Sofia Manso, CEO of Academia da Felicidade: “We became aware that if work doesn’t bring us happiness, we don’t want to be there”

Can a moment of extreme unhappiness be the catalyst for a drastic personal transformation towards happiness? He can. “It seems almost antagonistic to say that from the worst came the best, but the truth is pain has a revolutionary purpose, which is to grow and improve. We can grow through pain or through pleasure, but it is proven that 99% of people grow through pain”, highlights Sofia Manso, CEO of Academia da Felicidade.

It was your case. The loss of her son Pedro led Sofia to end a career at TAP, leave Lisbon for Porto and dedicate herself to what she is truly passionate about: supporting companies and workers to find their own path to happiness, through intervention with leaders. , human resources and team management.

With a degree in Political Science, Sofia dreamed of a career in diplomacy and was active in political life and contributing to social causes. She volunteered so much that one day, during a job interview, the recruiter advised her to dedicate a page of her CV just to describing the unpaid work she did along the way.

Ten years as a flight attendant at TAP allowed us to internalize behavioral and emotional patterns that are ‘key’ in corporate life, to understand the relevance of reconciling personal and professional life, to recognize that in a company, each worker has their role in consolidating of the organizational culture and environment and that the role of the leader is the glue that joins all the ends.

And never as much as now has it been crucial to talk about happiness in companies. “The pandemic made us aware that if work doesn’t bring us happiness, I don’t want to be there”, he highlights, adding that “when we don’t create an environment where people want to be, we lose talent”. And losing talent today is a difficult scenario to reverse.

The CEO is the limit is Expresso’s leadership and career podcast. Every week, journalist Cátia Mateus shows you who the Portuguese managers who marked the past, those who direct today and those who promise to shape the future are, how they started and what they did to reach the top. Inspiring stories, told in the first person, by those who dare to make things happen. Listen to other episodes: