Meet the Croatian mother-of-two with her own theme tune (to the sound of Hey Macarena), who loves playing board games but only when she’s not orienteering.
If you want to know where best to ride a bicycle in Zagreb, you really need to talk to Katarina Sovic.
You’ve had an interesting couple of years Katarina. Tell us more!
My husband works a lot in Slovenia and he went there just as the pandemic hit. He ended up being stuck there for two and a half months!
It wasn’t such a strict lockdown in Croatia, so we were able to get outside and ride our bicycles every day. I investigated all possibilities to ride a bike in Zagreb and I began drinking coffee for the first time in my life to be functional!
I was happy that Chris Cummins organised NLP evenings during lockdown, which gave me an opportunity to talk to grown up people and think of completely different subjects outside of everyday chaos.
Tell us about your career to date:
I am a pharmacist by education. I worked in a pharmacy and then moved to AstraZeneca, which is where I met my husband.
The birth of my second son was the turning point in my life, as I was leading the capability development for a region, travelling across six countries with a demand for me to oversee a further four. It was completely crazy juggling work and I’d had enough of corporate life.
How were you introduced to OTD?
It was about five years ago when I was working with Astellas. They connected me with OTD as they wanted to deliver a training programme in a local language.
Since then I’ve taken the NLP practitioner class with Chirs and met other OTD coaches, where the collaboration has continued. We have a Whatsapp group called ‘The Salseros’ with Daniella Gardini, Tina Dullaghan, Dave Cosgrove, Louise Wilson, Sarah Fogg and Theis Husfeldt.
We comment on anything going on in our lives and exchange ideas which is great!
You describe yourself as a “nerd”. Tell us why!
I really like studying and learning about new things! One example was during lockdown. I love face to face training as it’s so important to feel the room and read body language; things that aren’t verbalised. I was struggling with how to keep interaction online, so I applied for any webinar I could find on facilitation. And that’s how I learnt. I found a group in USA who specialised in facilitation and spent a lot of time with them.
What’s the best lesson you’ve learnt?
To be flexible and to adapt quickly. You cannot plan everything – when I started doing facilitation there was this uncertainty, people need freedom to investigate the topic and you never know where it leads you. I learned to listen and collaborate on solutions. Covid has taught me similar lessons – you can’t predict, so play with what you have.
Who inspires you?
My late grandmother. She was a woman who didn’t care about rules and was very courageous. It wasn’t easy for her, born in a small village on the Croatian coast, with no tourism at that time. She wanted to drive a car but was refused, so she found an army jeep and learnt how to drive it. When the vineyards died after WWII, she migrated. She saw that people were hungry and didn’t eat well, so she opened a restaurant. No matter what happens you must stand on your feet and continue. I thought a lot about her in Covid. She gives me strength.
Tell us a meal from your country that we should try:
We have been occupied by someone else for so many years, so on the coast you can eat similar cuisine to Italy, whereas elsewhere it’s more Ausro Hungarian. I would choose pasta combined with cabbage. The cabbage is cooked with a little oil until sweet and caramelised, and then combined with pepper and homemade pasta. A simple meal but something you can eat every day.
The world would be a better place if …
We communicated more and stopped being so self-centred. We were part of Yugoslavia when I was growing up. A lot of bad things happened but what was really good was that people thought as part of the group and of giving something to society. It’s what we’re missing, we think too much of ourselves.