A Lecture on Leadership

On February, 13 AUBG students of all majors and standings gathered in the BAC Andrey Delchev Auditorium to witness Velina Getova’s lecture on leadership.

Velina Getova is an AUBG alumna of 2009; she majored in business administration and journalism and mass communications. After AUBG Getova went on to study at the London School of Economics and Political Science and graduated with a master's degree in organizational and social psychology. In 2013 she started her own company, Genuine People & Change.

Getova started with a question “Do you ever feel that you have to make a choice between ambition and having fun? Or between being a good friend, a cool person in class and being the winner?”

In her lecture, she wanted to share the results of her research, which was also her master's thesis - “a story about the identity formation path of 14 young entrepreneurs who start and lead innovative small firms in Bulgaria.” Today they are all heading successful IT companies. Getova found out that in their young life, those people didn’t think of themselves as leaders, they were not particularly enterprising and outstanding, and when they founded their own companies, money wasn’t their primary goal. Based on her findings, Getova came up with a better understanding of how we can all discern the true leaders within an organization.

Firstly, she pointed out the differences between leaders in the past and those in the present. “In the past leadership was all about money and power”, Getova said. The leaders of today are people called authentic leaders. “Who are authentic leaders? They are people, who are true to themselves, with high self-awareness, moral values and genuine goals.” Getova said that authentic leaders can be described with a saying “Be a first-rate version of yourself, not a second-rate version of someone else.” They know everything about their own strengths and weaknesses and are brave enough to face them and work on them. “The best thing about authentic leaders is that they are human, they are like everyone else.”

Authentic leadership is also about helping people grow and feel happier when working. “Positive emotions have impact on our productivity and performance”, Getova said.

Getova concluded with the last key point that impactful people have. True leaders show empathy and support, thus nurturing team spirit. “They are the leaders among the group, on the same level with others, not on top of them.”

The lecture was followed by a Q&A session with AUBG students and faculty members.