New work, old evaluations?

An Ode to Perseverance

Tip from the Director of Dasein EMA Partners Brazil, Daniel Rezende.

With the dream of living off sports, sisters Yusra and Sarah Mardini flee from a war-torn Syria and seek refuge in Europe. This is the starting point of the film “The Swimmers,” inspired by the story of the young Syrian women who had to swim across the Aegean Sea. According to the tip’s author, Dasein EMA Partners Brazil Director Daniel Rezende, with a powerful story of overcoming, dreams, and hope, they continue to live their lives even in the chaotic environment that surrounds them.

“The Swimmers” is an ode to perseverance, willpower, love of life, love of family, emphasizes Rezende. “It is a film that should be shown to every young person because it is a great lesson. Human and emotional in the sincerity with which it views the entire story. It also shows the sad reality of the horrors of war, the real and cruel routine of people who go through it every day. Families separated in search of better living conditions and who need to go through horrors to achieve a minimum of dignity. A great film about the best and worst of human beings.”

What: film “The Swimmers.” Where to watch: Netflix.

Overcoming Insecurity

Tip from consultant Jovaneide Sales Polon Batista

Abandoning excessive self-criticism is not simple, but it is possible as shown in the book “Self-Compassion – Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind,” recommended by psychologist and consultant Dasein, Jovaneide Sales Polon Batista. The work, signed by Kristin Neff, “brings comfort to all of us who experience an avalanche of changes, feelings, and thoughts that always put us in a condition of lack. Of not being good enough, of not being competent and strong enough to fully meet the different roles we experience throughout our lives.”

In addition to bringing an approach to the dilemmas experienced in her own history, at the end of each chapter, the author suggests practical exercises to overcome self-criticism and feelings such as sadness or inadequacy for not achieving our internal demands. “She reinforces three essential elements of self-compassion: self-kindness, embracing our vulnerabilities, being gentle with ourselves; recognizing our humanity, we are not alone and we experience the same issues and feelings daily; and maintaining mindful awareness, balanced awareness, without ignoring or exaggerating pain.”

What: book “Self-Compassion – Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind.” Where to buy: online or physical bookstores.

Champions who Inspire

Tip from Dasein | EMA Partners Brazil Associate Consultant, Luzete Campolina.

Analyzing the path of champion coaches, their challenges, and achievements in sports is always a good inspiration for personal and professional life. With this in mind, Dasein | EMA Partners Brazil Associate Consultant Luzete Campolina recommends the documentary series “The Playbook: A Coach’s Rules for Life.” According to her, the Netflix production reveals the rules these professionals use to achieve success. “They are inspiring stories that address team development, overcoming obstacles, motivation, guidance towards results, decision-making, and resilience.”

“As an associate consultant at Dasein | EMA Partners Brazil, interviewing numerous executives, I have the constant challenge of gathering behavioral evidence that allows me to understand the functioning dynamics of these professionals. They have the great challenge of developing people, leading and inspiring teams considering strategies that seek to generate results for the various stakeholders impacted by organizations. This is a great challenge for me and an even greater challenge for executives who are leading teams and guiding organizations towards success.”

What: series “The Playbook: A Coach’s Rules for Life.”  Where to watch: Netflix.

Encouraged by his mother, Maria Gorete, Edu Lyra found the necessary stimulus to create what is now a reference in social entrepreneurship worldwide: the NGO Gerando Falcões. Born in a favela in São Paulo, Lyra started selling his own book “Jovens Falcões” door-to-door. With the money earned, he founded the organization that has already impacted more than 700,000 people in 5,000 favelas across 25 Brazilian states.

Although his story is an exception in the communities of the country, he works hard to change this reality: “I don’t want a person from the favela to win. I want the favela to win collectively and integrally.” Follow below for more about this great story.

We need to learn the initial lesson of citizenship and respect for others, urgently inserting racial inclusion into the ideals of our society.

At the head of the Gerando Falcões Network, you have drawn the attention of major executives and companies to the reality of young people in impoverished communities. Leaders such as Jorge Paulo Lemann, Rubens Menin, and Guilherme Benchimol, for example, support your initiatives. Several other leaders praise your management conduct (inspired by the Ambev model). How was the construction of Gerando Falcões’ management conduct, and how was the path to mobilizing the country’s main companies?

