ESIC Barcelona renews its participation for the 10th edition of the BizBarcelona fair to join efforts to ‘Reactivate Barcelona’

During the BizBarcelona fair in its tenth edition, six teachers of the ESIC Barcelona Campus have participated giving conference talks or advisory sessions aimed to businesspeople and entrepreneurs ready to take on the next challenges of the future. Under the theme line ‘Let's reactivate Barcelona!’, many activities were organized to empower the economic muscle of the city, which is facing now a new era of change and transformation. The fair, held from 21 to 23 September at the Fira de Barcelona in the Montjuïc venue, celebrated its 10^th anniversary having redesigned the space in order to comply with all the health and safety requirements.

At the Entrepreneurship exhibition stall, our teacher Yolanda Barneda, trainer in soft skills and personal and executive coach, presented on the 22nd of September the conference ‘The conscious entrepreneur: The art of the empowering question’, to help entrepreneurs and managers exercise a mindful leadership in their organizations. In the first place, Barneda explained to the audience that any art is something that must be practiced and tested. Therefore, the art of searching for the right question must be perfected, in fact, and precisely, by asking questions: “How passionate are we about our work? What impact does our work have on others? How willing are we to keep on learning? What would we do if we were not afraid?... All of these questions have to dig down on both the intra-personal and the inter-personal dimensions, to find deeper awareness of ourselves and our surroundings”. Indeed, as Barneda pointed out, it is difficult to successfully project our future if we are not in a conscious present state.

To formulate and answer all these questions the right way, the professor at the ESIC Postgraduate Campus noted the importance of the emotional intelligence. Citing the reputed psychologist Daniel Goleman, Barneda said that, for a good intra-dependence relation, we need to put in practice the capacities of self-knowledge, self-management and motivation, while for a good inter-dependence relation, it is essential to cultivate our empathy and social abilities.

On the other hand, Barneda also explained how to reach the right empowering question when we want to focus all this self-awareness work towards a professional goal. In this regard, Barneda recommended to follow three steps:

1. Before even formulating the question, it is essential to be free of judgment and expectations.
2. The question itself must be an open-ended, relevant, and conscious one.
3. And, considering the answers, you may have prepared an action & follow up plan before moving forward.

As she concluded, “the talent to ask the right questions in the right moment is crucial for the welfare of all organizations, because being aware of your physical and psychological self and that of your teamwork will allow you to make decisions that, at the end, will have a positive impact on your company’s outcomes. Don’t forget that awareness is the foundation to productivity!”.

The participants of this edition of the BizBarcelona fair could also enjoy, live or online, the conferences given by the ESIC faculty members Luca Dell’Oro, Tamotsu Kamata, Xavier Escales and Joan Manel Torres, besides the personalised advisory sessions given by the teacher Josep Salvat. An opportunity to get to know all the potential of Barcelona, a city recognized worldwide for its promotion of entrepreneurship and its attraction of global talent.