How mentoring helped Michaela Cuřínová guide change from the inside

The people who help companies navigate change don’t always have someone to navigate it with. HR leaders and coaches spend their days guiding others through decisions, structures, and priorities, and the guide rarely gets a guide of their own. Michaela Cuřínová knows that gap well.

Michaela is HR Manager at SYB, a construction and building technology company, where she helps set up effective processes, roles, and collaboration between divisions. She is also a coach at Tiimiakatemia Prague. Her background spans recruitment and HR at companies such as Ahold, Czech Radio, and Philip Morris Czech Republic, and she has run her own individual and team coaching practice since 2018. She came to Femme Palette through her daughter, Adéla, who spoke at our Financial Wellness Event. By the time she joined the mentoring program, she wasn’t short on experience. What she wanted was an external guide through change, and long-term plans for sales and marketing.

Her work with her mentor, Lenka Hrabovská, covered far more than she expected, from an audit and strategic questions about people and processes to a new website and a student program that is already attracting schools. Here’s what came out of it.

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1. Tell us a bit about yourself. What do you do, and where were you in your career when you joined the Femme Palette mentoring program?

I work as HR Manager at SYB, a construction and building technology company. Together, we are setting up effective processes, roles and collaboration in the way the company is run. I also work as a coach at Tiimiakatemia Prague.

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2. What made you realize you needed a mentor at that moment?

I came across Femme Palette thanks to my daughter, Adéla Cuřínová, who spoke at the Financial Wellness Event. There I learned about the mentoring program and realized it would be valuable for me to have an external guide through change.

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3. What goals or challenges did you hope to work on?

I felt the need for long-term plans in sales and marketing. Over the course of our collaboration, my mentor Lenka Hrabovská and I worked on many topics: an audit, strategic questions around people and processes, and setting priorities. Alongside that came smaller steps driven by what was happening at the time – for example, our new website, which we will launch soon, PPC advertising for home air conditioning, an internal communication strategy, sales activities and the digitalization of accounting documents.

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4. Which goals did you achieve, and what are you most proud of?

We created and launched START SYB, a program for students of technical fields, which has already caught the interest of several schools. Its aim is to build SYB’s reputation as an attractive employer for students and graduates in the long term. We will soon welcome our first intern.

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5. Could you share a specific breakthrough or meaningful moment from the program?

I clearly defined my role and mandate within the company’s organizational structure.

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6. Was there any unexpected benefit from the mentoring experience?

Contacts for different areas of how a company works, fresh perspectives on how the company could operate in the future, and a practical approach to solving problems and challenges. And the courage to rely on common sense.

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If Michaela’s story resonates with you, whether you’re guiding others through change while looking for someone to guide you, working to turn big plans into clear priorities, or just ready for an outside perspective on your role and your next steps, that’s exactly what mentoring is for.

Your story could be the next one we tell. Explore the Femme Palette mentoring program and take the first step today.