“We have been investing in technology and innovation for a long time. We invest in platform, code development, cloud capacity expansion, and the formation of our Communication team. In addition, we have a range of incredible partners who, in times of crisis, contribute immensely to disseminating information. In these moments, we know who has created good teams and built relationships of trust with donors. Gerando Falcões is audited by KPMG, with public financial statements and reports. We are transparent with our donor base, and people see value in that. During the last campaign, we mobilized 44,000 individual donors and created instability in the bank’s system. In other words, we use technology to its fullest potential to scale impact solutions at the forefront.”

I don’t want a favelado to win. I want the favela to win collectively and integrally.

Despite the increased presence of black men and women in universities, only 3% reach executive or management positions in companies, according to IBGE. It is consensus that investing in education is the best way to prepare young people from favelas for leadership positions. However, being qualified is not enough, as many lose the competition due to discrimination. From leader to leader: how to break the barrier of prejudice in companies?

We need to learn the initial lesson of citizenship and respect for others, urgently inserting racial inclusion into the ideals of our society. It’s not enough to just make a post on Black Consciousness Day. It is necessary to set goals. At Gerando Falcões, 70% of the total leadership is female, and 63% of women hold high leadership positions. In total, 39% of all employees are black women.

Through a social development ecosystem involving education, employment, sports, and culture, Gerando Falcões Network has been changing the fate of thousands of young people who live in Brazilian favelas. Tell us more about the backstage of this strategy as a way to inspire other professionals and companies.

To think of a long-term strategy and have the strength to put it into practice, one of our initiatives was to expand our work, sharing our knowledge with other NGOs that have the potential to generate transformation in their territories. More than a thousand social leaders have graduated from Falcons University.

Currently, we have almost 14,000 favelas in our country, and in order for our work to be relevant, we need an operation on a large scale. In addition, we need to have a model with goals, performance indicators, management rituals, all based on data, and this helps us a lot to think about future solutions.

At Gerando Falcões, 70% of the total leadership is female, and 63% of women are in high leadership positions. In total, 39% of all employees are black women.

You are a great example, not only for young people, but for leaders in various sectors. In your journey, who were the people who inspired you?

My mother has always been my great inspiration. She always said, “It doesn’t matter where you come from, but where you’re going. And you can go wherever you want.” And I believed in that. My life experiences also served to make me think about my purpose and mission. I lost friends to violence, and I visited my father in prison many times. I overcame poverty in my own life, now I want to overcome it on a large scale with my team and our partners. I don’t want a favelado to win. I want the favela to win collectively and integrated.

We are sharing our knowledge with other NGOs that have the potential to generate transformation in their territories.

“Poverty will become a museum piece.” Thinking about the power of this message, please share the future plans and development of the Gerando Falcões network.

Our goal is to bring poverty from the favela to the museum, not the favela itself. We want a complete transformation, which is the proposal of Favela 3D (Dignified, Digital, and Developed), a viable solution to overcome poverty in Brazil and that can be a public policy for this mission. We need to solve our urgent and crucial problems. We are the last generation that has a chance to change the future.

To evaluate and be evaluated: that is the question. This is a dilemma that remains intact through the deepest social or corporate transformations. Just look back – how much has changed in the last few decades, and yet the subject has never left the spotlight. One of the reasons is linked to human nature – people do not like to test others, much less to be tested themselves.

However, what has been most troubling for professionals is not the evaluation itself, but the way it is conducted. In Brazil, only three out of 10 employees are satisfied with the methodologies used in companies, according to a survey by WTW consulting for the newspaper Valor Econômico, conducted with 800 companies worldwide. Other studies endorse what seems to be a consensus among professionals and people managers: it is necessary to review the way performance and skills are tested.

Potential assessment identifies what people know in practice, what they will be able to know in the future and when they will be prepared for challenges.

By using evaluations as development resources, as good opportunities to listen to the collaborator, it is possible to resignify them. And more: when associated with the future, with the potential capacity that resides in each person, they become understood as paramount. After all, it is impossible to move forward without evaluating.

