Zahari Sabev, one of our Team Leader Program alumni, brings 9 years of experience as a SAP BI Developer and Consultant in the SAP Business Intelligence and Data Analytics field. Fluent in both English and German, he has been working as a freelancer for approximately 2 years, primarily with German-speaking business clients. Zahari is passionate about data analysis, artificial intelligence, leadership, and team management. He enjoys constantly learning new things and solving problems. While he has not formally held a Team Leader or management role, he has trained colleagues, stakeholders, and business clients - and acted as a mentor and informal deputy to his supervisors, addressing assigned topics when they were absent from the office.
What motivated you to participate in the Team Leader program?
The reason for my enrollment in the Team Leader program was my desire to enhance my leadership and management skills. My life philosophy is that individuals should continually seek to learn new things, even in unfamiliar areas. Additionally, I believe that managers should be the most open, adaptive, and ready to learn, because modern team management in every company, regardless of size, demands a comprehensive skill set that encompasses not only organization, management, and soft skills.
What challenges did the program assist you in overcoming?
The program helped me further develop my leadership skills, emotional intelligence, active listening skills, and better organization of my tasks, which assists me in working with my clients.
What is the most valuable takeaway you learned from the program?
To effectively manage a team of people in order to achieve specific outcomes requires a different set of skills such as organizational, managerial, soft skills, analytical thinking, problem-solving abilities, flexibility and adaptability, emotional intelligence, and perhaps the most valuable among all mentioned – regardless of the circumstances, the manager must be able to positively influence the team by motivating and inspiring them to achieve peak performance. However, before acquiring these skills, an individual aspiring to become a manager or Team Leader should possess the right mindset – a general leadership mentality in personal life and interactions with friends and acquaintances, as well as a passion for working in this position and enjoying the opportunity to communicate with people and solve their problems.
What would you like to share with other individuals considering to join the program?
I recommend it to everyone who wants to pursue a professional career as a Team Leader or Manager. The instructors can teach you many things, and the training is quite practical in nature. Additionally, you get the opportunity to meet people from various fields and exchange knowledge with them. What could be better than that? Specialized knowledge, skills, and data in today's world are more valuable than gold.