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FINAL Overall Experience

    The Leadership course was a very enriching, it was a very interesting experience to dive deep into myself and explore my own leadership strengths, discover my personality, to get to know me better. To understand my uniqueness, It was also interesting to learn more about my colleagues, team, family, and the people I work with. In my opinion, it was a whole new perspective that enables me to interpret people’s reaction to different situations.

    I believe the course was very well organized and the resources were versatile, rich and concise. The course covers the various aspects of leadership and guides me on how to become an authentic leader. The course helped me to value my personal assets and to develop a plan on how to deploy my leadership strengths toward different situations.

    The leadership course helped me to assess situations by looking at the bigger picture. Sometimes little arrangement can be a game changer. Identifying the leadership strengths of subordinates, for example, is crucial for proper assignments of tasks, roles and responsibilities. Understanding the potentials of members of a team is crucial for predicting the deliverables. This is the reason why behavioural interviews become an essential factor in the recruitment process. No wonders why the employers nowadays are looking for the perfect fit for certain position, versus, the old credentials/experience hiring concept.

    As we went deep into this course, we got to know more about leadership aspects, I started realizing some leadership skills that I don't have and I need to acquire. Additionally, I started to look at some of my leadership skills from a different perspective with an aim for improving them.

    On a personal level, I realized one of the misses that I had, was not sharing my vision. Owing to this course I learned how important is to share your vision with the people involved in realizing the end goal. This is something that I’m determined on doing in the future.

    One of the major takeaways is team building skills. How to be a dedicated team player or leader. Respect, active listening, recognition, acknowledgement, and most of all how to get through the difficult situation together, how to mitigate conflicts and how to manage conflicts when happen, and how to apply the problem-solving technique in different cases.

    This course based on learning by examples, which is my favourite way of learning!

    This Leadership course is an important component of The Business Analysis and Process Management program, as it encompasses the analysis of different personalities that we will be working with, in addition to the processes analysis. I definitely would need to know the people of the organization and analyze their leadership strengths and managerial style, in order to drive the best solution for both the business and the stakeholders.

    I tried to reflect on the most important parts of the course, however, as a results-oriented person, I tend to focus more on the outcomes. I believe I have developed a concrete understanding of the Canadian work culture and I’m ready to join the workforce with confidence.

    While this course comes to an end, it opens a new window for me to embrace new challenges and unleash my potentials.

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Week 8

1.    What was the most important lesson that you learned generally about leadership from the first Leadership Trail and how might you use that in the future? The most important lesson I have learned is that the Leadership involves leading change. Change is important for improvement, if you keep doing things the same way, you can’t expect improvement. Change is needed to respond to threats, opportunities, and shifts in the surrounding environment. To make this change happen, you need to gather all concerned people to view the importance and the need of change, and this is the role of the leader to communicate and motivate them to move forward to the change. Leaders characterized by courage, believe in his people, promote adaptability, recognize and learn from their own mistakes, capable to manage complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. These change should follow these steps: a- Light a fire for change: Which is simply that people should believe that the change is really needed. b- Get the right people on board: Leaders is needed to manage the complexity of the change and to give the power needed to make this change happen. c- Paint the compelling picture: in this stage, leaders communicate a clear vision and strategy to all concerned people and make sure they understand the aim of this change and the long-term outcome and benefits. d- Proper communication: Leaders are to communicate the message over and over, making sure that everyone understands and engaged to achieve the desired goals of the change. e- Get rid of obstacles and empower people to act: Leaders support people with time, resources, knowledge to take steps toward making the change happen. f- Achieve and celebrate quick wins: Leaders should get people to see the positive results they achieve to motivate them to continue toward the change process, this can be achieved by celebrating a short-term accomplishment. g- Keep it moving: After short-term wins, keep it moving toward achieving the vision. h- Find the way to make the change stick: In which, leaders strive to integrate the new values into everyone’s work habits, for example, they develop an incentive system for employees show better integration toward the implemented change.

