Labeling and calibrated questions are techniques used to advance negotiations in high-stress situations like kidnappings. The world of Localization, or leading teams, is also a world of negotiation, not on the level of what an FBI negotiator deals with where it's a life-or-death situation. Localization is important, but not to that extent 😊 however, there are things we can learn to help our efforts to negotiate more time for LQA, additional headcount for our Localization team, and to argue for reducing the price per word/budget etc., to conclude successfully.

And that's what my post is about this week.

A Personal Development Plan (PDP) is essentially a roadmap for our self-improvement journey. It's a way to identify our goals, strengths, areas of interest, areas for growth and then create a plan to enhance our skills and achieve those objectives.

We’ve all heard the saying that “change is always good,” right? Wrong. We don't like change; we don't like to step out of our comfort, but still, change must happen. I've been studying "Change management and resistance to change" in the last weeks because change is the norm in our #localization industry. In this post, I summarized my learnings so far! I hope you find it useful ☺️

I was a team leader by chance, as I was a good Individual Contributor (IC) with knowledge of localization quality assurance and good communication skills. My transition was difficult and bumpy, as I was not ready and did not know the differences between being an IC and a Localization Team Manager. Despite the challenges, my capacity to adapt helped me succeed. To successfully transition from an IC role to a Localization Manager role, one must have the right mindset, be surrounded by skilled professionals, and have a supportive manager. I now understand the differences and want to share my learnings with others.

Reflection as a leadership skill as part of the Localization community provides us with several benefits: it allows us to learn faster and get up to speed in new situations more quickly. It helps us not make the same mistake twice. And it's super practical to question our assumptions and make better future decisions.

We’ve all heard the saying that “change is always good,” right? Wrong. We don't like change, we don't like to step out of our comfort but still change must happen. I've been studying in the last weeks about "Change management and resistance to change", because in our #localization industry change is the norm, so I thought this might be a nice soft-skills to polish during 2022. In this post, I summarized my learnings so far! I hope you find it useful ☺️

The year is slowly coming to an end, it is time to analyze how it went, it’s time to set the future goals for our localization strategy, it’s time to dream big to think where we want to be in 2020.

Why I’m Probably Not an Inclusive Leader -Yet

Let's imagine this situation, one possible conversation between Jeniffer a Canadian girl who was living in Valencia for 2 years and John an American guy that we'll be traveling to Spain to meet with some potential clients.

If Jeniffer says to John something like this “ When you discuss business with Spanish people, remember this, this and that .” I would say in this situation…. Jeniffer, which Spanish are you talking about? A Spanish from Valencia or a Spanish who lives in Galicia, or maybe a Spanish from Madrid who lived 5 years in Ireland, then moved to Silicon Valley to work for Apple and now is working in Seville?

Stereotypes are dangerous when what we seek is to increase our Cultural Intelligence but there’s one way we can deal with them!!

The Remote Only Manifesto first “rule” is Hiring and working from all over the world instead of a central location. Few industries will promote and live this principle as strongly as the localization industry. But, getting results and being effective working remotely requires the right mindset. Luckily once again the superpower skill of Cultural Intelligence comes to our rescue

Predictable and boring doesn't have to be something necessarily bad. A day at the beach may end up looking monotonous, a Globalization strategy can also end up being predictable and somewhat monotonous ... but I have realized that that does not necessarily have to be a bad thing

From a command and control mindset to a multiplier mindset. My 57 lessons learned while studying Lyssa Adkins coaching material

HOW GOOGLE WORKS is an entertaining, page-turning primer containing lessons that Google Executive Chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg learned as they helped build the company. I read it and I prepared a summary below with an eye and a mindset about how we can learn from this book from a Localization perspective.

Your fitness routine doesn't stay the same over your lifetime. You shouldn't expect your career to either. What a cool idea!!!

November 1985 Queen released a great song “One Vision”. That song was inspired by the famous Martin Luther King speech. During 4:02 minutes Freddie Mercury surrounded by his faithful friends sang to the world about the importance of remaining together to create a vision. 30 years later we can not enjoy the presence of Freddy Mercury among us anymore but we can use his strength and charisma to help us define a vision following the Agile Framework!

Being manager for the very first time is tough. Mainly for the misconception that we have about what it truly means being a manager. In this personal post, I share some learnings that I learned hard way the first time I was promoted to Localization Manager...  

Why do we do what we do? How do we create new habits? Why Florentino Perez has time to lead Real Madrid and being the CEO of ACS while I struggled this morning to find time to buy some fresh vegetables? In this post, I write about my main 3 key takeaways while working to shape new habits. Lessons learned!

During 40 years I thought this was a gift, not a skill that it could learn, cultivated, trained and polished!