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About me
My name is Mauro Bagnato and for over 15 years I have been leading tech organizations.
When I first stepped into leadership, I believed technical expertise was the key to being an effective leader. However, I quickly learned that organizations are living and complex systems and that leading them demands much more than just technical know-how. I believe that curiosity is at the heart of effective leadership. This is what fuels learning and experimentation, both crucial for continuous improvement. This blog aims to explore engineering leadership in all its aspects and to provide insights in a tangible and pragmatic manner. It will also be a space where I will share insights, reflections, and personal takeaways from books, podcasts, and articles that influenced and keep influencing my journey.
Find out how I can help you!
How often have you been in situations when everyone around you is panicking?
In such moments, my guiding principle is:
Stay cool when others lose their mind!
But what does it mean to stay “cool”?
It is not about pretending nothing is wrong and/or reassuring people that things will get magically better.
Staying cool means controlling your emotions and your state of mind to analyze the situation from multiple perspectives with a clear and analytical approach.
It sounds easy but it is not.
Over the years, I learned how to read my body signals and emotions to recognize when I am not in a perfect state.
In this case, stepping back, distancing myself from the chaos, and taking a couple of long breaths for a few minutes helps me clear my mind, relieve the stress, and re-focus on the problem at hand.
However, it is not enough.
Two more factors heavily contribute to my “coolness”.
People around me
Creating a trusting and collaborative environment makes it much easier to stay cool. Effective communication is the key factor here.
Effective communication means tuning the level of information and the delivery frequency to the specific needs of each receiver to keep everyone involved and engaged.
Data available.
When the amount of available information is huge, detecting the signal from the noise is paramount to staying focused and properly analyzing the situation.
Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet here. Selecting and applying the right metrics is crucial but metrics can sometimes be misleading. This is where the insights of experienced and knowledgeable people can provide the context and depth that raw data cannot.