Potential diagnosis as a turning point

In traditional performance evaluations, carried out internally by a good part of companies, past work, that which has already been performed by the collaborator, is analyzed above all. Depending on how they are conducted, they do not always boost performance or stimulate the person to look ahead.

Reviewing this model thinking about current needs and combining it with evaluations that focus on the professional’s potentialities is an alternative more coherent with a constantly transforming market and marked by complex relationships. According to Dasein EMA Partners Brazil’s CEO, Adriana Prates, potential evaluation brings significant benefits to companies and employees, and, consequently, to team performance. “It is a tool that stimulates self-knowledge, allowing the identification of strengths and areas that need development. From there, it is possible to draw individualized plans and goals, with practical actions, in addition to providing recognition and growth opportunities for employees.”

According to the leader, the method has generated greater talent retention, increased productivity, improved corporate climate and team harmony, as potential evaluation helps in understanding and collaboration among teams. “Engagement and project efficiency also increase significantly in a workplace that invests in development and prioritizes people because they feel they are performing better and are essential to the smooth functioning of a company’s system.”

Verifying potential capacity is also a strong ally of succession processes. “The company has the need to create successors so that its critical positions are filled effectively, and succession planning should start years before this demand arises. A potential capacity check is valid when it is able to identify what people know in practice, what they will be able to know in the future, and when they will be more prepared and ready to face challenges of high complexity and uncertainty, after all, talent is what you do when you don’t know what to do.”

Not all high-performing people are able to take on more complex responsibilities. Correct evaluation and precise diagnosis of this growth potential is a valuable management tool.

How to build meaningful careers?

According to the Microsoft Work Trends Report, which surveyed 20,000 workers from 11 countries, 68% of respondents would stay longer with a company if they had opportunities for career growth and development. Considering the creation of meaningful careers – and the benefits for both the individual and the business – is part of the scope of potential assessment.

Through this type of analysis, as explained by Adriana Prates, it is possible to identify individuals with potential for development and growth, helping the company to map where and how it should invest in its talent. “For workers, it is much more motivating and secure to work in a place where it is possible to see the company’s efforts to develop people through actions that propel them forward, generating a greater sense of belonging and willingness to contribute even more. It is very important that employees perceive the relevance of their work and know that it is in the company’s interest for them to reach higher positions, which consequently generates better results and deliveries for the company.”

Not all high-performing people are able to take on more complex assignments.

Potential analysis also brings a strategic perspective and helps identify skills and competencies that will be more valued in the future. “This allows the company to create career plans aligned with future market needs and have employees with the necessary skills to adapt to changes and remain competitive,” highlights Prates.

Constant feedback and reciprocal evaluations

At Magalu, one of Brazil’s largest retailers with more than 38,000 employees, discipline and consistency prevail in personal and team performance evaluations. According to the Executive Director of People Management, Patrícia Pugas, “what cannot be measured cannot be improved. That’s why we invest a lot of energy in this issue. Constant feedback between leaders and team members is part of our culture, but we also have structured mechanisms to encourage and stimulate reciprocal evaluations.”

Weekly climate surveys are an important beacon for knowing what employees are thinking and seeking.

She explains that this strategy consists of four stages, which include behavioral performance evaluations, in which employees are evaluated by peers, subordinates, and leaders. The other stages are related to defining long and short-term goals in strategic events with leadership, monitoring goals in monthly and quarterly meetings, and recognizing and rewarding achievements of proposed goals, either through career promotions, merit-based financial rewards, or profit sharing programs.

“In-house talent”

According to Patrícia Pugas, most open positions at Magalu are filled by employees who already work in the company, the famous “in-house talent.” “We have a very strong characteristic in our culture of giving opportunities and encouraging employees to create their own career plans and engage in pursuing their professional success. There are no unique paths, open positions are shared with everyone, and each professional can exercise their protagonism and define their own path towards growth.”

For this, the company offers several actions that stimulate constant learning, as highlighted by the leader. “For example, we have the training manager program, which prepares professionals for a future career; we have the Portal do Saber, an internal e-learning platform with a variety of courses that allows employees to learn and start studies, even if it is not their field of expertise; and the scholarship program, also available to any employee for any course they wish to take, without the need to be in a related field, which also allows for a variety of formations and career changes.”

