Anna Kornacka

1 To begin with about professional work. What is your area of professional specialization?

I deal extensively with soft competencies in business - I work with managers from various industries and sectors, training in the areas of effective communication, effective management, leadership, public speaking, stress management, creativity or organization of own work, among others.

2. What challenges do you face in your professional work?

I have been working with managers, middle and top management for more than twenty years and have encountered an extremely wide variety of challenges. Each person I work with carries a separate story, which I treat individually and one at a time. Currently, the biggest challenge in my work is the difficult and limited face-to-face contact, which is the basis for working on soft skills.

3. What are the key issues addressed subject by the program you are teaching in the MBA program?

In my MBA course I teach subject Design Thinking, or more precisely - thinking like a designer. subject applies to service and product design, it includes a lot of workshop content necessary for this skill, such as creativity workshop, emotional intelligence, stress management and proactivity workshop.

4 What are the most common topics of discussion with students in your classes? What are the students most interested in?

Very often the discussions revolve around breaking stereotypes, I'll admit that this is my favorite subject matter - a lot of the content I provide is based on the latest research (especially in the area of neuroscience), including challenging what is stereotypically or habitually considered the norm, such issues always arouse emotions and extremely interesting, constructive discussions. Another category dominating the question sessions are topics related to the individual, professional experiences of student-managers, which they are eager to share, which is also an added value for all class participants.

5. What skills do students acquire while studying the subject you teach on the MBA?

I have the pleasure of teaching subject, which provides a very good opportunity to address extremely interesting and, in addition, universal issues - my ambition is that after these classes students should be able to navigate in the matter of their own and other people's emotions, understand the mechanisms related to stress management and their intellectual activity, creativity, to be able to better understand their clients, but also team members, colleagues and employees. All this is perfectly useful both in the work of an effective manager, service designer, but also in personal life - and these areas are worth treating together.

Anna Kornacka - business trainer, entrepreneur, personnel consultant and social activist. Since 2000, she has been running her own training company, inspiring and supporting business, public administration and academics in their development. She specializes in the area of soft skills (management, motivation, stress management, public speaking, creativity, didactics). She is an academic lecturer and author of more than a dozen items on effective communication and management. She has conducted training for teams from various industries and diverse areas, worked for such organizations as the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy, the National School of Treasury, trained the staff of universities such as Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw Medical University, carried out educational projects for universities from all over Poland: the University of Warsaw, SWPS University, Poznan School of Banking, trained several hundred business teams (m.Tieto, OT Logistics, PKO Bank, BOŚ Bank, Environmental Protection Fund, Modlin Airport, LarsLaj, McDonalds, among others). President of the Management Board of the Western Pomerania Employers' Association, member of the General Council of the Lewiatan Confederation, vice-chairman of the Regional Social Dialogue Council of the Western Pomeranian Voivodeship. Active in both local and national social activities, including initiator and president of the board of the association Women for Szczecin and the Region, member of the Institute for Germany and Northern Europe. In 2009, she was chosen by the readers of "Gazeta Wyborcza" (supplement "Wysokie Obcasy") as the Polish Woman of the Year 2008, and in 2017 by the journalists of Głos Szczeciński as the most influential woman of Western Pomerania.