”Georgeta Dendrino is a successful entrepreneur, executive coach, and mentor in a variety of programs, Managing Director of Interact Solutions as well as a trainer for the Marketing and Strategic Communication Module. Her strengths are management development, performance improvement, career development, business strategy, and human resources. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, writing, driving, travelling, and discovering new niche scents.

IAA: Hi, Georgeta, and thanks for agreeing to sit down and chat with us 🙂
Tell us a bit about Interact Business Communication and how the company has evolved lately.


G.D: Interact started in 1997, it had three shareholders then, and I was the first person to teach a course here. A few months later, the three split up and I became a shareholder shortly after, with 50% of the business. Since 2006, we have been in a different form, however, I have the majority stake and the other shareholders are among those who have been with me over the years. We have a mechanism whereby those who bring value to the business can become shareholders.

So, a very good trainer, with experience in Interact, with business development skills, can become a business associate, which means that first they get a share of the profit, then they become a shareholder.

I am glad that we are one of the relevant companies in the Romanian training market and that we have clients in other countries.

IAA: What kind of coaching do you practice, what is your approach?

G.D: I have an Executive Master in Coaching and Consulting at Insead. I wanted to go for coaching education, not just training. The Master at Insead, one of the best business schools in the world, lasted two years and the approach is psychodynamic. This paradigm means that we apply a psychodynamic lens to the study of behaviour in organisations. There are a few premises of the approach:

First, there are rational reasons behind all human behaviour, even for actions that seem irrational.

Second, much of our mental activity – feelings, fears, motives – we are not aware of, even though they affect our conscious reality and even our well-being. We all have our shadow side, blind areas, that we don’t know, sometimes even don’t want to know.

Thirdly, nothing says more about a person than how they manage and express their emotions. Emotions give positive and negative connotations to our experiences, affect our preferences and choices, the way we interact with the world. Emotions underpin the representations we form of ourselves and others, and guide our relationships in life. The way we perceive and express our emotions can change over time, influenced by our life experiences.

The fourth premise underlying this approach is that human development is an inter and intra-personal process. We are the product of our past experiences, and these experiences, including our early experiences with parents or caregivers as children, continue to influence us throughout our lives.

The clinical paradigm brings to the surface the forces that underlie human behaviour. It brings light into the human mind – often filled with dark, unconscious aspects. If we understand the reasons for these dark areas, we can hope to manage them, to control them.

IAA: You have a lot of collaborations with professional associations. Can you tell us a bit about this work of yours? How do they intertwine (and when is there time left for other activities – leisure, culture, sport, etc.)?

G.D:That’s right, I’m involved in a lot:

AVE – Association for Values in Education
RGS – Romanian Gifted School
EMCC – European Mentoring and Coaching Council
PWN Romania – Professional Women’s Network Romania
PWN Norway – Professional Women’s Network Norway
Cartier – Cartier Women’s Initiative
I have various roles in these organisations, from non-executive board member to mentor and mentor coordinator, coach; the common thread is that of individual development, education, contribution to a more developed society.

In my spare time, I like to read, drive, travel, go to niche perfume shops. I have a few hobbies that give me energy when I’m having a hard time.

IAA: In other cultural spaces, women empowerment is a super important theme – with Diversity, Equality & Inclusion officers and constant campaigns aiming to close the gender pay gap. How do you see things from your position in the Professional Women’s Network Romania?

G.D: In Romania, the situation seems to be not so bad. Somehow, we have many women in management positions and there is no big difference in salaries.

But I think there are many kinds of discrimination in our society, and it comes from the level of education, national culture, the way society thinks.

However, changing mindsets requires sustained and long-term efforts in education, investment in critical thinking, exposure to other cultures, letting go of egocentrism, and accepting that we still have to learn, usually all our lives.

I don’t want to give a pessimistic message, but it will take generations to change the way a country thinks. But we have a responsibility to make our contribution, however small it may seem. What is happening in many cases, the flight to other countries, is not a constructive solution at all.

IAA: You are also involved in many mentoring and coaching activities. What would be 3 learnings, tips you could share from working with mentees & coaches?

G.D: I would say it’s good to have lifelong mentors. They come into our lives and sometimes we don’t realise it, we let them pass. Sometimes we learn something from them, other times we treat badly precisely those who saw something in us and encouraged us, smoothed our way.

The collaboration between mentor and mentee is one from which both sides learn. Often a long-term relationship is forged between the two.

I like to compare this relationship to that between Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. The cricket comes with his experience, his perspectives, the decision-maker, however, is Pinocchio. The wooden doll becomes a child when he goes through some difficult moments, some initiatory thresholds when he learns something from them.

We all go through such moments in life. A mentor can support us to get through it better, more easily, to make informed decisions. I recommend everyone to have mentors, people who can give them insights, advice, listen to them.

IAA: Interact Business Communications has been working – through you or Alina Doica or other facilitators – with the IAA School for many years. How have you observed – either directly involved or as an observer/manager – this collaboration?

G.D: We have indeed been collaborating for many years and I thank Laura Tampa and Aphrodita Blasius for the trust you have given us.

We have always had a very good experience, I would dare to say that it culminated, for me, with the business simulation we held in March 2022, Business Value Creation.

I enjoyed seeing some very engaged, constructive people who, although they had their own experiences, wanted to learn. And that’s a big, big deal at a time when many people think that if they’ve read three pages in a field, they know everything. Congratulations on how you selected them and congratulations to them! I think that’s the kind of people we need, this kind of open-mindedness.

IAA: What is the business value creation simulation you “played” in the strategic module? – Consumer Marketing Today®️

G.D: It is one of the business simulations, licensed from BTSI, which we have been representing in Romania since 2004. It is my favourite course. It has all the functions of a company: from supply chain to production, marketing, sales, HR, finance, advertising. Basically, participants make decisions in all areas of a business, strategize, learn to complete and analyze the three basic financial documents (balance sheet, income statement and cashflow statement), then analyze the impact of their decisions on the profitability of the company, experience an elevator pitch in front of shareholders.

This simulation is like an experiential MBA in a few days.

IAA: How do you see the current generation of brand managers, brand strategists? What would be your message to them (or to those who are now more at the beginning of this journey)?

G.D: I can say about those I met in the IAA School program. They impressed me with their dedication, openness to learning, curiosity, feedback, assertiveness, empathy, respect for others, critical thinking. If they are representative of the generation, then the future sounds good.

IAA: What are your ‘must have’ resources in a week, where do you get your inspiration from – newsletters, podcasts, magazines…?

G.D: Every morning I listen to 1-2 podcasts, something on Youtube while getting ready to go, making coffee, doing some exercise on the bike. I read articles on Twitter or Linkedin. Of course, I also check Facebook or Instagram but it’s more of an automatism. I also listen to something from the Thrive platform, about wellbeing, how we think, leadership.

Otherwise, I read business books and fiction. I did language school, I’m a teacher at the base, if I don’t read literature, poetry, I feel impoverished, it’s like I don’t have enough internal resources.

Besides, so much has changed since I finished my last MA in 2016 that only by reading, always learning, can we be contemporary with our times.

IAA: What about all time favs – books, films, articles you would recommend to anyone, but especially to those who want to develop as leaders?

G.D:I have many, but I’ll say about a few.

Film:

The Moneyball
Any Given Sunday
Collateral Beauty
The Great Beauty
The Last Emperor
New Amsterdam

Business Books:

Mindful Leadership Coaching, by Manfred Kets de Vries
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, by Herminia Ibarra
The Beermat Entrepreneur, by Mike Southon and Chris Vest
Play to Win, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin
The CEO Whisperer, by Manfred Kets de Vries

Literature

All the great writers of the world, from Dostoevsky to Balzac, Proust, Michel Tournier, Celine, to Vargas Llosa, Milan Kundera, Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Mark Twain, Umberto Eco, Marquez, Isabel Allende, Goethe, Charles Bukowski, and many others. I would also recommend the Bible, there are so many stories in there that great authors have reinterpreted. The whole history of culture is one long string of metaphors, differently intoned, as Borges said.

We learn a lot from business books but without literature, without poetry, painting, music, we are poor souls, with minimally furnished minds, hardly able to make connections.

You remember that line from the film Philanthropy: ‘The outstretched hand that tells no story gets no food.’ You can’t tell stories if you don’t continually train your mind, if you don’t expose it to interactions with other minds.

IAA: What are the sine qua non items of a (business) leader of tomorrow?

G.D: First of all, it’s important to be contemporary with the times, to learn continuously, and to be up to date with the market trends of the new generations. This requires a learning mindset, an open mindset.

Then, to be concerned with self-knowledge and understanding others.

Concern for society, involvement in sustainability projects, I think will bring appreciation from the team, especially when it comes to Generation Z.

It would be good if they would also takes care of themselves. Just as they take care to charge their phone every night, they should also recharge their own batteries, rest, sleep, have more concerns, different activities, different people around them,, so that if a pillar collapses, they have something to lean on.

IAA: Thank you so much, Georgeta, for your authentic and relevant thoughts!”

via: Școala IAA