Development isn’t a ladder to climb, but a landscape to explore

Development isn’t a ladder to climb, but a landscape to explore

1. What’s a mistake that helped you grow in your leadership?

At the beginning of my career, when I started taking on leadership roles, I struggled to admit my vulnerabilities. I tried to hide them, thinking that would come across as more professional. Over time, I realized that was a mistake: acknowledging your struggles actually increases authenticity and has a profound impact on how you lead.

The mistake, then, was trying to always appear solid and unshakable. But that’s not realistic — there are times when you feel less capable or lack certain skills. Sharing that with your team — in a thoughtful and conscious way — helps you grow, builds deeper trust and connection, and paradoxically leads to a stronger, more authentic, more honest output.

2. What makes a development journey effective today?

We’re working in a world that’s increasingly complex and less linear. Organizations operate in ever-evolving contexts, which is why I believe professional growth today is driven more and more by diverse experiences.

Learning and development are closely tied: when you expose yourself to new situations, you gain fresh perspectives, build new skills, and ultimately strengthen your growth journey.

Many managers still push for vertical advancement, but I think that view needs to be challenged. Embracing horizontal experiences — broadening your scope — can truly make a difference.

In short: an effective development journey is one that offers people the chance to experience a variety of situations, pushing them to expand the boundaries of their skills and responsibilities.

3. How do you design development paths that are both scalable and personalized?

It seems like a trade-off… but I believe the key lies in building journeys that are as tailored as possible — combining diagnostic tools (skill mapping, assessments, feedback systems, etc.) with a wide range of development tools (training platforms, coaching/mentoring, etc.) — especially digital ones.

Technology today allows us to scale access to development tools. But at the same time, growth has to remain a personal responsibility — each person must define the path that works best for them.

Of course, guidance is essential: offering a broad menu isn’t enough. You also need to help people build a path that actually makes sense for them.

That way, you bring together both breadth and depth — and the journey becomes truly personalized while still being scalable.

4. What’s the difference between developing talent and recognizing potential?

Beyond the various potential mapping systems companies use, the truth is: when someone has potential, you see it. Talented people stand out.

Sure, the distinction between performance and potential might be useful on paper, but in practice, I believe it’s hard to have one without the other.

That said, developing talent requires courage: you have to give them increasing responsibility, even on projects that might seem “too big” for their experience. That’s how real growth happens.

Recognizing potential means taking a leap: throwing out new, more complex challenges — and seeing what happens. Great managers are the ones who raise the bar, trust their people’s talents, and rely on their learning agility, openness to change, and willingness to step outside their comfort zone.

In the end, if potential is there, it will show in the results. Once potential is activated, it becomes real — it becomes performance. That’s when you truly recognize it.

5. How can we create environments where people want — and are able — to express their potential?

You need an environment with psychological safety, where people feel free to express creativity, to experiment, even to fail. A strong error culture is essential: mistakes are a source of learning. They spark initiative.

A healthy organization isn’t one where everyone strictly follows process or sticks to their job description. It’s one where those things are just a starting point — a perimeter to be expanded.

That’s where wellbeing becomes essential — truly feeling good at work. Wellbeing isn’t just about perks or benefits. It means creating the conditions for a workplace that supports holistic wellness — mental, emotional, relational, and physical.

Even the physical space matters: open, welcoming, transparent environments boost wellbeing and collaboration.

Wellbeing is not an add-on. It’s a strategic lever.

6. What’s a concrete example of organizational wellbeing you’ve seen or helped build?

At Fastweb, over the past few years, we often asked ourselves how to best use the limited wellbeing budget — which is never enough. So we decided to activate listening mechanisms, asking people directly what mattered most to them.

In some surveys, the theme of caregiving came through very strongly — people caring for loved ones. So we tried to design custom programs that could be tailored to specific needs.

It’s a small example, but I think it really reflects the concept of people centricity.

7. What’s a belief about development we should let go of?

Let me go back to the idea I mentioned at the start: too often — both personally and managerially — we believe development should be linear and vertical.

But real growth is full of discontinuities, changes in direction, diverse experiences, horizontal moves.

If someone’s an expert in one area, why shouldn’t they be able to switch? Offering new opportunities is how you help them grow — and how you retain them. Changing direction doesn’t mean starting over. It means enriching your path.