In 2023, the company has already distributed more than 2,500 scholarships in this format. “We want our employees to be increasingly prepared and ready to take on challenges wherever they arise, since every ‘in-house talent’ is more adherent to the culture, values, and purpose of the company,” emphasizes the director.

Active listening in weekly meetings

At Grupo Boticário, one of the most important beauty holdings in Brazil with 12,000 employees, performance evaluation and development involves constantly listening to employees. Through weekly surveys and the use of technology, the company evaluates the level of fatigue, involvement with projects, and relationship with leadership.

According to the Employee Journey Director, Renata Simioni, the weekly climate surveys are an important indicator of what employees are thinking and seeking in the workplace, ensuring leadership can respond quickly to their demands. “It is a strategy that gives us an effective and agile understanding of the organizational climate, as we follow the climate indicators week by week. This gives us even more confidence about the environment we have built and how it is perceived by our employees, being an important thermometer to understand how we are, what we can improve, and what each employee’s needs are.”

Organizations are formed by people who form others and so on.

Simioni says the method allows for a macro view of the entire company, as well as segmented by vice-presidencies and directorates. “These cuts are very rich and actively support us in providing the work environment we want and our people expect and desire. On average, we have more than 60,000 questions answered weekly with more than 3,000 written feedbacks with an average of 10,000 users responding. It is very important to put it in numbers to give an idea of the power of this management tool.”

Another premise of Grupo Boticário is that technology becomes accessible to the entire company. Each interaction within the ecosystem generates data that is used to improve processes, products, and experiences. “We want HR to be more tech and technology to be more human, as people and technology need and already walk hand in hand.”

The role of leadership in performance management and well-being

Organizations are made up of people who form other people and so on. This shows the importance of leadership being well qualified and the responsibility they have in generating knowledge, as emphasized by Dasein Ema Partners Brazil CEO Adriana Prates. “The best way to exercise leadership is through example. It is essential to be aware of this and always seek to improve and have behaviors that encourage the desired attitudes in the team. What makes a leader better are their experiences and learnings that shape future behaviors from a lot of discipline, focus, and humility to accept their own and others’ imperfections.”

Nurturing the culture of learning and sharing leadership is one of the focuses of Grupo Boticário, as highlighted by Renata Simioni. “Transparency, interaction between teams, agility, autonomy, and clarity of roles and responsibilities are essential. We understand that leadership has a fundamental role in the process of managing and developing employees. Therefore, we seek to create opportunities for leaders to be increasingly closer to their teams, accompanying, supporting, and further expanding active listening, contributing to a process of exchanging experiences, which is super important for the company.”

She says committees focused on development are held, with actionable feedback connected to employees’ professional ambitions. “In addition, it is worth noting the Leadership Academy, which focuses on preparing people, generating cohesion and direction for leaders, both those who are new to leadership positions or who have been in management positions for a long time. Topics range from expected leader behaviors to strategic themes for the year, discussion rounds on current topics, face-to-face meetings, learning workshops, among others.”

What cannot be measured, it cannot be improved.

Psychological safety and its impact on work routines are also frequent topics of training with Grupo Boticário’s leaders. “We know that safe environments provide a more favorable ground for innovation. In addition, the theme of integral health is frequent in our interactions with leaders and employees because caring for people involves not holding the individual responsible for their well-being, but rather understanding them in their entirety and creating a prevention and support network.”

For Patrícia Pugas, every leader, in general, needs to think about the holistic health of their team and the balance between professional and personal life. “I believe that attention to health begins with us, leaders, and then we are able to create a culture of health and well-being in the organization. If we do not take care of our own health, how can we take care of the health of the entire team?”

Magalu encourages and provides structure for not only senior leadership but the entire company to focus on self-care and seek personal and professional balance. “We have a telepsychology benefit available to all employees, as well as health programs that include a series of live events, lectures, and educational actions that aim to raise awareness among everyone on the topic.”

“Bringing to the access of many what is a privilege of few”

It is not enough to offer the same opportunity to everyone, but to take actions so that everyone has the same access. Promoting development programs focused on minorities is one example. According to Patrícia Pugas, diversity has always been at the core of Magalu, a company founded by a woman 65 years ago. “Our company was born with a strong DNA of diversity, and not coincidentally, our purpose of ‘bringing to the access of many what is a privilege of few’ reflects this commitment in some way.”

