Thriving🌟Challenge Practice

Ask for Feedback

We have blind spots; the people who we think we are might not be the people others see. What you say or you ask others might not be aligned with your actions. We need feedback to uncover what we don't see and increase our self-awareness and growth.

1. Take the Insight Quiz to identify how self-aware you really are. It includes an assessment from someone who knows you well. — Dr. Tasha Eurich.

2. Ask for feedback from a peer, direct report, and supervisor. Use it for continuously improving performance and detecting blind spots. Getting feedback is a gift.

3. Enumerate 5 things you are grateful for and keep taking notes of how you feel.

4. Watch The Power of Self-Awareness illustrates the transformative potential of giving and receiving feedback. — William L. Sparks

My Recommendations

Books

• Radical Candor — Kim Scott

• Thanks for the Feedback — Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen

• Leaders Eat Last — Simon Sinek

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — Patrick Lencioni

Videos

• Simon Sinek Videos

• Why Building Trust Is Important - Simon Sinek

• How Can All Contribute to a Safe Environment - Amy Edmondson

Get In Touch

You can find me on LinkedIn and X.

If you wish to make a request on a particular topic you would like to read, you can reply or send me an email to patri@develagora.com.

💡 How to overcome productivity roadblocks and maintain work-life balance.
💡 Ways to lead by example while delegating effectively.
💡 4 practical tools to boost your productivity while managing energy.

From A Break to Productive

In my team at Amazon, we used to say: “The most stressful periods of the year are October to November and February to March”. In October-November due to reInvent and in February-March due to planning/scoping work. You can correlate those months with my publication dates. In the last 3 weeks, I had to prepare the review of a 5 Customer Questions Working Backwards document with senior leaders in an onsite, and an internal AWS conference presentation. But there was something else: 2 children in Daycare + Winter Flu. We have been rotating the flu at home over the last 2 months.

The result? At work great, but I slowed down and got delayed in our 30 Days Thriving Challenge. Publishing daily in the chat and 2 weekly posts, together with the stress at work and sickness at home, was too much. I needed to rest. I needed to take breaks. Taking breaks helps us to refresh our minds and to refocus later. To be resilient. But we need to get up, and productivity tools can help us to get back on track.

Today, I share with you the 4 productivity tools that I promised you in my last post. Next, and will publish guest posts on Earn Trust.

Productivity vs Motivation

Productivity isn't just about getting things done. It's about effectiveness (doing the right things, the appropriate goals, and quality of work) and efficiency (doing things right and quantity of work).

While motivation drives our intensity and persistence, being motivated makes us 17% more productive. However, we often fall into productivity traps.

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Common Productivity Roadblocks

1. Firefighting: Spending time on urgent issues that need resolution, rather than progress on more important and impactful goals. Example: Solving all oncall tickets instead of planning, executing, and tracking by severity.

2. Lack of Clarity: Ambiguity about how to move a project forward or what to work on. Lack of deadlines, importance unawareness, or what needs to get done. Example: Early this year my team was blocked by high level leadership decisions. It impacted the productivity of the team.

3. Cherry picking: Choosing what to do to make quick accomplishments and feel productive instead of focusing on what’s important. Example: Talking with stakeholders without an intentional plan.

4. Lack of Planning: Spending a disproportionate amount of time on activities and projects that are not important nor add value. Example: Working on projects that are not aligned with your leadership.

5. Distractions: External and internal interruptions that keep you from giving something your full attention. Example: Opening new browser tabs while switching to a different, slightly related topic.

6. Lack of Focus: Diminished concentration that slows down your progress and makes a task bigger in time. Example: Rereading a document or email.

To avoid getting trapped, we need to be aware of the productivity roadblocks and find a balance.

Avoiding Productivity Roadblocks as Leaders

As leaders, we need to lead by example as well as delegate while avoiding the productivity roadblocks. When something is urgent but not important to you, that usually means it is urgent and important to somebody else. But as we work in collaborative settings, sometimes we need to complete tasks that are sand instead of big rocks (unimportant tasks). Not collaborating enough can impact your ability to Build Trust and not working on your important projects can impact your ability to Deliver Results. We need a balance.

Great leaders are self-aware and adaptable. Here’s how to lead with balance:

1. Know Your Why: Before stepping into a task or delegating, ask yourself; Why am I choosing this approach? Acting with intention ensures your actions align with your goals, values, and avoids you from firefighting, lacking clarity, or cherry-picking by default.

2. Plan Your Tasks and Energy: Once you know your why, block time in your calendar for planning or addressing the task considering your energy and scheduled breaks. Calendarizing allows you to focus on the right things and avoid distractions, because during the autopilot while executing, we will be able to do the right things planned efficiently.

3. Communicate Clearly: Authentic leaders bring their team along on the journey. If you’re leading by example, explain why it’s necessary. When delegating, articulate your trust and expectations clearly. By communicating clearly, you bring clarity and focus to the team.

4. Adapt to the Situation: Leadership isn’t one-size-fits-all. During high-pressure moments, lead by example to inspire. In everyday operations, delegate to empower. Flexibility is key. Through daily, weekly, and monthly reviews, you will get more self-aware and be able to identify a lack of focus or planning.

5. Show Gratitude: Practicing gratitude helps team members feel valued and appreciated, increasing their job satisfaction and productivity. Additionally, it will boost your positivity and motivation.

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4 Tools for Productive Leadership

As leaders, we can make things happen that weren’t going to happen without us. We create a vision and strategy through goals. These tips will help achieve them productively:

1. Manage Your Energy for Optimal Achievement

Understanding and managing your energy levels is crucial for peak performance. Here's how:

1. Identify your Chronotype: Take this quizz and determine whether you're a Lark (morning person), Third Bird (in-between), or Owl (evening person) to understand your energy peaks.

2. Estimate your tasks based on your energy: Assess your energy level and focus relative to the task. Estimate task duration based on your current energy state.

3. Organize tasks based on your energy stages: Divide your day into peak, trough, and recovery stages, and plan tasks accordingly.

"I do my high-IQ meetings before lunch. Like anything that's going to be really mentally challenging, that's a 10 o'clock meeting. By 5pm, I'm like, I can't think about that today. Let's try this again tomorrow at 10 am." — Jeff Bezos

The 3 Energy Stages

1. Peak: Highly vigilant, in the best mood, and with the most energy.

2. Trough: Major drop in mood and performance.

3. Recovery: Rise in mood but no great vigilance.

Night Owls, experience a reverse pattern and are in Recovery in the morning, Trough in the early-to-mid-afternoon, and Peak in the late afternoon and into the evening.

Use your peak period to focus on deep, important work and analytic, cognitively-demanding tasks. Avoid administrative work, like processing emails, and time-wasters like reading online news, at peak hours or recovery stages of the day. When you’re in your recovery period, switch to insight, creativity-driven tasks because you will be less vigilant but in a good mood.

Example: As a leader at Amazon I sometimes have to wear many hats. With the experience I identified that at my Trough stage I feel better doing TPM work than tech designs. Because I don’t need to put a lot of energy and my brain doesn’t try to avoid it. When I tried to be creative or write a tech design in the afternoon (my trough), it resulted in me wasting time and working extra hours that day.

2. Refocus by Slowing Down and Resting

Make real breaks that allow you to refresh your mind, detach from work, and help you to refocus later.

2.1. Mental Rest: Take strategic breaks of up to 20min every 90min of work to take advantage of the daily ultradian rhythm. The ultradian rhythm is the wake-rest-activity cycle that repeats through the 24h day. It alternates periods of high-frequency brain activity (roughly 90 minutes) followed by lower-frequency brain activity (approximately 20 minutes).

