Floriana Popescu: How to Use Intuition as Your GPS in Leadership and Life

Floriana Popescu is living proof that life is more interesting when you allow yourself to be “pulled by the string.” With a professional journey that took unexpected paths, she has learned that sometimes, instinct is the best GPS. And it worked well, even when she had to keep a team united and motivated during tough economic times – a challenge that many leaders are all too familiar with.

Her secret? Open, authentic communication, through which relationships based on trust can be built. Floriana firmly believes that leaders don’t shape people, they shape contexts. This means that leaders provide the space and trust that people need to grow and reach their potential. And because she knows that healthy relationships, both with ourselves and with those around us, are the foundation of success, Floriana encourages young people to invest in their emotional and relational development.

C&B: Your career has taken several unexpected turns, and you’ve learned to trust your instincts. How did you develop this ability to trust your intuition in moments of uncertainty?

Floriana Popescu: I didn’t trust my intuition as much as I would have liked, and that perhaps made me delay some decisions. But in the end, if something happened at that moment, it means it was the right time, right? ☺ I believe what helped me was allowing myself to ask the tough questions: Does what I am doing now fulfill me? What does professional fulfillment look like for me? What do I think brings me energy; do I have that now? What do I think brings me joy? Where do I think I could create impact or more impact? Do I appreciate myself and feel appreciated in this role? If the answers remained unchanged after a period of time, I would decide that I was being “pulled by the string” in that direction and I would follow it. These answers are not easy to formulate, especially when they can be different or in opposition to certain external standards like: “This is how it’s supposed to be,” “This is what’s appropriate for my age,” “This is safer,” etc. As I delved deeper into these thoughts, answers, and questions, I felt more strongly what I hadn’t allowed myself to feel easily for various reasons, and I found the courage to make changes.

C&B: You managed to keep a team united and motivated during difficult economic times. What strategies did you use to build trust and maintain morale in such conditions?

Floriana Popescu: I believe these are the best moments to not use strategies, but to allow ourselves to be authentic, vulnerable, in search of collaboration and solutions. To lay everything that’s in the air on the table, to build together the destinations we want to reach, and perhaps to create something more beautiful and valuable than anything we had built until that moment. A quote from Brene Brown’s books comes to mind in response to this question: “Clear is kind, unclear is unkind.” Especially in difficult times, I believe creating clarity is an essential requirement for a safe and ambitious space.

C&B: You say that leaders do not shape people, but contexts. How do you create your working environment to provide your team with the space they need to grow and reach their full potential?

Floriana Popescu: I would generalize and say that not only leaders, but people in general, are creators of contexts in their relationships with others, or as Shirzad Chamine says in his book Positive Intelligence: “We are co-responsible for the version of the other person that emerges in interactions with us.” A few essential aspects for creating such a space:

• To accept and understand what it means to be “co-responsible,” what my role is, what skills I need to develop, which beliefs I need to let go of, and which behaviors I need to unlearn in order to learn new, healthier ones.
• To understand the coordinates of a healthy context and the associated behaviors.
• Less theory, more practice (less intellectualization, more exposure). The discipline of applying consistently is a defining point in change and development. All of these concepts and practical workshops have been integrated into the development programs where I am honored to coach in leadership and relational intelligence.

C&B: How do you approach open and authentic communication to build trust-based relationships in the organizations you collaborate with? What advice would you offer leaders who face difficulties in maintaining such a dialogue?

Floriana Popescu: One thing I’ve understood and integrated more strongly into my life is that people don’t necessarily do things out of bad intentions or disinterest, but simply because they don’t know how to do them. In their conversational and behavioral routines, they don’t know how to introduce new elements that could create a different impact. Many leaders fail to maintain an open and authentic dialogue because they don’t know how to do it and are blocked by certain prejudices and limiting beliefs. The first pieces of advice that come to mind:

• Pay close attention to the impact their behaviors create. The excuse “My intention was good” doesn’t work, especially in a position of authority.
• Challenge themselves to change small things in their behaviors and practice them consistently until they become an integral part of their leadership practice. For example: I know it’s very important to give specific positive feedback – I learn what this means and practice it constantly, even though I struggle with my own routines and limiting beliefs.
• Ask for specific feedback, not the kind of “What do you think about our collaboration?” and cultivate the courage to see their “blind spots.”

C&B: In modern leadership, how important do you think emotional and relational development is for leaders, and how does this affect performance in team management?

Floriana Popescu: Emotional and relational development… I see it as a dealbreaker in the practice of healthy leadership that strongly influences engagement and team performance. We continuously repeat in management how important it is to learn to achieve performance through your team. However, paradoxically, most managers I encounter in the leadership programs I facilitate are stuck in operational tasks and micromanagement. A major cause of this effect is precisely the low level of relational and emotional development.

C&B: You mentioned that transferring responsibility is essential, not just delegating tasks. How do you implement this concept in your daily activities, and what impact does it have on your teams?

Floriana Popescu: At this moment, I do not manage teams, but I coach leaders in building motivated and high-performing teams, where this transfer of responsibility takes place. We train together, in practical workshops, to change micro-behavioral patterns so that we can influence the transfer of ownership. Yes, the practical workshops involve a high degree of vulnerability and exposure for the participants, but at the same time, we manage to build a safe space for each other.

C&B: How do you approach moments when a team member is struggling to reach their potential? What role do the support and trust provided by leaders play in these situations?

Floriana Popescu: Here, I’ll give a shorter answer ☺ – you have non-transactional conversations with them. ☺ In a highly transactional environment, people generally struggle to reach their potential.

C&B: In the current labor market context, what skills do you think young people need to develop in order to succeed in dynamic and often uncertain professional environments?

Floriana Popescu: I mentioned it for leaders, but I’ll mention it for young people as well: they need to develop relational intelligence – to learn how to build valuable relationships, how to work in teams, how to function healthily within an organizational system – these are strong foundations for engagement, purpose, and performance.

C&B: You mentioned the importance of developing healthy relationships with ourselves and others. How do you promote this concept within the teams you work with, and how do you think it can influence the success of an organization?

Floriana Popescu: Over the past 10 years, together with my colleagues, we have created an extensive program called Engagement Mechanics. All its modules focus on challenging beliefs and practicing communication tools designed to help managers create healthy relational contexts. With this program, we aim to make a significant contribution to bringing more health into organizational cultures in Romania.

C&B: What lessons have you learned throughout your professional journey, and how do they influence your approach in working with teams and leaders?

Floriana Popescu: I would mention two lessons from a series ☺ I’ve learned that life becomes more unsatisfying and frustrating when I get lost in intellectualizing and forget about practice, constant exercise, and discipline. This led me to create Applied Workshops for Combating Relational Atrophy ☺, where I train leaders and teams to make micro-changes in their behaviors, which have a big impact on them and those around them. I’ve also learned, and continue to learn, that self-acceptance and inner balance are essential to achieving what you set out to do, all while maintaining joy and optimism. I greatly value the coaching sessions with my clients, where we have the opportunity to reach this level of depth. In fact, I strongly recommend that every manager have a coach or a therapist to help them consistently focus on these aspects and work on them. And because this is such an important lesson for my own development, I’ve created the Self-Regulation Program and Workshops, where we teach how success can be achieved with joy and self-appreciation.