Edina Salcinovic is a Coach & Founder. She is originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Former Yugoslavia and lives in the Netherlands now.
She tells us that, “I was very young when the war broke out in my former country. I worked for a relief agency, and I had extraordinary experiences in working with people who can say a lot about hardship and pain. I also witnessed their capacity to keep going, to keep the hope alive, to strive, despite all the odds. It has been a humbling experience.
I also learned that once we know how, the drive to do right by oneself is already there. This experience of people’s capacity for compassion, love and growth, and the personal experiences of transformation helped shape the supporting and empowering people to better their lives, and of those around them, into my vocation.” Edina is a Transformation and Career Coach determined to make her contribution to making the world a better place. She believes in, “One career and one transformation at the time.”
What were your initial years of growing up like? Tell us about your life before starting your corporate journey/venture/initiative.
Growing up in an alternative system such as socialism in the Former Yugoslavia has greatly impacted the person I have become. It was a doctrine rooted in equality, inclusiveness and justice. Although in reality not everything was quite so perfect, by the time I began to understand this, these principles were deeply rooted in my value system, and they became my personal guide and goals towards which I’ve been striving. My family’s modest and hardworking background shaped my childhood’s landscape. The intergenerational trauma, which remained invisible and never talked about, much less dealt with, and the hardships of life shaped the family dynamics and attitude towards life. This resulted in growing up with a craving for support, guidance, clarity.
I grew up rebelling my way through the feeling of being alone, insecure and ‘misplaced’. I found a refuge in school and peers, learning and books. Since I can remember, I was captivated by reading about the fictional or real characters who defied the odds. Fun detail: for a few years in a row, I was pronounced a most prolific reader by my school’s library. I was fascinated by the world as it COULD be, not only as it was. I used to deeply mourn not having the guidance and thought ‘‘if I did this [relatively] well on my own, imagine what I could have done with guidance?! ‘’. Only later did I understand that this life-long craving brought a gift of being proactive and seeing to these needs in a different way. I reached for every available piece of information and avenue to heal and get answers, get much-longed peace of mind, and improve my self-command and personal leadership.
Becoming officially a coach resonated deeply with me. At one point not only did I become aware of this link, of desiring guidance, and searching for a purpose and role to assume in life and the gifts that it brought where I learned that even if I was not GIVEN those things, I can still GET them, but sharing it also became my goal. Hence the coaching.
The things that have been a part of me for as long as I remember are a deep drive to belong and share, curiosity, creativity and love for animals and nature. I desired to do industrial design and I understood later that was a strategy to combine thinking, creating and the drive for ‘bettering’. Now I satiate these deep drives by being ever creative about the ways to design a quality, fulfilled life.
The time in nature is the peaceful opportunity to connect and recharge is priceless. Whenever I can, I spend time with animals, the horses in particular, and that fills my heart up.
Was there any turning point in your life that changed your journey? If so, what was it? Please tell us the backstory behind it.
Kierkegaard said it – life can only be lived forward but understood looking backwards. We weave the life’s narrative by reflecting on the events and pairing them with the emotions. We give meaning to the experiences this way. Life is a meaning-making journey ALL ALONG. At any point, with every step, there are different options we can take but we took THAT one, which led to another one. Each step highlights the ‘logical’ (or simply convenient), possible next ones. Each one of them is a choice.
It’s the choice we made at that particular moment, but speaking about everyday life, it’s never the only one available to us. I got to see that it’s usually not the ‘end of steps’ either. There was always a next or different one. It was always a matter of the ‘price’, if I was prepared to do what was required. I liberated a lot of my action taking potential by distinguishing between these two.