2.2. Physical Rest: Keep a consistent sleep schedule that aligns with your circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm controls when you are most alert and when you are most tired. It is your brain’s sleep-wake cycle in a 24-hour period that determines your natural wake up time and bedtime. The average sleep is 90 minutes long of 4-5 full sleep cycles, or 6-7.5 hours. Plus 20-40 minutes to fall asleep. Starting at your wake time, work back 7.5 hours to find your bedtime.

2.3. Sensory Rest: Unplug from electronics at the end of the day to reduce their sense of overwhelming. Or close your eyes for 1 minute in the middle of the day.

2.4. Creative Rest: Take in the beauty of the outdoors or enjoy arts to reawaken the awe and wonder inside to improve in problem solving.

2.5. Emotional Rest: Be authentic. Take the time and space to freely express your feelings and cut back on people pleasing.

2.6. Social Rest: Surrounding yourself with positive and supportive people will allow you to differentiate between those relationships that exhaust you.

2.7. Spiritual Rest: Engage in something greater than yourself and add prayer, meditation, or community involvement to your daily routine. It will give you a deep sense of belonging, love, acceptance, and purpose.

My current sleep time is 6 hours split in half due to the baby. That negatively impacts my concentration, energy, and mood level during the day. The community from Substack gives me some rest too. Thanks to and for all your support.

3. Calendarize and Adapt

Keep your calendar up to date and also incorporate time for addressing your projects while being adaptable through the day with reviews. Read this tip in the chat:

4. Time Management Apps

Additionally, here you have 3 apps that will help you to focus through the day:

1. Stayfocusd: Control the websites you visit at the time you want to stay focused.

2. Marinara: Pomodoro: Light way Pomodoro browser tool.

3. Break Timer: Plan your breaks. You can also use it with Pomodoro technique.

4. Automated WonderLead Framework in an Obsidian preconfigured Vault.

5. Digital WonderLead Planner for those who prefer a more printed sheets.

"Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen." — Jeff Bezos

Self-Awareness Side Practice

Pause, Breathe, and Recharge

Being self-aware is not easy. After asking for feedback or in another situation your emotions might been triggered. Then our defense mechanism arise.

Pause and Listen to your emotions.

Listening to our emotions is hard at triggered moments. Tens of different emotions might hit us at the same time.

Breathe and Accept they are there.

Ask yourself what is causing them? Keep diving deep until you identify the root cause.

Then ask yourself, what do I want to do about it?

Take note of: (1) what you were doing, (2) emotional reaction rate, (3) triggering thoughts, (4) feelings (in body too), (5) with/about who, (6) assumptions, 1 negative thing or many data?, (8) next steps.

Now Recharge.

Try recharging by listening to music, dancing, drawing, or walking in nature. All of them will release dopamine (the brain's reward chemical), while reducing cortisol (the stress hormone).

Share in the comments the music that helps you to focus or recharge. Or the drawing this post inspired you.

Get In Touch

You can find me on LinkedIn and X.

If you wish to make a request on a particular topic you would like to read, you can send me an email to patri@develagora.com.

Hi! 🙋🏻‍♀️ Welcome to WonderLead.Tech!
In the last 2 weeks, we doubled the size of subscribers, and I feel very grateful to have you here.
I believe we can build together a great community of wonder leaders in tech!

What You'll Learn:

💡 Transform from being overwhelm to strategic achiever.
💡 Align your goals with personal and team values.
💡 Combine self-awareness with self-management to keep focus.

From Overwhelm to Achievement

I used to own too much and became a bottleneck for my team.

Juggling too many high-priority tasks led to missed deadlines and compromised quality. I wasn't choosing the right battles because, for some of them, it wasn't the right time. I also couldn't meet delivery dates because I had too many big rocks in the jar. Through practice and mentorship, I learned a system that helps me thrive. And combined with self-awareness, I can self-correct and align my goals with my values and vision.

This week in the Thriving Challenge, we are going to start diving deep in thriving through self-management of our emotions and challenges. We will address challenges with curiosity, positivity, and focus. This will allow us to learn from failure, innovate, and adapt with success. I will share with you 4 tips during the week. After practicing self-awareness, we are ready to set habits and tools that will make us thrive. At the bottom of each challenge post, you will find self-awareness tips. Self-awareness is an ongoing process that we have to keep practicing to become great leaders!

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The Foundation of Right Achievement is Self-Management

Self-management in Emotional Intelligence helps us to regulate our behaviors, thoughts, and emotions in a productive way. So that we can excel for the benefit of ourselves and our team. It includes the competencies Emotional Self-Control, Adaptability, Achievement Orientation, and Positive Outlook.

Achievement Orientated Balanced Leaders

As wonder leaders and in our lives, we strive for excellence. We look for ways to do things better and set challenging goals with calculated risks. However, staying in this overdrive all the time may make us toxic leaders or unhappy in our lives. To avoid it, we need a balance with the rest of Emotional Intelligence competencies.

How To Achieve Your Goals With Balance

For achieving my goals I use productivity technics (Big Rocks, GTD, and Pomodoro) together with self-awareness. You may already have your own system that works and that makes you an achiever. Then, I suggest you to incorporate in it self-awareness and align your goals and tasks with your core values, while following your purpose or vision. For details on assessing your values, you can read the post below.

1. Adopt Time Management Methodologies

There are several ways to self-manage ourselves; The Big Rocks methodology is about fitting in our time or resources (Jar) high priority projects (Big Rocks) while eliminating, delegating, or de-prioritizing less important projects and tasks (little rocks and sand). It creates time for our highest priorities and still having space for other less important things.

Benefits: It allows to grow in our role, impacts our customer significantly, and contributes to our team or organization. Because they maximize our resource allocation, enhance focus and clarity, boost morale and productivity, reduce stress by prioritizing overwhelming workloads, and deliver superior results by achieving more important tasks.

2. Plan Goals Aligned With Values

2.1. Define Your Aligned Goals

1. Identify your high priority projects (Big Rocks) from the plan of the year, strategic documents, level guidelines, or customer metrics.

2. Choose 3-5 Big Rocks for the quarter that:

   1. Drive significant team/customer impact.

   2. Align with organizational goals.

   3. Support personal/professional growth.

   4. Connect to your values and purpose. 🚀

3. Define them with the SMART🌟 framework. Relevant should have your purpose.

Why: Not aligning your goals with your values can lead to burnout despite external success, decreased job satisfaction, internal conflict and stress, reduced long-term motivation, and potential damage to relationships or well-being.

2.2. Your Success Roadmap

1. Plan your Big Rocks by breaking the projects into manageable tasks.

2. Track and Prioritize your plan and tasks weekly. This way, you make progress and boost your focus. Otherwise, some tasks might linger for weeks in your list before you consider them while you Keep The Lights On or firefight urgent issues.

My Example: Last week I worked on a 5 Customer Questions (Little Rock) document for a new technical product (Big Rock). While at the same time supported the team with reviews and writing a COE. What I did was break the doc down into the following tasks which allowed me to make progress on the project: (1) Initial section notes, (2) PM/SDM alignment, (3) UXD visuals planning, (4-6) write draft of section 1-3, (7) refine draft and add visuals, and (8) do the first review. This week finalizing the doc is urgent because I want to review it with the Leader PM of the org.

Tip: What was important may become also urgent, which is a state you must avoid.
Under urgent situations, our brain is in reactive mode and doesn’t do its best.

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3. Plan and Execute Your Roadmap Daily

3.1. Mindfully Review and Plan every task

Our work is never just Big Rocks, so we need to account for smaller rocks. With a daily plan you will know what to tackle, instead of prioritizing instant gratification or getting tunnel vision, our brain’s default choices. Tunnel vision might neglect smaller important tasks and miss opportunities.

