Teo Galea, Country Manager & SME Europe Director. I joined Colt in July 2014, as a Marketing Manager. After 6 months I changed my position to Telesales Director and on Jan 1st 2020 I was promoted as SME Europe Director. Alongside my main role, I am also the Country Manager for Colt Romania SSC, that has beautifully grown in the last years, reaching 164 employees in 2020. Colt strives to transform the way the world works through the power of connectivity. The Colt IQ Network connects 900+ data centres across Europe, Asia and North America’s largest business hubs, with over 29 000 on net buildings and growing.
How did you start your career? Which were your first steps? How did you envision your career?
I started my career in 2005, in a consultancy start-up, as a Human Resources Specialist, working on recruitment, training, consultancy projects, having also a commercial component by being responsible for the direct relationship with the clients. After 1 year, I moved to another start-up consultancy company, where I became an associate, with 2 French business partners, developing the company on the Romanian market and also getting involved in the operations from Germany, France, India and Morocco. I remained part of this company even after joining Colt, working in parallel for a while. When I was a student, I imagined myself as a School Counselor or Human Resources Specialist. I’ve always been very competitive and even though I haven’t made projections of where I will get, I always looked to improve myself and do more than the job required me to do.
What were your key career moments (those that had an impact on your professional journey)?
- The Erasmus scholarship in Belgium, while I was a student. It offered me an international view, understanding the culture, the different working ways and has given me a high level of personal independence.
- Being part of 2 start-ups and a project started from scratch in Colt gave me the valuable experience of building something that hasn’t existed before.
- Obtaining a management role in a non-governmental organisation (The Association of Psychology Students) offered me the opportunity to see that I can lead people by motivation, without financial benefits.
- Meeting a few exceptional leaders, in the consultancy companies and in Colt, that opened new and valuable horizons for me related to the leadership area.
What is the best three most valuable career lessons you have learned?
- If you want to build something really valuable, you need to be perseverant and to have the availability for a sustained effort.
- Loving people is not a management strategy that you learn from the books but it is the best strategy that I identified in my whole career.
- You don’t have your position written on your forehead and have to always stay humble.
Why did you choose Business Service Industry? What were top 3 reasons for choosing Colt?
The service area in Romania’s economic and social context is one of the areas with the most accelerated development and with a potential that only now starts to be exploited.
I chose Colt because:
- It is a corporation that understands the business objectives can be fulfilled only if the company is also building a culture that values every individual who is actively involved in fulfilling these objectives.
- Its global dimension is significant enough but in the same time it is small enough to give you the opportunity to communicate till the top of the organisation and have an impact on the direction the company is headed.
- Connectivity is one of the most important elements of the society nowadays and people cannot live without it.
What are your/your company’s plans for 2020?
The company and I plan to increase the added value of our SSC in Romania and raise the consistency of the impact we have on the customers, as well as achieve a higher level of satisfaction.
What do you think would be the keywords of the year for managers in the Business Services industry? Automation? Cutting costs?
How they will learn to manage the relationships with the employees, obtain engagement and added value while also reducing cost and automating.
Tell us a little bit about your private life. Tell us about your passions, family. What do you do to relax?
I have a family life at least as busy as the life I have at work, having 3 children. I relax and have fun with them, playing all kind of games and doing sports. We like to travel and basically be together, regardless of the activity we engage in.
If you were starting now your career, knowing the present and near future opportunities, what would you do? What career would you pursue?
I would try not to take too seriously those small difficulties, that seem big in a small time horizon but are really small in the long time one. I would for sure choose a career that would put me in continuous interaction with people and I think that my career is not defined by sales, recruiting or a specific company, but by the management of human resources.
I would try to be more focused on the truly important things, making sure that at least 20% of what I do every day provides me growth, not only solves an issue from that day.
What are the top 3 skills that you would develop?
The ability to work in a multicultural, global and diverse environment
How to rest and relax efficiently
A critic-constructive mind
What would you do and what would you avoid doing? – practical advice to young professionals.
I would advise young professionals to trust their choices and follow them with perseverance, without letting themselves be set back by the rest of the society. They should try to wisely choose the people they interact with, thinking if they make a better human out of them or not.