This realisation of choices always being available is the most liberating piece of awareness I got to experience. With hindsight, I see clearly how every turn and change in my life opened up a new path to take, even if the insight about that wasn’t available at the time. The turning points such as the war, working with the victims of war, refugees and various vulnerable population groups, which lead me to shift my focus from natural to social sciences in the most traumatic but powerful way, changed the trajectory of my life forever. Of the pivotal ones I’d spotlight two: moving the country and shifting the expectations from the external to internal source of guidance. The ‘clean’ slate I found in the new country was terrifying but also liberating. That led to this notion that I ought to give myself the guidance and support I craved for all along. For the first time I gave mindful regard to/for my values and what I stand for.
The rest is a process – it takes time.
Every industry that is now a large-scale, top-notch business once started as a small idea in the minds of entrepreneurs. What was that idea or motivation that made you start your business /initiative? What motivated you within to say “YES, go for it!”
I always thought I ought to be an entrepreneur because I am creative and could express only a fraction of that creativity within whatever structure I belonged to. I could however never figure out what I was good at to make a business out of it.
When I was licensed by the then institution to be an inhouse career counsellor, two things happened during the licensing training. One was that my experience, knowledge, formal education as well as my values suddenly found their expression. They all had a role in that framework I was being taught to do. Two: I realised THAT could be the type of work where I can be me. Being me actually was the work. From a burnout, disillusioned professional, in the course of that training I transformed into a hopeful person. A bigger-than-fear thought surged in my consciousness: I COULD change the course of my career. As it turned out, I changed the course of my life in the process as well. That initial clarity with which I saw the way to proceed was another incredibly inspirational moment.
Tell us something about your initiative or current role. What is it about, and what impact are you trying to make?
I am a transformation and career coach, and a founder of a private practice for which I have a long-term vision to continue supporting many professionals who found themselves at the crossroads.
The link between the career and [personal] transformation emerged through the work with my clients, and people I know. Whilst acknowledging how important the work identity is, and can be, to use a metaphorical language, a career change can be understood as a symptom, whilst the real reason why we can’t just take steps to do it, or why we can’t see the path forward, is a cause.
This cause [that is our inner world], unless we intentionally choose to look at it, will remain invisible. It rarely finds us on its own. Unless we choose to do it, it often results in the repetition of the same things, the lingering of old habits, resulting in undermining any change that we are trying to implement. Unless we do the inner, preceding to or in parallel to the actual changes, the change in/about the career will either not be fulfilling or it will not have a lasting effect. This is because even if the career is different, similar circumstances tend to emerge at new jobs. We tend to pick similar jobs, or if the shift is really drastic, unless we match it up with the inner transformation, the challenges of a new career tend to become too big to sustain. So the cycle continues. For many, a career serves as a gateway for transformation. Career pivoting, changing industries, as well as following their authentic, inner voices that call for a more general shift, so that they can build the career that fits their vision, or/and experience the fulfilment and purpose in life, takes building personal leadership skills and transforming the wealth of experiences, skills and strengths which people already possess into the driving force.
The mind that brought you up to where you are currently is not the mind that will take you further, is one of the ways that the coaching field describes this metaphorical and actual inner dynamic. People unfortunately sometimes are blocked at this moment where their mind starts posing a limit to going further. I am not a fan of generalisations, but in terms of coaching, we can broadly say there are three types of potential for coaching/transformation:
1.Those who are not ready [YET] to see this landscape of opportunities, possibilities and options;
2.Those who have started ‘the work’ but have not fully open to see the opportunities,, and
3.Those who recognise this limiting paradox of the mindset, habits and personal leadership skills, and are actively seeking support to help them to do the transformation. [These feel challenged and say ‘give me more of this, I want to understand’.]
