More and more
often people are selected based on their personalities, yet the
body is often home to more than one soul. Job@ has tried to uncover
the hidden side of well-dressed business people, the other side
of the business world, and to reveal the real face of routine business
men or women. Today’s story is about Patrick Collin who made
his own dream come true at the age of forty and has enough ambition
to make that dream last up to the age of eighty.
PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS TRAINER AND CONSULTANT
I kicked off my career as an analyst/programmer for an insurance
company after obtaining two degrees, in computer science and occupational
psychology. Soon after I moved on to work for various IT companies.
At HP I was assigned a commercial position, consequently I started
training their new European employees. I profoundly enjoyed that
task and because of the fall of the Berlin Wall the nationalities
in my sessions included the English, Spanish, French, as well as
the Russians, Slovenians and Polish. This diversity was highly motivating
to me. However, I left HP to set up a Belgian branch for a French
software company. Still, I had not found what I was looking for.
So at the age of forty I decided to return to my first love: psychology,
and use the experience I had gained thus far to set up my own company:
Paco.
Achievements
Setting up my own company at the age of forty and leaving behind
the security of being an employee do not really count as achievements
to me. That was bound to happen sooner or later anyway. What I do
consider as achievements are the projects I successfully completed.
For example, I managed to realise the consolidation of two provinces
for a large bank. Training Leadership and Management Skills, Sales
and Self-Management, that is Paco’s job, and by keeping an
open mind I am able succeed time and time again. This open mind
is especially crucial because I often operate in companies with
multiple nationalities. I have even been asked by some companies
to start up a procedure to bridge the gap between different nationalities.
Ambitions
My true calling is in annual projects involving about a hundred
or a hundred and fifty employees. Similar projects have actual depth
because of their duration and size. I am also involved in individual
coaching of managers for several companies. In fact that is where
my drive comes from. One day I hope to have the opportunity to coach
a professional sportsman or woman.
Satisfaction
I always try to bear in mind that a learning process happens in
four steps: from unconsciously to consciously incompetent, and then
from consciously to unconsciously competent. Seeing an employee
or an employer move from scepticism to enthusiasm is what satisfies
me. It is well-known that working with people provides fulfilment,
as does the realisation of set objectives, and this is also the
case for me.
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