3.2. Maintain Daily Focus

1. Try first a small, slightly related task or tasks previously done to boost your motivation. For instance, clean up your inbox before writing an important email, or sync with a stakeholder about your doc before writing a specific section.

2. Block in your calendar the high priority tasks of the day or from yesterday.

3. Keep a single backlog for the tasks you want to do and focus on today.

4. Skip not important and conflicting meetings by following up asynchronously.

3.2. Adaptive and Positive Mindset with Self Awareness

By combining self-management with self-awareness we can thrive. Do the following:

1. Delegate and Collaborate. Your little rocks might be the big rocks for someone else. You can use the Eisenhower Matrix or GTD to identify what to delegate/drop. Also remember that you don’t need to do actively all important and urgent tasks always.

2. Think in the positive customer and team impact to keep a positive mindset.

3. Balance tasks with values and purpose. In your reviews, ask yourself if the new task (1) process and (2) outcome align with your Values and Purpose by asking “Why am I doing this?” and “What do I want to achieve?”. If the goal task is not aligned, think of a way to tackle it so that in the long term you will have a positive outcome out of it.

4. Balance urgent needs with important priorities. Values, culture, leadership development of your people, and building and maintaining strong team relationships all fall into the important and not urgent category. Being able to maintain these important functions when the demands are pulling towards the urgent tells your teams that when a crisis hits, you care about them and you are maintaining a wide perspective.

“Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you”. — Franklin Convey

Thriving Challenge Action Plan

Step 1: Define Your Goals (Today)

☑️ Write down your top 3 Big Rocks for this month.
☑️ Align each goal to specific core values and your purpose.
☑️ Use this template:

Goal: [Your SMART Goal]
Value(s): [Your Value(s)]
Impact: [Team/Customer/Personal Growth]
First Action Step or Detailed Plan: [Specific Task]

Step 2: Set Up Your System

☑️ Schedule focused work blocks in your calendar.
☑️ Prepare your inbox.
☑️ Practice delegating and saying no.
☑️ Do daily and weekly reviews with values checks.

Step 3: Join the Thriving🌟Challenge and Get Accountable

Put these principles into practice with other wonder leaders right now!
☑️ Share your most important goal for this month in the comments or chat.
☑️ Share your core values aligned with your goal.
☑️ Ask Us Anything. Experienced leaders such as , , and joined the challenge and can be found in our Chat or Discord. Feel free to connect or ask us for help!
☑️ Get Accountable by filling out this Accountability Sheet!

Leave a comment

Self-Awareness Side Practice

Pre Step 1: Define your Values and Strengths

To align your goals with your values and strengths as part of your weekly reviews, you need to define your values first. Your values and goals will become the compass of your actions. 🚀 One tip: You likely admire the people who exhibit those values in their day to day lives. Join the chat and share your values with Marion with Animalsofa, Artur Henriques, and me.

1. Define your core values and strengths. Share them in a comment or chat.

2. Read Self-Assessment: Knowing Your Why Leads to Your Dream Job

Pre Step 2 - Mindfully Identify Your Purpose

As leaders, we need to be intentional. To be able to thrive, we need a sense of fulfillment, and for achieving it, some of our goals and actions should be aligned with our purpose and mission. Today, mindfully identify your mission, passion, vocation and profession in your life and career through an Ikigai exercise.

1. Find your Ikigai, the intersection between 1) What You’re Good/Skilled at, 2) What Others Need, 3) What You Get Value From, and 4) What You Love. Reflect, and share your ikigai in the chat or comments. Is your job and life aligned with it?

My Recommendations

Thriving Books

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen R. Covey

• Getting Things Done — David Allen

• Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman

Thriving Tools

• WonderLead Obsidian Vault Automated Planner — Patricia Juarez Muñoz

• WonderLead Digital Planner — Patricia Juarez Muñoz

Thriving Related Publications

• How TOP engineers structure their day to maximize their productivity without burnout — Strategize Your Career

• Don’t Snack Too Much At Work — The Proactive Engineer

Get In Touch

You can find me on LinkedIn and X.

If you wish to make a request on a particular topic you would like to read, you can send me an email to patri@develagora.com.

💡 The importance of self-awareness for companies and teams.
💡 Self-awareness from the lenses of a people manager.
💡 Practical tools for improving the self-awareness of your team and yourself.

Tasks for the Week:

☑️ Practice self-awareness activities from the Thriving Challenge with your team.
☑️ Send the below self-awareness quiz to your team, where you can rate each other.
☑️ In your next 1:1 ask 1) what they value in you and 2) what actions you take that annoy them.

Self-Awareness at the Workplace

Companies with more self-aware employees, from IC to top-level executives, significantly outperform — revealed a research by Korn/Ferry Instititude. As tech leaders, we have to be aware to succeed. Yet while 90% of people believe they're self-aware, only 10-15% actually are. We can change and become aware leaders. It’s a journey that I am still following.

This week in the Thriving Challenge, we are practicing self-awareness. Self-awareness allows us to understand our emotions and thoughts. It is the first step to own the actions that will make us thrive in our goals! With self-awareness we can improve our performance and overall job satisfaction of ourselves and teams.

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from , is a Senior Engineering Manager at Salesforce and believes in the advantages of self-awareness, for himself and his team. He embraces self-awareness daily and influences changes in his team that make people succeed. Want to know how? Read on, he is sharing his learnings next. Suresh, over to you.

Self-Awareness as a People Manager

As an Engineering Manager, you manage three things: yourself, your team, and the work. But the first thing you need to manage is yourself.

One morning, I got pulled into a meeting about a production issue. The on-call engineer, visibly annoyed, walked us through the root cause. It turned out to be a change another team member had made. He muttered in a frustrated tone:

“This was so obvious, right?”

He raised his eyebrows and then shook his head in disapproval. He was clearly blaming the other team member.

That triggered me. My first instinct was to snap back.

“What if you had made the change? Would you like being blamed like that? Can we act more like a team instead of pointing fingers? Shouldn’t we focus on understanding why this was missed?”

If I hadn’t been self-aware, I would have said all that aloud. And the meeting would have gone downhill from there. It would have turned into a yelling match because emotions were high on both sides.

Your Leadership Debugger

That's why Self-Awareness is such an important skill to have as a manager. Without self-awareness, you’re flying blind. It’s like trying to debug code without logs or a stack trace. You can’t fix what you don’t understand. You can’t manage others if you can’t manage yourself.

Self-awareness helps you recognize:

• What triggers you and why.

• What communication is working (and what isn’t).

• How your behavior affects your team and vice versa.

That day instead of reacting, I caught myself. I paused. I looked away, opened my notes app and started writing my thoughts. This allowed me to process those thoughts better. With my emotions in check, I could now think clearly: How do I get the outcome I want without escalating this further?

So I asked about the next steps and moved on. In my next 1:1, I gave the engineer direct and constructive feedback. He took it well.

If I had yelled that day in the meeting, this behavior change wouldn’t have happened.

How to Master Self-Awareness

For me, self-awareness has become the foundation for empathy, better decision-making, and effective leadership. It has helped me catch my blind spots and make meaningful improvements.

It’s not easy, but it’s a skill you can develop:

• Notice your emotions and pause before reacting.

• Reflect on conversations that didn’t go well. What made you angry or sad? How could you have handled it differently?

• Seek feedback to know what others observe about your behavior.

When you show self-awareness, it also encourages your team to do the same.

You can also take the coaching approach to make team members think about their behaviors and emotions.

“How does that make you feel?”

“Why is it important to you?”

Next time around, they will mentally ask these questions themselves first, making it easier to take the right action.

The idea of self-awareness is to observe, process, and respond with intent.
This is how you manage yourself first. This is how you thrive when working with other people!

