How to Lead Projects Under Pressure Without Losing Balance: What Emma Arévalo Told Us

Emma studied history, earned a master's in cultural management in Barcelona and today is deputy director of cultural development in Metepec. She organizes festivals with international artists, large-scale events and projects that reach the whole community. And she is also the mother of two young girls.

She is not an entrepreneur in the classic sense, but her day-to-day has the same challenges any business owner faces: paperwork that gets stuck, huge projects with large teams, a lot of stress and little time. In this episode we talk about how she handles them.

The problems she faced

1.Slow processes and paperwork

Emma says it plainly: one of the biggest challenges of her job is bureaucracy, with its forms, official letters and steps that sometimes seem unnecessary to her, but are part of the system. Working with government means more processes for anything to get done.

Even so, she finds the advantage: as a municipal government, she has direct access to public spaces and to people, and can invite the community to propose and take part instead of just receiving events.

2.A giant project with a thousand moving pieces at once

The festival she coordinates requires managing international artists, flights, hotels, meals and logistics for about 30 artists, all at the same time. And after almost 10 years of doing it, she still gets nervous at every edition.

Her method is to break it down: go step by step, close things out and work by project. Each one gets built, launched and closed before the next one overlaps. She admits she sometimes handles about five projects at a time, so she tries to close them so they do not pile up.

3.Getting a huge challenge with nobody to guide you

When she was around 26 she was assigned a Guinness World Record. Nobody advised her, so she researched, contacted the offices, coordinated departments and people's goodwill, and worked six months to achieve it. She suspects they assigned it to her thinking she would not pull it off.

Her takeaway: never let things go. Hold the goal, follow up constantly and do not let it drop.

4.Staying calm when everyone is stressed

At the most intense moment of the festival there are people who shout or lose their patience, and then apologize. Emma reflects a lot on how to handle those tense moments: observe, learn and never lose your composure, keeping your cool, your conviction and your values.

She sums it up like this: there comes a point when that moment ends, and the question is how you want to look in front of others.

5.Growing in your career while being a mom

Here she was very frank. She said we live in a world of very masculine productivity, where raising a baby has no room, and that combining motherhood with an important role has been hard for her. Traditional office hours do not always line up with events that happen at night and on weekends.

What helps her most is her husband's support, whom she recognizes as a very present dad, and a support network. She also insists that this challenge is not only hers or only her sector's: the host noted that it is the same in teaching and in corporate jobs, and that many dads are also not allowed by their work environment to be present.

What she learned (and it can save you years)

1.Perseverance, discipline and consistency

This is the advice she gives to anyone who wants to follow her path: take it as a challenge, be disciplined and give your best in every moment, even if it is minimal. And learn to work under stress without losing yourself in it.

2.Let your team make mistakes

She lets the people who work with her make mistakes so they understand the process for themselves. She does not do it to make them work twice as hard, but because that is how they learn best, and afterward everything flows more easily. She also does not consider herself a perfectionist: she knows that, especially with events, not everything is under her control.

3.Mistakes are part of the job

She prefers not to call them failures but experiences. Working with people means there will always be mistakes, and that gives the work a more authentic touch. One day an event goes badly, and the next it turns out incredible: it is a roller coaster.

4.Talk about it and build your circle of support

On the topic of motherhood and work, her proposal is to start by talking about it with your close circle and creating circles of trust. There is nothing like having a support network, they said in the conversation.

5.Acknowledge what you have achieved

Emma believes she is where she needs to be because of all her achievements and the recognition from people. She says you never know when you are making an impact on others: a child who studies theater because they went through one of her workshops is a seed planted.

“Do not live in the "what if". If you want to do it, do it.”

Is something like this happening to you?

If your work feels like a roller coaster, check whether any of these are happening to you:

Listen to the full episode

This is only a summary. The full conversation has many more details, stories and tips. Watch it in full on YouTube (it is recorded in Spanish; turn on the captions and choose Auto-translate to read it in English) or find every episode on the Pandas Creativos podcast page (in Spanish).