The difference between these? The understanding that the limitations come from the way we think, our mindset, our beliefs, habits. Not to say of course that everybody has the same chances, not everyone has the same access to resources, but in each individual’s context, the change is possible. Understanding that this limitation of the current mind does not have to have the final say, that we can, and ought to change it, that we ought to work on our mindset, work on the beliefs about the self, others and the world so that we can open up the new opportunities and build our executive leadership skills, is the turning point. My coaching approach is inspired by experience of working with people for a long time. My background in sociology, psychology, systems thinking and being a life-long student of the amazing science on the link between our physiology and psychology, understanding how our brain works all help shape it and create the tools which I use to support my clients. This multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach enables me to support those who are ready for transformation to transmute the doubts into finding the right approach, tailoring the tools that inspire the insights, knowledge seeking, application and action taking that result in that much-wanted shift. My coaching is a positive, creative and empowering framework. I have been doing mainly 1 to 1 coaching and I am currently just about to release an online group coaching programme.
Everyone has their own set of challenges when starting an entrepreneurial journey. Still, the most essential part for others to learn is how you deal with those. Would you like to share with us your challenges and your coping mechanisms?
In connection with what I shared about having an idea and implementing that idea is the single most powerful learning about the entrepreneurial journey. What I learned is that ANY idea can be turned into business as long as you take time, show dedication, are prepared to learn about the self, the ‘guild’ ropes, as well as the business side of it. The idea, the a-ha moment, is just a starting point. The business that comes out of that idea, and the eventual success, is the process and the discipline that follows.
The key three things for me were:
1.Getting disciplined and doing the steps,
2.Surrounding myself with the people who were ahead of me but not to the point where their stage in process seemed unattainable, and
3.Accountability. Mostly I was accountable to those I looked up to, and over time I also learned to strengthen being accountable to myself.
To these, I would add an important inner dimension, such as accepting some ‘awkwardness’ in the process. So normalising for myself that ‘new’ equals ‘discomfort’ helped me tremendously to roll with it and keep taking one step at the time. Like with any other field or new challenge, there are new skills and knowledge to be acquired. It takes time to integrate them. It takes patience for it to happen AND to put it to action. You can have all the knowledge and still not take the necessary steps.
While the global pandemic of COVID-19 is associated primarily with adversities, it has also brought about a true boom in startups, with successful entrepreneurship in many countries. The pandemic has impacted all of us in one way or another. Would you like to share your experience on a personal and professional level?
I had the most traumatic and defining experience with the pandemic. In 2020, a total collapse in all three major areas of my life took place within a 45-day period. A close-family member died of COVID, my relationship of many years broke down, and I received the news that my contract with the organisation I worked at was being discontinued as of the end of the year. I was never as lost for direction as at that time. What I found out was fascinating, and a great learning point for life, for my coaching, for general understanding. My mind could not deal with all three at the same time. The order in which my physical and mind dealt with those tells me about life’s priorities: I first mourned the intense feeling of loss of my brother-in-law; then my emotions moved on to face the loss of the security/threat to survival due to the loss of employment. Almost a year later, I was finally ready to look into the loss of the intimate relationship. From whichever end I contemplate how I dealt with these traumatic events, I can see life’s great wisdom at work. I am humbled by that experience beyond words. And yet, it is due to and during the COVID time that I started with my solopreneurship. The everything-shutdown helped me to focus on what needed to be done and the many things I needed to learn about having my own business.
Your journey and your vision are very inspiring, but are there any achievements or accomplishments you would like to mention?
Setting up a business in the context of challenges I was facing is an accomplishment of a particular kind. On the more substantive level, I work with some amazing clients. Personal growth is a complex process. The biggest shared achievement is that no one remains the same person after the deep, inner work, even if the awareness of it comes in its own time. Because this change happens differently to different people, the results also show up differently. Some experience an immediate effect, some come back after the process has done its magic to share what a life changing experience the coaching they received was for them and how that impacted their significant others, family, friends. I feel humbled to contribute to this process of change for my clients. The ripple effect of transformation makes me even more grateful for the trust they showed me by working with me.
Would you like to share with our young budding women entrepreneurs the change you would like to see in the world if given an opportunity?