Special thanks to Suresh for sharing his leadership insights. Follow his journey on LinkedIn and also on his newsletter.

Self-Awareness Week in the Thriving🌟Challenge

Connect with other leaders practicing self-awareness this week in our Substack chat. Share your experiences, get daily exercises, and practice them within the challenge. The week is not over yet! You can still join and start practicing to become an aware, thriving leader.

Challenge Recommendations

Day 1 - Define your Values and Strengths

During this month you will align your goals with your values and strengths. They will become the compass of your actions. 🚀 One tip: You likely admire the people who exhibit those values in their day to day lives. Join the chat and share your values with , , and myself.

1. Define your core values and strengths. Share them in a comment or chat.

2. Read Self-Assessment: Knowing Your Why Leads to Your Dream Job

Day 2 - Start Practicing Self-Awareness

With self-awareness we will be able to control our thoughts influenced by our values and emotions. This control will increase the likelihood of success towards our goal for the next 30 days! After the activities, don't forget to share how you felt in the process.

1. Reflect on how you feel today and what the triggers were. Take notes.

2. Journaling: At the moment you feel an emotion, dive into what situations or thoughts triggered those feelings from the present or past.

3. How do you live your values today? Write down 1-3 real examples. (e.g. one of my values is kindness, and I am running this challenge to share what I know)

4. Read "Self-Awareness: First Step to Your Career Plan and Thriving as a Leader?"

5. Watch "Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix" with Tasha Eurich.

Leave a comment

Day 3 - Mindfully Identify Your Purpose

As leaders, we need to be intentional. To be able to thrive, we need a sense of fulfillment, and for achieving it, some of our goals and actions should be aligned with our purpose and mission. Today you will mindfully identify your mission, passion, vocation and profession in your life and career through an Ikigai exercise.

1. Keep reflecting on your day.

2. Find 2 moments to breath for 2-3 minutes each. Breathe before reacting to a triggering moment, before starting a meeting, or through a guided meditation.

3. Find your Ikigai, the intersection between 1) What You’re Good/Skilled at, 2) What Others Need, 3) What You Get Value From, and 4) What You Love. Reflect, and share your ikigai in the chat or comments. Is your job and life aligned with it?

Day 4 - Ask for Feedback

We have blind spots; the people who we think we are might not be the people others see. What you say or you ask others might not be aligned with your actions. We need feedback to uncover what we don't see and increase our self-awareness and growth.

1. Take the Insight Quiz to identify how self-aware you really are. It includes an assessment from someone who knows you well. — Dr. Tasha Eurich.

2. Ask for feedback from a peer, direct report, and supervisor. Use it for continuously improving performance and detecting blind spots. Getting feedback is a gift.

3. Enumerate 5 things you are grateful for and keep taking notes of how you feel.

4. Watch The Power of Self-Awareness illustrates the transformative potential of giving and receiving feedback. — William L. Sparks

Hi! 🙋🏻‍♀️ Did you practice some of the thriving tips I shared with you last post? We can help!
Join the Thriving Challenge and get 1) automated tools for keeping your focus, 2) daily thriving activities and lessons supported on EQ, and 3) support from a community!
If you still are not interested but you think it can help others in your community,
click like 💖 or share this post 🔄 !

WonderLead🌟Thrive Challenge&Course

Join the WonderLead Thriving Challenge & Course for Free. Each week, we will practice one of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence 4 domains but focused on thriving as leaders with daily activities (15mins) and weekly posts. While you will improve your thriving skills, you will keep focus in meeting the goal(s) you chose.
Join in the chat today or subscribe!

This challenge can be customized to your schedule and preferences so that you keep your focus. If you want a more personalized experience you can fill this survey or join to the platform that fits you more:

1. Substack Chat (Daily Challenges with likeminded leaders)

2. Discord Chat (Daily Challenges with likeminded leaders and reminders)

3. Substack Newsletter (Weekly Challenge Posts)

4. LinkedIn Newsletter (Weekly Challenge Posts)

Start Thriving Today!

What is the Challenge about?

1. Transform Your Life and Career

⏱️ In just 20 minutes per day!​
​Establish your habits for Thriving by receiving in your tool of preference insightful content that will transform your leadership through activities.
Develop emotional intelligence skills and learn to navigate challenges with confidence, enhance your ability to inspire, and guide your team. Discover how to make impactful decisions and how to foster a collaborative environment that drives success.

2. Meet Your Goals with Focus

🌟 Turn your aspirations into achievements. ​
​During the program you will receive configurable notifications that will guide you through practical techniques to set and execute clear, actionable goals aligned with your values.
You'll learn effective time management strategies, master the art of prioritization, and implement the WonderLead Framework that will help you thrive. Develop the focus needed to create a sustainable work-life balance and consistently meet your objectives.

3. Thrive with Support, Not Alone

💬 Join a working group of like-minded people.​
​Join a vibrant community of like-minded leaders who support and inspire each other.
Engage in weekly live Q&A sessions with industry experts, receive personalized feedback on your growth, and connect with mentors who've walked your path.

Are you ready to Thrive? Join for Free NOW!

Join for free NOW!

(*) Alternatively to the Substack chat you can choose (1) to get daily emails by subscribing here, (2) to get a sense of more community you can join instead to our Discord chat where you will also be able to create group chats and get daily notifications that will allow remind you to focus in your goals, or (3) 1 month free paid subscription to get the daily emails without switching platforms (send me a DM). Fill out this Substack survey, and you’ll be able to enjoy the challenge with the settings of you choice.

Who is this challenge for?

1. New managers looking to establish strong leadership habits.

2. Experienced leaders aiming to refine skills.

3. Anyone returning from vacation or leave, or aiming for a promotion or goal.

4. Anyone feeling stuck in 'survival mode' and ready for thriving!

What will I get?

In addition to daily reminders and activities for helping you set thriving habits, transformative weekly mini posts, and a community of support, you will get:

1. Participants will get access for free to an 🤖 AI application that will help you Thrive with a plan.

   

2. Top Achievers will get 🏆 6 months of free paid subscription in WonderLead in Tech and access to Beta applications for thriving.

What is Thriving?

Thriving is reaching for continual growth and success, while surviving is doing what is necessary to exist. We all exist on a spectrum somewhere between surviving and thriving and constantly shift between the two states depending on our situation. Learn more about Thriving vs Survival modes in the following post:

💡 The difference between surviving and thriving in leadership.
💡 Four key areas for thriving as a leader.
💡 Practical tools for maintaining Emotional Intelligence and goal alignment.
💡 About our free 30-day thriving challenge to boost your leadership skills.

Tasks for the Week:

☑️ Assess whether you or your team are in survival or thriving mode.
☑️ Prioritize your values and ensure basic and psychological needs are met.
☑️ Commit and practice daily the tools that will help you thrive.
☑️ Join the 30 Days WonderLead Thriving Challenge & Course.

From Surviving to Thriving

After 7 years working at AWS, I thought I had mastered Amazon’s culture. But when I returned from maternity leave, I realized that I had temporarily forgotten some of my high-performance habits and skills. This made me feel less confident and like an impostor. Later, I was assigned to lead a crucial launch for my organization at reInvent - AWS's most important annual event where teams present their biggest updates - while adjusting to my life with my new baby. Sleep deprivation, stress, and lack of free time were pushing me towards survival mode.

Being in survival mode made me get stuck in the day to day high priority tasks with tunnel vision. It wasn’t only me. The team also got so focused on the delivery that we skipped retrospectives and worked more hours. We were doing an amazing job, but at what cost? At the moment I defended the team needs, it was when I started to thrive and feel myself back.

When I learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, everything became clearer. Understanding the needs required for thriving, combined with a system to support it, allows my team and me to completely succeed today.

"We can't be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode." ― Jeff Bezos

What is Surviving vs Thriving?

Surviving is doing what is necessary to exist, while thriving is reaching for continual growth and success. We all exist on a spectrum somewhere between surviving and thriving. And we all constantly shift between the two states depending on our situation. What’s critical is that we can identify where we and others are on that spectrum and then move towards thriving!

It’s not enough knowing our values and be self-aware. Before being able to thrive, we need to know the priority of our values and satisfy our basic and psychological needs. And if our environment doesn’t support us, we can apply self-management tools to stay in thriving mode.

Why is it Important to Thrive as a Leader?

When leaders thrive, it benefits the leader, the team, and the entire organization. It creates an environment where everyone can excel!

Thriving leaders inspire and motivate, are resilient and good decision-makers, foster innovation, enhance the work culture, accelerate their personal growth, improve their work-life balance and retention in their team, increase organization success, and build a legacy that lasts and has a positive impact.

How can I Thrive as a Leader?

To thrive as a leader, commit to improving the following 4 areas. They align with the Emotional Intelligence 4 Pillars that I introduced in Your Journey to Become a WonderLead post.

1. Self Awareness: Knowing ourselves allows to make the best decisions and act on them.

2. Self Management: Drive your actions towards your goals with motivation. Manage challenging situations and your emotional triggers through Self-Management. It allows to build resilience and use adversity to grow.

3. Build Trust with Social-Awareness: Empathize and support the well-being and needs of those around. It allows to deepen engagement. It helps your team manage change, prevents burnout, and inspires growth.

4. Master Collaboration Social Skill: Through relationship management, create a psychologically safe environment that fosters inclusion and innovation. It allow to resolve conflicts, influence, and develop the best in others.

Let’s break down an example:

• Situation and Task:
  My team has just encountered a major technical issue that threatens to potentially delay for 6 months a reInvent launch.

• Possible Survival Mode Actions:
  1) Panic and work longer hours, 2) Blame team members or other departments, and/or 3) Cut corners to meet the deadline at any cost.

• Recommended Thriving Mode Actions: 1) Self-Awareness: Recognize your stress and anxiety about the setback. 2) Own Your Actions: Take a step back and assess the situation objectively. 3) Build Trust with Social-Awareness: Communicate transparently with your team and stakeholders. Empathize with team members who might be feeling pressured. 4) Master Collaboration: Bring the team together to brainstorm solutions. Delegate tasks based on individual strengths. Negotiate a realistic timeline or solution with stakeholders.

• Result: Immediate problem addressed but also strengthen team cohesion, build trust with stakeholders, and creates a team process for handling future challenges.

The actions were generated by my 🎁 AI Thriving tool. You can get access when joining to the WonderLead Thriving Challenge by filling this Substack survey.

What Tools can I use to Thrive?

To be an intentional leader and thrive, I try to apply the following consistently:

1. Cultivate Self-Awareness by understanding your emotions, meditating, and rethinking what you will do before doing it.

2. Focus and Take Action with the WonderLead Framework to thrive daily by:

   1. Planning to avoid losing your North Star. Align your actions with your prioritized values and goals. Choose 1 goal at a time in a dedicated timeframe.

   2. Taking Care of Yourself by walking and mindfully breathing to reduce stress and increase optimism.

   3. Practicing Gratitude to boost your resilience and happiness.

   4. Journaling to reframe things that you are labeling as bad. Identify what actions for turning the bad into a good thing to celebrate someday in the future.

   5. Regularly Reviewing to reaffirm your values and check if you/your team are surviving or thriving (quiz). Get some additional perspective by asking others how they see your values manifested in your actions. And ask yourself, what could you have done differently to stay aligned with your values?

3. Practice Thriving Consistently. To ensure your success, I created the 30 Days WonderLead Thriving Challenge & Course! Together we’ll practice daily the 4 areas that are required for thriving. Participants will get an AI app that will help them assess survival mode and will receive guidance for shifting to thriving. Top achievers will get 6 months of the future WonderLead paid subscription and access to productivity tools. Join me for the first cohort for free here! 🎁

Remember that it is expected that we move to survival mode when there are life-inevitable issues. I also thought I had already learned the reInvent rushing lesson, but I made the mistake of stopping my own system because of lack of time and moved to survival mode. There are still days when I feel overwhelmed or unsure. But with each roadblock, we can grow, recover faster, and spend more time thriving with ongoing awareness, acknowledgement and practice.

"Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." ― Nelson Mandela

30 Days WonderLead Thriving Challenge

To help you put these tools into practice, I'm excited to announce the launch of the 30 Days WonderLead Thriving Challenge & Course! This free program is designed to help you focus on thriving through daily reminders, mini-posts, and support.

You just need to subscribe here and adjust your schedule for 20 daily minutes! It will be free in exchange for your feedback during and at the end of the program. Participants will get an AI app that will help them assess survival mode and will receive guidance for shifting to thriving. Top achievers will get 6 months of the future WonderLead paid subscription and access to productivity tools.

Start to Thrive. Join before Jan 26!

Whether you're returning from vacation or leave, aiming for a promotion or goal, dealing with survival mode or impostor syndrome, or simply you are curious to learn with like-minded individuals, this challenge is for you! You will be more prepared to handle stressful situations and life’s inevitable issues. 🎁 Join for Free! (See details).

My Recommendations

Thriving Books

• Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence — Daniel Goleman.

• A Theory of Human Motivation — Abraham H. Maslow.

• Think Again —

Thriving Tools

• 👉🏻 WonderLead Thriving Challenge

• Pomodoro Physical Timer

Thriving Related Substacks

• How to make meaningful progress this year without burning out -

• How I'm advancing my career without neglecting my life. "New year's resolutions" done right. -

This post opinions are my own, and may not reflect the opinions of the company I work for.

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Notion template for your next post + AI App that will support you as a bestseller newsletter editor.

⭐️ CONTEXT

At the time of writing, I realized that most of my audience are writers because I didn’t promote WonderLead.tech out of Substack. Some of you are paying for AI tools to help you in your newsletter, when you could create or use other tools for free. I don’t have a large audience but I really admire you. It’s a privilege for me that you are reading me and I thank your support, so I decided to dedicate a few minutes today and created you an app that you can fully customize with your personal style. I know the team who builds it, and I have been using its playground personally for many different tasks for a year ;). I love it and hope you like it! 💛

Most writers spend 60% of their time on tasks that have nothing to do with actual writing, from content planning to platform-specific formatting. Personally, I want to spend less! A well-designed AI toolkit combined with a Notion template can cut that administrative overhead in half, giving you back precious hours for actual creative work and audience engagement. And it is FREE!

🕰️ Comment: (1) How much time do you currently spend on non-writing tasks in your newsletter workflow? (2) How much time did this tool help you to reduce it?

⭐️ WHY THIS PRODUCT

• Free AI app which you can modify with your writing style.

  • 6 engaging titles autogenerated.

  • 2 edited blog posts with suggestions of improvements.

  • 3 Substack notes, Linkedin post, Twitter/X thread, and Instagram caption for promoting your new post.

  • 2 images autogenerator.

  • AI chat editor that will help you improve the texts.

  • App can be fully modified with your style and more social media posts, but must you keep the links to the original sources. If you decide to modify the app and make it public, let me know and I will link to your app in the original one.

    

• Free Notion template for writing and planning your next blog post.

  • Use the template in your writing calendar or planner.

©️COPYRIGHT & TERMS OF USE

• Personal and Commercial use. All of our products are registered under copyright. Users may not redistribute, resell, or repackage the products.
  © 2024 develAGORA, All rights reserved.

