Rebirth After a Crisis, Helping Others Develop Their Potential
The Chinese proverb "every crisis is also an opportunity" is not entirely pertinent, but Eva Rosenthal found herself catapulted into a corporate crisis right after graduation. This was why she decided to turn her professional life around, when a planned future in the family business had faded. She started working in human resources in the electronics components sector and immediately had to deal with complex situations such as extraordinary redundancies. Eventually the company was sold, and that was when Eva Rosenthal stopped to think about the future. She understood that, in order to change, she would have to make use of all her prior experiences. So she combined the business world with a past as a champion equestrian – regarding which, she has won more than 50 medals and participated in the FEI World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany, in 2006.
Business and sports are seemingly two distant worlds, certainly in terms of human resources. “But during the world championships I noticed that athletes who were well trained from a technical point of view would panic due to stress. This is how I chose to set my new professional course. I attended my first personal growth course and I clearly saw that I wanted to help people develop their human potential – both in corporate and sports settings. I had decided that I would stay in human resources, despite my initial experiences," she says. She is now a trainer and business and mental coach at Ekis, after a degree from Bocconi in Industrial Business Management and an Executive Master in Strategic Human Resources Management. "The Master gave me the tools I needed to make me feel capable of managing complex situations, such as my experiences after the Master. My athletic background has taught me to combine passion and discipline, hard work and personal balance," Rosenthal continues. "For this reason, I advise young women to learn to cultivate and express their talents and passions in order to complement their career choices. Also, it's great to train to work hard, but it’s best to apply that discipline to completing tasks on time. You also need to maintain a balance with your personal life, and good time management helps with this."
From the turning point as a business and mental coach onwards, there has been no shortage of other challenges: first and foremost, motherhood, as for many other women. But above all there was prejudice against her physical appearance. "Often, after the first meetings when I was perhaps the only woman in the room, I was told, ‘I stand corrected; I didn't think a pretty girl could convince me of anything,’” says Rosenthal. "Now I notice this kind of look in meetings right away and I move past it because I’ve learned to be professional without letting it get to me, without overdoing it. I know I’m good at what I do and my message is getting through."
According to Rosenthal, there is a characteristic pattern of female leadership that emerges. Distinctive features include greater empathy, listening, as well as knowing how to be assertive without necessarily being authoritarian. "There is also the issue of opening up to inclusion, a hot topic that is above all fundamental for the growth of any company that must attract and retain the best resources," emphasizes the Bocconi alumna. "What are some negative aspects of female leadership? Women may be too self-critical, too strict with themselves. On the subject of women and work, if anything, we do not talk enough about motherhood and in particular about the time after pregnancy, just when women need to be supported and are naturally more predisposed to goal setting. They often want to go back to work and figure out how to manage their time and energy better than before. It’s a shame their work is not used strategically within companies."