“We believe in diversity as a mindset and have developed consistent programs that lead us more and more towards a democratic, inclusive, and diverse world. We also believe that we are a representative cross-section of Brazilian society and that, in this way, the essence of society should be reflected in the company. Better companies make better people. Better people, a better world. We have specific goals to evolve in these issues and have developed programs such as the exclusive trainee program for black people, the diversity and inclusion program for people with disabilities in technology, the 40+ and 50+ programs for hiring professionals of these ages, LuizaCode, to hire more women in technology, among others.”

Involving leaders and senior executives in meetings on diversity and inclusion is one of the strategies of the Grupo Boticário. “Our CEO, Fernando Modé, voluntarily participates in meetings of affinity groups Generations (50+), People with Disabilities, and Orgulho GB (LGBTQIA+), inspiring us on the importance of being close and available to listen to people,” says Renata Simioni.

We want that HR be more tech and that technology be more human.

Thinking about training and access expansion, Grupo Boticário offers mentorship programs exclusively for marginalized groups, including tools for personal and professional development and networking.

Diversity in recruitment and succession processes

To avoid biased recruitment, selection, and succession processes, the consultancies that make up the international group EMA Partners are increasingly working to deconstruct prejudices and ensure that diversity is present in all phases of the recruitment process, from candidate profiling to final selection. To achieve this, EMA and its partners, such as Dasein, invest in training and capacity building for their team so that consultants have a deeper understanding of the topic and can apply it in their practices.

According to Adriana Prates, Dasein focuses on leadership, assisting in the creation of an inclusive culture, establishing policies and practices that promote diversity. “We encourage the creation of diversity and inclusion committees, promote prejudice training, adopt measures to eliminate discrimination in the workplace, provide financial support for education, leadership training, and mentoring, and have leaders from different backgrounds and perspectives.”

Five benefits of potential capacity diagnosis

Identifying potential is a valuable strategy for companies seeking long-term success. It leads to more effective talent development, improvements in productivity and decision-making, and prepares the company for the future, especially with regard to leadership succession and return on investment generation. Here are five major benefits of this strategy.

In-depth understanding of relationships. The assessment leads to understanding not only of the organization and the individual, but also the ways in which they interact.

Understanding the complexity of new times. In the pursuit of sustainability and growth, companies must structure themselves according to more complex work patterns that will require different abilities for business success.

Indicating a talent for each challenge. Each level of complexity requires different talents to understand and lead the work, so that they can apply their knowledge and exercise their ability to discern and judge, in order to achieve the objectives.

Showing how to choose paths or build new ones. Creativity is a human quality, but creativity can be blocked, repressed or misused if we cannot allocate people according to their abilities. The question is what to do to allow its manifestation.

Understanding people’s current capacity and estimating their growth over time. This is a strategy for anticipating future levels of work complexity and the capacity of each individual. From there, it is possible to manage talent at different levels and create the basis for planning people development and succession.

“Writing is easy: you start with a capital letter and end with a period. In the middle, you put ideas.” It was with his customary irony that Chilean poet Pablo Neruda drew attention to the arduous task of communicating well – whether through writing or oratory.

A critic of the “divine gift,” he demystified, in various accounts and works, talent as an essential element of writing. In its place, the requirement for dedication, practice, and continuous work. According to the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, communicating ideas with fluency is more of a skill that can be built and improved, rather than a vocation that a person has or does not have.

If it is practice that leads us to develop and improve competencies, would it not be prudent to put into perspective the digital automation of important exercises for our evolution, such as communication? Between us, yes. Especially in the face of the frenzy created by ChatGPT and its meteoric growth.

The technology that was missing?

As an antidote to communication creative blocks, it promises to organize, through texts of various styles and formats, ideas with a beginning, middle, and end. All in seconds. Developed by OpenAI, an American artificial intelligence research company, ChatGPT has been used to write presentations, announcements, difficult emails, articles, and whatever else is on the user’s confused mind.