NVC, the non-violent communication framework, gives me the language to express this. We all have core human needs. These are to feel safe, belong, be accepted/ regarded for who we are, love but also the needs to which we can tend next, such as creativity, to contribute and give back. The ways each of us achieves these, defined as strategies, however significantly vary, and that is where the disagreements and conflicts happen. I am dedicated to contributing to empowering people to see to their core needs so that they can live a fulfilling, successful life, on their own terms. Everything we all contribute in this sense will make the world a better place for everyone.
One [beginning of] transformation at the time from me. It goes on to impact people around as well.
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in your personal life and professional journey? What is your personal motto in life?
It has to be the realisation that the world is not made up for me but that it’s the interplay of my perception, beliefs and the subsequent actions which I take, that solidifies it all into my reality. People favour the known over the unknown/new. It’s a human trait. This happens EVEN when ‘the known’ is less favourable and when ‘the new’ means the much-wanted change and lightness. There is a great deal of uncertainty in giving up a perceived permanence, even when it results in a way of living that doesn’t serve us. In this uncertainty however lies everything good I strive towards. So I purposefully, deliberately, with kindness and curiosity, build my muscle [skills, tools, mindset upgrade, beliefs] to see the potential in uncertainty. I choose the difficulties to be my guide in understanding how my perception is limiting me and from there I take steps to build a fulfilled, value-driven purposeful life, so that I can serve and give back to the world. In short, my motto is that certainty is seriously overrated; uncertainty only appears scary if we think of it as a bad thing.
Women are a growing force in the workplaces worldwide, standing shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. There are cracks in glass ceilings everywhere, with many women breaking through to carve out a space right at the top of the pyramid. What are your thoughts about women’s leadership today?
It was about time 🙂 It’s empowering to see how, with the democratisation of knowledge and economical independence, there is a steady trend of women being a part of the mainstream. The most impressive women leaders for me are the ones who are comfortable being themselves and being the leaders. Not trying to ‘beat’ men in their own game but really being comfortable being ‘different’. That difference however is only from the traditional concepts of leadership, created by and for men. This is evolving, of course, but in some fields it’s a slow, spontaneous change, negotiated over a long span of time, many business deals and an immense amount of experiences. But what if women leaders and new-business owners, the leaders of a more sustainable future, start intentionally spotlighting their uniqueness as a new mainstream now?! Not compete with men in their own game, which only confirms its status, but dare and define the outlines of a new way of leading, co-creating and coexisting?! What a future! I asked one of my clients to define the three most important traits of a great leader. They said ‘empathy, readiness to help others and regard for inclusivity’. Isn’t this inspiring to hear and think that these are the traits that people value in their leaders? Women excel in all of those. It’s in our making. Women have such a unique set of strengths that their contribution only enriches and builds on the current practices and leadership concepts.
With your grit and determination, you are making a considerable impact, breaking through, and serving as role models for many budding entrepreneurs. What would you want to say to our young women leaders/audience reading this?
I am personally driven by the values, and what we are about, because ‘the passions’, as in ‘follow your passions’ are the first one to be dropped when life gets tough and complicated. And it will get complicated on the entrepreneurial path, we can count on that. So, getting very clear about those values first is crucial. We assume sometimes we know them but values can be more elusive and less defined than we think. Living authentically and giving purpose to our actions, depends on this. Take it seriously and be intentional about it. Changing the way we think about difficulties is another aspect. Reframing the expectation for things to go smoothly, or fail even, can be the single biggest killer of our dreams and plans. When I started catching myself having expectations of the easy win/resolution, that’s when things got easier because I could say to myself ‘everything worth having is worth working for’. That simple thought eases the grip of fear and resistance towards the ‘difficult’ and helps me take the next step. It’s all about what steps we take. Difficulty is just another way things can appear. No judgement as to ‘good/bad’. Surrounding yourself with people you aspire to be like, and the community is another building block for success. I am often surprised to hear my exact thoughts coming out of the mouths of others, thinking I was the only one who struggled with that. Feeling like we are not alone in something releases the fears and our natural brain potential to be creative and come up with solutions can then be released.