Hi! 🙋🏻‍♀️ Long time no see! I returned to AWS after maternity leave a month and a half ago. It was challenging to find time for Substack while onboarding. But I’m back with a lot to share!
How are you doing with your self-awareness and self-management practices? This post also has 🎁s for you, and an invite to our new Discord server. On Discord, it will be easier to share our journey. The more people who join, the more we will learn from each other, so don’t forget to click 💖 or share this newsletter with your friends!

What You'll Learn:

💡 The importance of self-assessment in owning your career and thriving as a leader.
💡 How to use self-assessments to define your career path and leadership vision.
💡 Practical steps to conduct meaningful self-assessments and what to do with your discoveries.

Tasks for the Week:

☑️ Introduce self-assessment to your self-management reviews.
☑️ Fill the Wonderlead personality sheet with your discoveries.
☑️ Own your career by testing the uncertainties found in your self-assessments.

Assess YourSelf and Discover Your Why

Through self-assessments, we understand better our needs and feelings. This self-awareness eases our success as leaders because by knowing our why, we can redefine our career and share it with the people who will help us to make the next steps.

In my team, we get 360 feedback twice a year. I always took it seriously and dogged into the root causes and patterns to improve my leadership style. I was conscious that the person I think I am, might not be the person perceived by others. And until I self-assessed myself, I didn’t really understand me and all my decisions. By knowing my strengths, limits, and values, I could better understand my past choices. Through self-assessments, I also identified hidden values that were holding me back. Knowing my core values and identifying how to balance them gave me freedom to become the person I envisioned.

“We armored up and at some point that armor no longer serves us. It's keeping us from being seen and known by others. What we thought protected us, keeps us from being the partners, the parents, the professionals, the people that we want to be.” — Brené Brown

Harsh or unfair feedback as well as past experiences created vulnerability armors in my mind that blocked my growth. I still remember situations where some people made me invisible or gave me unfair feedback about my accent. The shields I made up over time prevented me from focusing on what mattered. They affected my communication, and I couldn't completely connect with some colleagues. At the moment I dropped my armors and was true to my core values, I became more empathetic, authentic, and familiar. These changes increased the team's psychological safety which made people feel more empowered to take risks and be open with others.

What is self-Assessment?

Self-assessment is a process of introspection where we evaluate ourselves and our actions. It helps us to identify our own values, skills, qualities, and achievements. With this analysis we get to understand our beliefs, feelings, strengths and areas for improvement.

Why knowing our why helps to succeed?

Knowing our values is a powerful tool for self-discovery and growth. Because our values represent what truly matters for us and guide our beliefs, decisions, and actions even when we are on autopilot. By using self-awareness and introspection, we can control our actions better and align what we do with our core values and strengths, with our why. Aligning with our why, our job organization values, and ethical values increases our motivation and happiness. Using our superpowers and values as a compass helps to get a greater sense of fulfillment and purpose. And with all these advantages, it is easier to succeed.

But there are values that aren’t meaningful. They are called junk values. They were imposed in our childhood, by traumatic events, or by society, and have a negative impact in our wellbeing. We shouldn’t follow them, but it requires effort and persistence. And we will fail to avoid them; at those moments, I practice self-compassion and patience.

For being able to assess ourselves and align with our values for success at the workspace, we need to be emotionally intelligent leaders. We need 1) self-awareness and 2) self-management to keep using our core values and to improve our strengths.

How do I assess myself?

During your self-management review sessions, choose an aspect and dive deep into your preferences. Ask questions and answer them with honesty. Another way to do assessments is to do quizzes on the internet. During the process, track your answers in the Obsidian Vault I shared with you in my last post or in your own note taking tool.

Complete a personality sheet with your self-assessments output.
🎁Download it for free this week, later it will be available through referrals.
In the sheet, you will find different quizzes that you can try. They will help you to identify your personality type, strengths and tendencies.

However, we don’t figure out answers to all our questions through introspection, going with our gut, or quizzes. Instead, think like a scientist. During these sessions, take notes, identify SMART goals you might want to pursue, and clarify your key uncertainties. Afterwards, investigate those uncertainties by doing research and easy experiments. In your experiments, collect data at least for 1-2 weeks. And take note of the activity, feeling, and time spent.

Why does self-assessment matter for my career?

Because personal fit is the most important ingredient for succeeding at a job. It multiplies career impact and capital (skills, knowledge, and credentials). But it can take years to find your fit, and even you might never be certain about it. I am not. For that reason, don’t wait to make the perfect career decisions. Instead, make a career growth plan with steps to remove the uncertainties found during your self-assessments.

Start by making some best guesses about which career/project could be a good fit. If you find uncertainties during your assessments, then start making cheap experiments. Define a sequence of tests, starting by interviewing people and doing short real tasks. After your research and after small tests, treat taking new jobs as experiments. Aim high and be ready to quit if something is going so-so rather than great. With your career plan, the journey towards your dream job and becoming an exceptional leader will be easier.

You’re not alone. I applied these tips, and I am applying them as I write this post. In upcoming posts, we will dive deeper into our dream job and career growth plan. Additionally, will contribute with a guest post. She will share her learnings about her career move from engineering director to product director. The guest posts in the Discovery track will help to learn about other roles and what drove wonder leaders to make their bold career transitions. We hope to help you in your discovery research!

My Recommendations

Books

• The Power of vulnerability — Brené Brown, my life changing audiobook.

• Mindset: The New Psichology of Success — Carol Dweck. From my ToRead list.

• Designing Your Life — Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. From my ToRead list.

Other Substacks related with Self-Assessment and Career

1. Sharing My Portfolio Career — .

2. How to set proper boundaries — .

3. 9 Simple Actions You Can Take to Build a Culture of Empathy — .

4. Become the engineer everyone wants to work with — and .

I want this for free!

Undated Digital Planner, Printable and Digital Journal, Digital Goodnotes, Notability, Daily Planner

WonderLead Planner

The WonderLead Planner is perfect for the leader who wants to succeed in its goals by being intentional, self-aware and with self-control. This planner provides a clear and concise goal-setting system that with the help of emotional intelligence will help you to succeed with life balance.

Each page in the WonderLead Planner is built on our proven WonderLead Framework—learn about it in the Self-Management post.

WonderLead Planner Daily Rituals

This product contains only the pages for your daily rituals. For other formats such as reviews or project management, subscribe to WonderLead in Tech Newsletter. We will publish more pages in the newsletter with the insights on how to effectively use them.

⭐️ DIGITAL FILES TO DOWNLOAD

• WonderLead Planner Daily Rituals sheets

⭐️ WHY THIS PLANNER

• Print it or use it digitally.

• Duplicate any page as many times as you need.

• Easy to undo mistakes.

• For printed: Put it in a place where you will see it and will help you to keep your rituals.

• For digital: Copy & paste to reuse digital stickers

• For digital: Paperless planning & eco-friendly

• For digital: Easy to add images & photos - no more printing

• For digital: Get creative using your tablet

©️COPYRIGHT & TERMS OF USE

• Personal use only. All of our products are registered under copyright.

• This WonderLead Planner Daily Rituals is copyrighted by develAGORA. This product is strictly for non-commercial, personal use only. You may not resell, reproduce, distribute by electronic means, or profit in any way from the design.
  © 2024 develAGORA, All rights reserved.

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WonderLead Automated Planner

The WonderLead Automated Planner is perfect for the leader who wants to Effectively succeed in its goals by being intentional, self-aware and with self-control. This automated planner in an Obsidian Vault will allow you to plan your projects, track your habits and write your journal in a single app, synced with all your devices and without having to continuously copying your purposes, tasks and goals day to day in your journal. It provides a clear and concise goal-setting system that with the help of emotional intelligence will help you to succeed with life balance.

Each note in the WonderLead Automated Planner is built on our proven WonderLead Framework—learn about it in the Self-Management post.