Using the Transformer Neural Network (a method that teaches computers to process data like the human brain), the technology is capable of understanding and processing natural language, answering questions and generating texts to the customer’s liking, in an intelligent and humanized way.

It has also proven to be a good source of research, as it brings together billions of texts from the internet, including famous sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, and social media. For many, the technology that was missing – which explains why it is the fastest-growing platform in history (with over 100 million monthly active users in two months, surpassing TikTok, which took nine months to reach that number). That’s where the problem lies.

Writing is easy: you start with a capital letter and end with a period. In the middle, you put ideas.

Thinking is an exercise

Once we delegate certain activities to a robot, we stop performing them ourselves. This is the “Google effect”, associated with the low exercise of memorization. According to a study by Harvard University in the US, the constant use of search tools harms memory by creating user dependency – since information can be accessed at any time, there is no need to store it in memory.

The excessive use of digital search engines has harmed something essential to human development: the learning process.

If the data were trivial, it would be fine – the brain would have free space to store what matters. But the excessive use of digital search engines has harmed something essential to human development: the learning process. This conclusion is the result of a study conducted by the digital security company Kaspersky with 6,000 people in EU countries.

When given a question, 57% of the survey participants tried to suggest an answer on their own, but of that percentage, 36% ended up using the internet to elaborate their response. At the end of the study, 24% of the participants admitted to forgetting the information soon after using it to answer the question. In other words, a good part of the participants did not learn from what they had just researched.

The future of learning

Just like learning, writing is a path to be traveled, with challenges and discoveries. During the journey, new information is presented, solutions are found to solve problems, and this content is related to each person’s baggage, creating connections that become learning experiences. It is no wonder that writing is considered one of the great landmarks in human evolution – in addition to recording historical facts, it is an exercise in understanding the world.

The absence of this process, when there is excessive use of automation, is one of the major concerns, especially when it comes to the new generation of professionals. It is undeniable that young people who grew up using the internet have an enormous capacity to find information very quickly. However, this speed is often linked to a lack of depth and difficulty in elaborating good arguments. As we know, shallow answers do not solve problems.

Inspire yourself, but don’t copy

Far from taking away the merit of the technological advancement represented by ChatGPT – in addition to being a milestone for artificial intelligence and natural language processing, the tool contributes to innovations in several areas involving customer service and relationship (an evolution of chatbots), data analysis and consumer interactions, among others.

Its answers, often well-structured, can serve as inspiration for constructing arguments. That is, creating from the results that technology delivers is an alternative that can enrich your work – very different from copying. As ChatGPT uses billions of sources and data from existing content, you would be delivering a reproduction of web information – a point that has been generating many questions around security and ethics with information.

If it is practice that leads us to develop and improve competencies, wouldn’t it be prudent to put the digital automation of important exercises for our evolution into perspective?

It is by communicating in your own way, with authenticity, that you put your personal brand in what you produce. This is a characteristic that counts a lot for the future of any professional. As research indicates, communicating with empathy remains one of the most sought-after soft skills in the world. It is essential for engagement, development, generating trust, as well as avoiding a series of relationship problems – especially in routines that promise to digitize more every day.

The social and technological advances of recent years have posed an even greater challenge for human resources management in companies. How can we balance internal and external demands? How can we transform ourselves, as companies, institutions, and individuals, and keep up with the visible progress in various areas?

For over five years, I have led the HR department of a century-old company in a vital sector for the economy: CPFL Energia, one of the main players in the segment in the country. In addition to seasonal and ordinary demands, our agenda has been incremented, especially in the last three years, with a series of challenges that we have already begun to face. We recognize that the world is changing rapidly, and we want and will keep up with this evolution.

This transformation involves the need to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the company. We started from a scenario in which, throughout the energy sector, male predominance was visible, especially in operational areas. We needed to change and asked ourselves: how do we take the first steps?

In 2020, the company had five women electricians in field operations. Our challenge, initially, was to increase diversity at the front line, focusing on women. We entered 2021 with a goal: to train more women in our courses. Since 2012, CPFL has been offering free courses for electrician training. To reach our goal, we then decided to create exclusive classes for women. There were two classes in 2021 and six more in 2022.

