How to make an impact? Interview with Sylwia Kujawska-Frydrych

We took the first stab at answering the question “How to make an impact?” with Bianka Siwińska in the interview held on March 12, 2021. With the overwhelmingly positive feedback and growing appetite for more from the audience, we decided to explore the subject with another seasoned leader in the industry – Sylwia Kujawska-Frydrych, Managing Partner at Amberstone Associates – Executive Search in Digital & Modern Technologies and HR Consulting Company, Chairwoman in Technologia w Spódnicy.   The subject of impact and leadership can be discussed from many perspectives. Bianka Siwińska elaborated on female participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and the power of education. Anna Kocoń, Senior IT Recruiting Representative at Sabre, who hosted the interview with Sylwia, decided to laser focus on the power of community, relationship, diversity, mentoring, and motivation. We encourage you to watch the full interview here and share your thoughts in the comment section. Below you may find few key takeaways to ignite your fire of curiosity:

Diversity

Growing awareness of the mismatch between the market needs and the way products are developed rightfully directs the conversation towards – diversity. The likelihood of financial outperformance by companies embracing diversity speaks for itself following the McKinsey & Company report Diversity wins: How inclusion matters (May 19, 2020). Anna Kocoń acutely highlighted the untapped potential that lies within diversified teams and working environments.  

Motivation

The recurring question about a lower number of women leading in technology companies has been addressed by Sylwia with a strong statement that she doesn’t believe in quotas. She is a believer of grass root work, promoting role models, and building a competence-base starting at early child development stages.  

Mentoring

How to be a successful mentor? Sylwia believes it takes two to make it work: mentees need to be ready and willing to work on a specific goal while mentors need to be interested in growing a person and this effort requires preparation. If you would like to learn more about what Sylwia and her team do to grow both mentors and mentees, mark your calendar with a date – September 16th for Mentoring Day that will be held online. For more, visit their website.  

Engagement

In the difficult times that shifted us to online reality, we try to find out ways to keep our teams engaged and motivated. Sylwia believes that this will require a new way of leading the teams and adjust to the “new normal” and summarizes it with a quote from prof. Piotr Płoszajski from Ceonet: Today, we are living in the world of notorious Black Swans. The coronavirus is just one of many to come, albeit quite severe, indeed. As Tim O’Leary rightly stated in his recent book: “We’ve come to a singular moment in history, in which just about everything makes us say WTF?!” It is turning our yesterday’s understanding of the world literally upside down, requiring not the usual “thinking outside the box” but rather “thinking in entirely new boxes”.  Remember Mary Poppins: “When the world turns upside down, the best thing to do is turn right along with it”.