WonderLead Automated Planner V1

This product contains only the notes and settings for your project management and daily rituals. Newer versions will include more enhancements such as synchronization with your calendar, habits dashboards and other templates.

Details

⭐️ DIGITAL FILES TO DOWNLOAD

• WonderLead Automated Planner Obsidian Vault

⭐️ WHY THIS PLANNER

• Available in all your devices.

• All your productivity tools in a single app.

• Automatization of tasks in your journal.

• Easily searchable with tags and properties and the graph view connecting all your notes.

• Copy & paste to reuse digital stickers

• Paperless planning & eco-friendly

• Easy to add images & photos - no more printing

©️COPYRIGHT & TERMS OF USE

• Personal use only. All of develAGORA products are registered under copyright.

• This WonderLead Automated Planner is copyrighted by develAGORA. This product is strictly for non-commercial, personal use only. You may not resell, reproduce, distribute by electronic means, or profit in any way from the design.
  © 2024 develAGORA, All rights reserved.

I want this for free!

Personality sheet to track your values, strengths and aspirations. Markdown template compatible with any note-taking app supporting markdown, such as Obsidian or Notion. You can use it in WomderLead Obsidian Vault.

WonderLead Personality Sheet

The WonderLead Personality Sheet is perfect for any person who wants to track it self assessments discoveries for being intentional, self-aware and with self-control. This sheet will allow you to get to know you and track your progress towards your aspirations. It contains supported quizzes and questions for your self-assessment sessions that will help you to identify your personality type, strengths and tendencies. You can complete it for your peers to help you in your interactions and later feedback.

Use it as part of your self assessments.

⭐️ DIGITAL FILES TO DOWNLOAD

• WonderLead Personality Sheet Markdown Template

⭐️ WHY THIS TEMPLATE

• It will give you the self awareness you need to succeed while tracking your progress in your values, tendencies and strengths. This sheet gives visibility to your self and will allow you to be self aware.

• All your productivity tools in a single app.

• Easily searchable with tags and properties and the graph view connecting all your notes.

• Copy & paste to reuse digital stickers

• Paperless trackers & eco-friendly

• Easy to add images & photos - no more printing

©️COPYRIGHT & TERMS OF USE

• Personal use only. All of our products are registered under copyright.

• This WonderLead Personality Sheet is copyrighted by develAGORA. This purchase is strictly for non-commercial use. You may not resell, reproduce, distribute by electronic means, or profit in any way from the file.
  © 2024 develAGORA, All rights reserved.

Hi! 🙋🏻‍♀️ How have you been? Did you start being more self-aware since last post?
It would be great to hear your self-awareness Leadership Breakthroughs Stories!
This post I have 🎁s for you. Don’t miss to take a look to the end of the post and get your gifts.
I also created a Leaderboard! The more people who join, the more we will enjoy this journey and community. So don’t forget to click 💖 or share this newsletter with your friends!

What You'll Learn:

💡 The importance of self-management in owning your career and life.
💡 A practical framework for self-management.
💡 How to start practicing self-management today.
💡 Free productivity tools for Wonder Leaders, direct download for all subscribers.

Tasks for the Week:

☑️ Keep practicing self-awareness.
☑️ Incorporate a self-management framework for owning your career and life.
☑️ Plan and review daily your activities and habits.
☑️ Try the WonderLead Toolkit with your self-management framework.

Start Self Managing your Career and Life

(7 minutes read)

In my career, I struggled immensely with work-life balance due to my tendency towards ownership, perfectionism, and saying “yes”. Although I constantly worked on improving my effectiveness at work, I found myself in a constant state of rushing and hustle, with decreased quality. It wasn't until I introduced emotional intelligence (EI) into my productivity framework that I gained the self-control I needed to say "no" - for myself and my team. Now, I'd rather face the discomfort of setting boundaries than the resentment of not working on the highest priorities.

"Choose discomfort over resentment." My mantra reminds me that I'm making a choice that's critical for my well-being—even if it's not easy. — Brené Brown

This year, during my maternity leave, I spent the first month watching Netflix while my baby was sleeping over me. Then I realized I could use those moments to continue growing in my career. So I decided to manage my life like I do when launching a new product! First, I set up Obsidian, a note-taking app, to track my habits, feelings, and career goals, all in one app — and with a single hand! Then, I assessed my strengths and values, and defined SMART goals with the milestones and user stories to achieve them. Suddenly, everything I did had a clear purpose, and I found myself saying "no" more often to stay focused on my priorities. However, I realized that I didn’t want to do the journey alone, so I created this free Substack, WonderLead in Tech.

What is Self-Management?

Self-management is a core component of emotional intelligence, according to Daniel Goleman's model of EI. It has six key competencies: self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability, achievement orientation, and initiative. The competencies involve managing disruptive emotions, upholding integrity, taking responsibility, adapting to change, striving for excellence, and seizing opportunities. Lacking strong self-management skills puts us at risk of burnout, getting stuck, and lack of fulfillment in our careers, constantly firefighting rather than focusing on priorities.

The WonderLead Framework

To help you start owning your career and life, here you have an overview of the framework I came up with based on my learning and 17+ years of experience working in consulting, startups and Big Tech. If you are missing something important, please comment. I will test it and keep this post updated so that the framework will be better and owned by all of us.

1. Manage your Career and Life: To be strategic, evaluate each activity you engage in as you do in a project. If it’s not a top priority and aligns with your goals, add it as a task or story. If not, remove it from your "inbox" to reduce noise and increase focus time. If you identify a new goal you want to focus on, consider reevaluating your goals, values, and priorities.

2. Daily Check-ins: To stay focused, each day realistically choose your top 1-3 priority tasks to complete. Depending on how you feel, start with small tasks to gain momentum or take the most challenging ones first.

3. Regular Reviews and Plannings: To keep your why, do weekly and monthly reviews to assess your progress in your career and life. Based on these reviews, make adjustments as needed, and plan what comes next. Take note of your emotions.

4. Calendarize: To meet your promises, add your milestones/epics, stories, and habits to your calendar. Ensure realistic deadlines and consider risks and other priorities.

5. Journaling: To be self-aware, think about the day, write what happened, and what you felt. Record emotional triggers, identify assumptions, and reframe negative thoughts. Track the habits done to use them as KPI metrics in your reviews.

6. Practice Gratitude: To stay positive, express gratitude by saying thanks to someone at least once a day. List up to 10 things you are grateful for at the end of the day. You can enumerate them in your journal or out loud any time.

7. Take Care of Yourself: To be healthy, be empathetic and do well-being activities consistently. Every day, do exercise, walk, meditate, and connect with the people you value. Keep life-work balance, for yourself and the people who follows you.

8. Discover: To keep your strengths, stay curious and learn from your discoveries. Document what you learnt at the moment if it takes less than 2 minutes. Write them as tips or templates. Review and practice them regularly. Learn as well from feedback asked early on.

9. Celebrate Successes: To keep you motivated, be part of a community. Share your insights, motivations, and achievements with others. Celebrate your own and others’ wins, no matter how small. You can use our Chat to celebrate or ask for the help that will make you succeed!

10. Build Habits: To make this happen, write your habits as small and specific as possible with the formula “Instead of … I will do …” or “After … I will do …”. Schedule them for each type of day and, keep your schedule updated. Start with the habits that will support this framework. For instance, schedule at least i) 5 mins every morning to choose your priority tasks of the day, ii) 15 mins every night for journaling and being grateful, iii) 15 mins at the end of the week to review your career and life goals, iv) block at least 2h everyday of focus time and 30mins for unknowns, and iv) 20 mins of exercise and 2 blocks of 15 mins of meditation everyday.