The results are already visible. We started 2023 with 111 women electricians working in the field, a growth of 2,120% compared to 2020. This year, new schools exclusively for women are scheduled, which will allow us to increase the number of women electricians in our operations in São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul.

This agenda has no end. We are confident that it is possible to increase the diversity of our operational and administrative staff, and we will continue to create concrete actions that allow us to make progress step by step.

But these advances will only truly change the culture of the company and the sector if there is internal engagement from all employees, from the CEO to the analyst, from the Board of Directors to the field electricians. Fortunately, the diversity agenda finds an echo at CPFL and, in 2020, we structured “CPFL +Diversa”, a structured program that works on diversity and inclusion in an integrated way and focuses, at this moment, on the demands and needs of five specific social groups: generations, LGBTQIAP+, women, people with disabilities, and black people.

A diverse company is a reflection of the equally diverse society we have. In 2022, we held the first Diversity Week, with training and exchange of experiences with each of the groups. These moments are important because they allow people who had little or no contact with the topics to get involved. In the case of leaders, for example, training and improvement work needs to be intense and constant, so that everyone who holds positions of management, coordination, and supervision can put into practice everything we have planned in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Our experience in this important and long journey of diversity is certainly only the beginning. Today, it is one of the most important pillars of action of HR and is connected to broader commitments of the company. In November 2022, CPFL Energia launched the new ESG 2030 Plan, composed of 23 goals, including diversity.

A diverse company is a reflection of the equally diverse society we have.

All of these discussions, actions, and demands teach us a lot. Companies today, which want to continue to be relevant tomorrow, need to keep up with these changes that come from outside to inside. A diverse company is a reflection of the equally diverse society we have. A diverse team of employees, in the most diverse senses and possibilities, can better serve customers, better understand their demands, and increase our value to them and to society as a whole. I am part of this story and this is one of the greatest legacies I want to leave in my management!

It used to hang on the wall in the living room. It was one of those round targets to play darts, which my son had received as a birthday gift. We would randomly throw the red and yellow arrows at the black background. There were no rules or scorekeeping. Trying to hit the bullseye was just a game, a stroke of luck.

My game is different: with words. By choice and by profession. It’s been that way since I was a child. I hardly ventured into balls, teams; very little with board games. I switched courts for notebooks early on. My sporting instinct is too literary and too little literal.

At home, I removed the black frame from the living room and put it in the kids’ room. I thought it best to remove the game whose rules I didn’t understand from the scene – even though it’s easy to learn them on the internet. Losing the target in the game is easy; what I’ve seen out there is worse: many people shooting information randomly, missing the target of communication.

Writing is like playing darts. Each idea launched into the text is like an arrow aiming at the center of the circle. You need to know how much each one is worth to set the right strategy and score points. Like the player who sets the arrow’s goal on the target, you plan the destination of your text. Who is it talking to? What is the main idea? How will this content resonate with the reader?

These are basic questions that define where you want to go and provide support for knowing where to start. Every text is a path, but you need to chart the route for the reader. It’s not their responsibility to figure out the route alone. You need to signal the trail, give clues, pull them along and walk together.

While information is impersonal, communication is interpersonal. It’s not enough to write a text that’s just informative, if it doesn’t communicate with the reader. It’s necessary to think about the reader, how they will receive and understand the message. Communicating is about establishing a conversation, building a relationship.

According to the father of modern management, Peter Drucker, 60% of problems in a company are caused by communication failures. What does this tell us? People have difficulty understanding and making themselves understood. That’s why assertiveness in oral and written communication is so important.

I’ve seen this happen up close. Sharp demands for a task that wasn’t executed due to the simple lack of clarity in what had been requested in the first place. When there is no clear direction in the information, there is a lack of understanding and an abundance of personal interpretations.

You need to get straight to the point on the subject and convey confidence in what you’re saying, with clarity and objectivity, if you want to be assertive. Don’t be dry or boring. A good conversation or a good text has to have some spice.

If you want to hit the target, you need to understand the rules. Not to be bound by them, but to know how to play and throw the darts with a specific goal in mind. A well-written text starts from a defined premise, but leaves room for the reader to construct their own reflections.

To be assertive, your text needs to hit the bullseye of the idea. Only then will you hit the reader right on target.