2.    What was a key lesson that you might have learned about you personally as a leader? How might you use that to develop your leadership ability in the future? The key lesson is the importance of leading creativity for a change. I perceive myself as a creative person, I also tend to listen to people and their ideas, giving them a chance to create. But I developed a new leadership ability which is how to lead a creative people, and how to help them to create. This could be easily achieved by using the following techniques: 1-Facilitate Brainstorming: in which I encourage my group in a face to face meeting, to spontaneously suggest their own idea to solve a problem, based on no criticism and a lot of ideas is desired. 2-Promote lateral thinking: “Thinking outside the box”, In which encourage people to create new concepts and perceptions are generated instead of regular ones. 3-Allow pause: allow people to take time to think and work on a problem to achieve the best ideas. 4- Nature Creative Intuition: In which get the use of the creative insight bubbles up as an intuition from the deeper subconscious. 5-Enable Immersion: In which, encourage deep thinking into a single area or topic to spark personal creativity.

3.    What do you think you need to do to really grow in both competence and confidence to achieve the level of personal and professional leadership that is important to you? To grow in both competence and confidence, I need to believe in the need to improve, then I need to determine what the area of improvement is, next, I need to implement change to make it happen, finally, evaluate the change, and its positive impact will certainly foster my confidence.  

4.    What did you learn about leadership communication and the ability to effectively communicate and present your ideas/vision/ plan from your and the other team's presentations on Leadership Trail #1? Leaders must be a champion of communication in order to influence and motivate their followers. Whatever was the mean of communication, the message “Verbal and non-verbal” transmitted by the leader must be clear and easily understood by the receiver, feedback is an important tool to determine whether the receiver correctly interpreted the message. So, when presenting to a group, a special attention must be given to the following points: 1- Introduce myself, team, the meeting agenda and meeting process. 2- Special attention to presentation skills, including:         Clear well-prepared speech.    Avoid being monotonous.    Smiling and show self-confidence.    Energetic, and enthusiastic.    Professional gesture, and non-verbal communication. 3- Show creativity and being different than other presenters. 4-Be prepared and ready to address questions that may arise.

5.    Being curious and being able to ask relevant, open-ended questions is a key leadership skill.  How might you prepare yourself for the interview with your second leader to ask key open-ended questions?  Write what that (those) questions might be here, in advance of the interview.

Interview Preparation: 1- To be at the meeting before/on time. 2- Well dressed, confident. 3- Did my homework properly in terms of reading the case as much as required to be digested, create notes, prepare insight questions that help me to better understand, analyze, and discover hidden problems. 4- Active listening. 

Questions Examples: What are the leadership problems that may be contributing to the current problem? Can you explain in more details the progress of this issue? Do you have alternative solutions to consider? Do you have a certain limitations or issues you don’t wish to consider the solutions? What other information rather than the given in the case, you may think to be useful?

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Week Six Questions

Week 6 – Reflective Tumblr Blog post

1.    What have I learned from the meeting we held with the adventure leader who visited our class this week?

1. To be prepared:

I must do my homework before the meeting, through reading and be analyzing the case in hand, listing all the questions that I would need to get clarity on, as well as the points that I would like to discuss.

2. Team Action Plan:

As a team, we should be warm welcoming our guest, we start by introducing ourselves, and show our appreciation for the guest for putting the effort and time to join us.  We should show our interest and listen earnestly and attentively throughout the meeting. We must be very organized, well prepared, and ready to kick off various topics during the meeting .we should participate in the discussion by asking questions to ensure that we understand our the issues and challenges that our guest is facing. By doing so we will be able to showcase what we have and what we will be offering. it's very important that we all sound professional and confident to provide our guest with an idea about our level of commitment, the quality of our services, and how we differentiate ourselves from the others.

3. Active Listening:

Speak less, listen more. We should listen intently and try to visualize the situation the guest is describing. I should engage all my senses to grasp the whole picture and never interrupt the speaker. My goal is to learn, remember and recall the situation. I should show our appreciation to the information the guest is wishing to reveal and our respect the confidentiality of certain information that the guest might not be able to provide. Most of the time, active listening answers so many questions that I have already in mind. Whenever possible, I should seize the chance and ask relevant questions to ensure that I understand the situation fully, end to end. My profound understanding will help me identifying the root cause of the issue to avoid analysis paralyses.

4. Taking notes:    

It's very important to take note, not only to help to focus on the pieces of information being given by the leader but also not to lose any details. Nevertheless, I will be less tensed to jump into my next question that I wish to ask.

 5. Not to step in with solutions too quickly:

I won't learn anything new if I keep on doing what I already know. I should wait, listen, and ask for more and more details, then I can assess all the possible alternatives to reach the most suitable solutions.

 6. Ask proper questions:

   The question should not be irritating, It should be raised in a smart way, If I am asking about weak points, a short introduction emphasizing on positive points should be a start. Also, questions should have a value to the case and sorted in harmonized order.

2.    What is one thing that I learned about leadership this week and how might I use this as part of my personal leadership development?

 Being well prepared before the meeting, Is the most important thing I learned. It empowers me with confidence and professionalism. Also, it enables me to ask optimized questions in terms of Quality and quantity, that would guide me towards the best suitable solutions.

If I'm not well prepared by studying the case, the situation, and the whole overview of the organization, I will ask fewer questions than required or maybe ask irrelevant questions. So whatever it takes, I will make sure not to attend a meeting without being ready with the right questions that I would need to ask, or without being ready to answers any questions I might be asked.

 3.    After working with my team, what are three things that I have learned about becoming a high performing team?

 1. We must have a clear common vision, purpose and goals that everyone is committed to them.

2. Every one of the team should have a Clear role and Work Assignments that he/she can and committed to doing.

3. Commitment: Achieving the agreed team goal is a higher priority than any individual objective.  

4.    The next time I am in a team what are the top three things that I would bring to the team to help make it a high performing team?

1. Trust my team:

   I will give the team my full trust, and encourage them to trust in me, I will work to achieve that by offering them my help, ask them for help when I need. I will appreciate their help or even willingness to help, so we are to share our ideas freely, learn from each other and help to improve our overall activities and productivity.

2. Understanding how my team is working:

 It's very important to understand how this team is performing, and agree with all parties on how to enhance our process to improve our results, by evaluating the way we do things, and to what extent it's working, do we need to improve it and how to do so?

All these actions should be done through proper communication and consensus of all parties to guard against any possible conflicts, and working toward improving the teamwork.

3. Learn how to be an active part of my team:

By focusing on the common vision and goals of the team, rather than my personal objectives. This point is crucial in achieving the team goals and being a high performing team.

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Week Three: High Performing Team

1. What was happening that made it a high performing team?

I set up a clear system by which everyone knows his responsibilities and duties, what expected to be accomplished.

Established Who, When, and How to be the way of thinking of each task.

Encouraged teamwork, and spirit.

Set a pre-work planning report, beside regular reporting system.

Socializing with the team, and outside business meetings.

Recognize the capabilities of each member, and how to develop it and maximize the benefits.

Valuate the inputs of each one of the team.

Fairness, and keep it as a win-win situation.

2.What was your contribution to the team development?

Evaluating with each individual owns strengths and area of developing, to work together on it for further developing.

Executing individual, and team training plan, based on developing learning curve.

Special recognition and thanks’ letters, for individual and team achievements.

3. As you look back on this team now, what might you change about the team and about your role in the team? Why?

I would be giving more delegations as per their individual development, promote who ready to carry on into his next step in his/her career path.

4.Think of how you currently respond to conflict in a team. In what ways does this help develop the team and develop yourself. If you feel another approach to handling conflict might be more effective what might that be?

My managerial style in handling conflicts is Collaborating, I believe it’s the most effective way to manage conflicts, and it works toward the best of the team. The second option in handling conflicts would be Compromising, but I’m not really to it as it's more like a halfway rather than the best solution.

5. If you could do one thing differently when working in future teams what might that be? Why?

Try to socialize with the team member, it fosters the relationship and loyalty between the team members, the stress and speed of business usually hinder this important role of humanity.

 6.Review your leadership credo.

My Leadership Credo:

Respect.

All team members have the same rights.

Honesty and trustworthy.

Fairness.

Transparency.

Put the team first.

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Judgement Personality

Personal assessment is very important, you may think you know your strengths so well and don’t need it, well, maybe, but are those of highest percent and impact on your personality and leadership, and how it impacted on your career and your life in general? It’s also important to know it so you can make the best use of it.

Today, I’m going to address Judgement aspect of personality. Judging person tends to organize his entire life, he does plans and sticks to his plans.

Although each type of personality could be at different level from one person to another, but I personally believe that Judging can be only either at high or low level, and can’t be moderate, for example, it’s may not be possible to find someone who plans and stick to only half of his life issues, you either tend to plan the majority, if not all of your life or you don’t.

Judging people-from my point of view are the most successful leaders. They tend to accomplish their plans and get things done, but that’s only achievable when they do proper planning after considering all the alternatives, this proper planning may also include plan B, in case things didn’t go well. One of the best example on the Judging in our life is the group assignments in schools or colleges, in which you can find the Judging person encourages the rest of the team, and do whatever it takes to accomplish their task properly on time.

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Leadership

             A personal leadership experience that I’d like to share with you today, occurred while I was attending an orthopedic surgery for Total Knee Replacement, in one of the most reputable hospitals in the Middle East. I was there to provide medical technical support.

The surgeon began very smoothly, then we reach a point where the surgeon was looking for the implant trial sizer to determine the perfect match size to be implemented, unfortunately it was missing!, literally, everyone in the operating room was petrified; the patient is on the table and it was too late to look for another sterile trial sizer elsewhere. At this moment I jumped in a suggestion to use the real implant as a trial sizer, stating that if we were lucky enough to be the desired size we will carry on the procedure and save time in that step, and If it was not the desired size, the company will carry the demurrage. But it really worked well. I felt rewarded because we managed to save the patient and for being a leader, I influenced the operation theater team and overcame the hurdle that we had in the surgery, and that we achieved our common vision “Successful surgery”.

I learned how it’s important to be confident and competent in tough situations, not only to be able to resolve them, but also to gain trust.

Leadership has many strengths and skills, in my opinion, these are the most important ones:

1-Communication: In all kind of Communications “Verbal, or non-verbal”, It should be based on respect, honesty, and transparency. Clarity is very important as well, you must ensure clear communication if you seek the best results. Being honest and trustworthy are also affected by the communication style, as you can’t expect someone to trust you while you acting ambiguously or arrogantly.

2-Motivation: Keeping people motivated is very important if you are looking for outstanding results, motivation goes up and down, the Leader usually plays an important role in keeping the Motivation momentum when he feels the inclination. Motivation examples are various, and it differs from one person to another. Some people are motivated by monetary rewards, other by recognition. In my opinion, Training and developing are also considered to be one of the most important motivation tools, as they work in both directions, on one hand, it motivates the recognized individual, and on the other hand, it improves his or hers capability to improve the work capacity.

3-Delegation: It may also consider as a motivation tool, as the delegated person feels the responsibility and the trustworthy. We should be aware that delegation may demotivate others who perceive themselves more capable to be delegated. Delegation should be given gradually, and according to individual criteria, for example, you can’t delegate a newly hired employee with minimal experience or someone who doesn't like to take responsibility.

4-Feedback: It’s very important tool by which you can evaluate the results and manage the processes for better future results. For example, if you chose to delegate someone; to what extent he managed to accomplish his task? What is the feedback from his peers? Upon that you can decide to give more or less delegation to him in future, and the area of development you need to work on with him. If we don’t give special attention to a constructive feedback and life experiences, we shouldn’t expect improvement.

5-Flexibility: If you are not flexible, you won’t be able to change, so you are not going to get a real benefit from an honest feedback. Change is the key word of improvement. Imagine that you are accustomed by a habit and keep on doing your work the same way, would you expect to see an improvement? A good example that summarizes the idea, is the High jump Olympic sport, It’s well known that at the early beginning in the 19th century athletes used to jump while facing the bar, and in 20th century when they changed the jumping  technique with their back facing the bar, they  were able to jump higher and raise the bar.

In my opinion, these are the most important leadership skills, under which secondary leadership skills fall. I believe all of them are somehow related, as explained formerly, the relation between bad communicator and trust. And between feedback and flexibility, and so on.

I believe that everyone has a different proportion of one or more of those leadership skills. The point is how much these criteria is involved in a specific position in a particular industry. And this is the parameter upon which a person should focus on to improve his leadership. For me I need to work more on active listening which decreased by moving up in my managerial level, this will help me to improve my communication to get more feedback to use to improve the process and so improve my leadership.