Remember, this is a journey of continuous improvement. Embrace the process and adapt it to your needs, celebrate your wins with us, and don't be discouraged by setbacks. Together, we'll navigate this journey, empowering you to own your career and thrive as exceptional leaders.

How do I practice self-management?

I know, at a glance the framework seems unachievable for busy leaders. However, the discipline of building your career will give you the freedom to become the leader you want to be. Your commitment will release you from the distractions that are taking away your goals.

1. Setup yourself to execute the framework effectively. You can download the framework toolkit below and use it.

2. Be mindful. Focus on the things that actually matter for you. Enjoy the path without getting obsessed about its end. Remember to not try too hard and get more by doing less to keep the experience positive, because when trying too hard, the benefits get diminished or even inverted.

3. Start executing and owning your career NOW. You don’t need perfect goals defined from the first day. We will create them in the next post. Instead, start with tasks of 1-15 mins every day to gain momentum and confidence with the framework. Preparation tasks are already part of your path, include them in your plan.

4. Experiment with the WonderLead framework or a variant of it.
   You can adapt it to incorporate your practices or well-known techniques that already work for you, such as Pomodoro or Getting Things Done (GTD). Embrace failures, review them, and adapt the framework to your needs. Make it yours.

Setup the WonderLead Framework Toolkit — Free for Subscribers

develAGORA offers a set of tools based on the WonderLead framework to support this newsletter and community. Their tools will be updated with the new content and available at the same time new posts get published in the Own Your Career section. And they will be free for us! More tools will be free through the referral system. Having shared tools allows our community to be truly effective and scale!

Refer a friend

Get your Free tools now:

1. Automated WonderLead Framework in an Obsidian preconfigured Vault. Apply the framework at any place, even offline, within any of your devices, and with less effort than in a physical planner thanks to the automation of your plan and relationships between your notes.

2. Digital WonderLead Planner for those who prefer a more analog approach. You can print all the sheets you need and create your personalized planner. Putting it in a place that will remind you to use it will help you with your new framework habits. Alternatively, you can use apps that allow writing in PDF such as Goodnotes.

My Recommendations

Books

1. Atomic Habits — James Clear

2. Getting Things Done — David Allen

3. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen R Covey
   Discovered while writing this post, I added it to my TO READ list.

Other Substacks about Self-Management

1. On Planning and Winning the Week — By Michał Poczwardowski 

2. Perfectionism - one of the biggest productivity killers in the engineering industry — By Gregor Ojstersek and Jordan Cutler

3. Eliminate Distractions — By Ethan Evans

4. Unlearning the Lessons That No Longer Serve Us — By Deb Liu

🌻This post is dedicated to @ibesora and my colleague Oleg. Both showed interest in my productivity framework, and their curiosity gave me courage to write this post.

This post opinions are my own, and may not reflect the opinions of the company I work for.

Hi! 🙋🏻‍♀️ It’s great you decided to embark on the journey to become an exceptional leader.
I’m so happy you joined! Did you introduce yourself in the chat? We are looking forward to meeting you. Also, don’t forget to share this newsletter with your friends.

What You'll Learn:

💡How important it is to define a plan for succeeding in this era of constant change.
💡What self-awareness is and why it's the first critical skill needed for the plan.
💡How self-awareness and emotional intelligence (EI) are essential for leadership.
💡How to become self-aware.

Tasks for the Week:

☑️ Start journaling by identifying your emotions and reflecting on them.
☑️ Reflect on the important things you've had to let go of.
☑️ (Bonus) Spend 3 minutes per day doing breathing meditation.

Plan with Your Heart

(5 minutes read)

We used to only rethink our career paths in our 30s, 40s, or 50s. However, the tech sector has been impacted by significant changes in the past few years. From the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing remote work debate, to the rapid adoption of AI — we as employees have been constantly reevaluating our priorities and career trajectories.

It reminds me of the Dotcom Bust of 2001. Back then, I was juggling around 5 different website projects, the university, and an internship. I was constantly taking and dropping challenges without considering if they truly aligned with my passions. And I kept doing the same for years. Looking back, I realize that I lost sight of my "why" — I was just checking off a list of goals without any real self-awareness.

“We don’t know how time and circumstances will change what we want and even who we want to be, and locking our life GPS onto a single target can give us the right directions to the wrong destination.” — Adam Grant

Recently, during the pandemic, I decided to buy land in Spain and move out of Berlin to work fully remotely. This decision will have a major impact on both my career and my personal life. But this time, I will have defined a career plan grounded in self-awareness — one that will allow me to take calculated risks without losing sight of my own aspirations. This plan isn't a rigid script, but rather a flexible mechanism that I'll continuously review and adapt as we navigate the hectic changes in tech.
It's the compass that will guide me to thrive as an exceptional leader.

Do you want to be a better leader and are you considering a change? We do too.
Discover, plan and thrive as leader in your career with WonderLead insights and community!

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”They’re planning their next career step, and understanding the trends at work is helping them to make more considered decisions” — The Pragmatic Engineer.

Why planning our leadership career with self-awareness?

Defining our trajectory towards thriving leadership is not easy. And often, the biggest barrier is ourselves — our own self-sabotaging thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours that undermine our confidence and decision-making. Self-awareness is the foundation upon which we can listen to our emotions, reflect on our experiences, and make intentional choices that, in this case, will propel us towards our aspirations. It's the first critical step in crafting an effective career plan — one that allows us to shed the job titles, beliefs, and opinions that keep us playing it safe, and embrace the vulnerability required to take the next bold step.

"You don't have to believe your thoughts." — Daniel Goleman

What happens if I don't have self-awareness?

Without self-awareness, our actions become reactionary, driven by unconscious biases, emotional triggers, and limiting beliefs. This can severely impact our leadership effectiveness, leading to emotional outbursts, impulsive decisions, and difficulty empathizing with others. We risk making choices for our plan that don't align with our values and goals.

How can I cultivate self-awareness?

Cultivating self-awareness is an ongoing journey, but it's essential for thriving as a leader in tech. By naming and understanding our emotions, we gain invaluable insights into our motivations, triggers, and blind spots. And by embracing self-reflection, we can make choices that align with our authentic selves and lead with greater intention and impact.

How do I start practicing self-awareness?

Begin by using a journal or the How We Feel app to deeply explore the emotions you experience throughout the day. At the moment you feel an emotion, dive into what situations or thoughts triggered those feelings from the present or past. Use this as a personal reflection tool, and watch as your self-awareness grows, empowering you to become the exceptional leader you aspire to be.

Reflect on the things you've had to let go of that you now regret. List the important matters you had to stop doing, and note the emotions you feel when thinking about each one. Then ask yourself: Why did you have to let these things go? What was the challenge for you? Do you still regret those decisions? What would you do differently now? This exercise will shed light on your values, priorities, and areas for growth, which will be useful in the upcoming posts.

(Bonus Activity) Find breaks of 3 minutes every day and do breathing meditation.

Remember to focus on your strengths.

When the self-sabotaging thoughts or criticisms arise, pause, listen to your emotions, and let them go. Take control of your behaviour and focus on your strengths.

Ultimately, self-awareness is the compass that will guide you on your leadership path. It's the key to thriving in the ever-changing tech landscape, embracing vulnerability, and making choices that propel you towards your vision. So start your self-discovery today - the exceptional leader you aspire to be is waiting.

My Recommendations

Books

1. Working with Emotional Intelligence — Daniel Goleman.

2. Mindset — Carol S. Dweck.

3. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know — Adam Grant.

Other Substacks from the Week

• What is Old is New Again —The Pragmatic Engineer.

• My solution to any trouble, any loneliness — The Quiet Life.

• The Most Efficient Way to Land a Better Job at One of the World's Top Tech Companies — Level Up by Ethan Evans.