Usama's Leadership Journey

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[usamayk]

Week 6 (Talking Stick)

I took this opportunity to show this video to my older brother and explained to him what the talking stick was. He thought it was a little childish at first, but we talked it over and we have had many disagreements in the past because of how our personalities are, so this might be a good exercise to develop a different understanding.

We talked about an incident a couple weeks back and why it happened. He had the talking stick first and I was there listening with intent. While he was telling me the reasoning of what happened, I slowly started to understand, but had questions; I think it was easier for myself to understand what kind of message he was trying to get across because there were no interruptions and he was able to talk about everything at once with all the reasons. This also gave me the chance to clearly understand as I was not able to say anything right away. When I was given the stick, I asked my questions and what I wanted him to hear from my perspective; I think this was also easier on him because he didn’t hesitate when answering my questions. I feel like this exercise really opens a new space when you’re trying to understand the next person. The talking stick makes it easier to develop trust between people when there isn’t constant arguing in the conversation; the conversation I had with my brother was peaceful and very informative from both sides. In the future, I think this method would help communicate problems much quicker than just a regular conversation. Conflict resolution with the talking stick can help create harmony in the group.

[usamayk]

Week 5 (Leadership Credo)

1. As a leader, I believe in creating a responsible environment. Responsibility can create a strong foundation for anyone. A strong foundation leads to the best possible outcome in any situation and is the road to success.

2. As a leader, I believe in self-development. Creating a safe and nourishing environment for your friends, colleagues and family will help you develop a better version of yourself. Opening yourself to new attitudes can create a fundamentally new understanding of approach.

3. As a leader, I believe in competition. Competition is both success and hard work; these help you create a foundation towards challenging both personal and organizational goals, as well as encouraging competitive behaviour.

4. As a leader, I believe in respect and trust. Without these two values, an environment can collapse on itself. Respect boundaries and trust the people you work for and work for you to get work done in the most professional manner.

5. As a leader, I believe in leading by being an example. Its assuring when someone can watch what you are doing and feel safe about it afterwards, knowing they are in good hands. If you can get people to follow you and trust your judgement, then you can reach the peak stages of leadership.

The situation I was involved in was with a group in one of my courses in this summer semester. What happened was that there was no communication with the group members even with the group chat we had created on WhatsApp. For the first assignment we had to complete as a group, the worksheet was incomplete with a lot of missing spaces from the group members who had not finished their part; I decided to confront the group members through the group chat and I ended up having a very heated argument with two of the other four group members.

From my point of view, I was expecting everyone to have finished their part, especially because we had at least 3 weeks to get the worksheet completed. Another thing to note was that there was no update from any of the group members, including myself, up until the last two days before the due date. As a leader, and the person who took the initiative to distribute the parts to everyone, I should have been more vocal with what I was expecting in terms of when the work should have been completed by to successfully put together the work and submit it.

In the end, I failed as a leader, I did not lead by example; Although it was not completely my fault at the incomplete work, I had completed my part and after the argument I decided to complete the assignment by myself and submit the copy; right after I had proceeded to email my professor. Its very important, especially when there are no physical meetups with the group, that as a leader you lead by example. By showing everyone what is expected of them and what needs to be done, they would have a clear insight on what to complete. Another thing to remember for future leadership opportunities is to always communicate. It is very important to keep updates on the progress of the group project and to understand where people might have problems doing the work.

[usamayk]

Week 4 (High Performance Teams)

Last semester I was in a high performing team in the marketing promotion management class. The team was considered high performing because of how efficiently the workload was distributed and completed. Two of the other three members of the group were part of the Sheridan OCMC team with me and we were acquainted but had never worked together. We had always completed each milestone of the project at least a week before the due date and when someone had an issue with their part, they consulted in the group chat we had set up and another group member or me would try to assist. My contribution to the team was putting the drafts for each step together and transferring the format from Google docs to a Microsoft word document; because of my technological skills, this was a task I felt very suited to. Looking back to that semester, I would not change anything about the team or my own role. Each of us had a strong suit while working together; I was the tech savvy member, we had a leader, and the other two members were very informative and had a keen eye for attention to detail.

My current method of conflict resolution is a little weak, but still effective. Currently, I give people time to correct their mistakes with reason, but if there was no reason why their individual work was not completed, then I would move forward without them and notify the professor with any problems in the group. I have changed my method of conflict resolution in groups recently but giving people time closer to the due date to get work done, also by helping with their part in case they are having troubles with it. There are many parts of a group project and some components might not be compatible with how others work, which can make it hard to complete; understanding that can help develop a stronger team effort.

[usamayk]

Week 3 (Effective Follower)

I believe that I am a very confrontational person; I strongly believe in providing support and being very straightforward when speaking to someone about a problem. The way I would implement myself to become an effective follower is to provide feedback to the leader that I am following. With feedback, it is very easy to understand problems that you may not be able to see with your own eyes; having another perspective or sense of vision can help you realize different ways to resolve troubles. Constructive criticism can be beneficial for both the follower, me, and the leader, this helps develop an opportunity for improvement in future decisions.

[usamayk]

Week 2 (Leadership Strengths)

1. Context: If I was hired at a new company for a leadership manager position, and my job was to oversee the activities that were conducted in my group, I would have to rely on the people that have already been working in the company for a longer period of time to guide me on developing a strong communication channel with my group. For example, if our project was to come up with a new idea based on current events, but I had no prior knowledge of this event, I would have to rely on my group and try and see if their level of context was greater than mine. In the case that it is, I would have to act like a leader and collaborate with their idea to understand their perspective. It would be very beneficial if I were to take into consideration my group member’s thoughts and ideas and develop them together.

2. Adaptability: This strength comes in handy especially during current times. With the quarantine situation, everyone was forced to stay at home at the beginning and adapt to the “work from home” lifestyle, the same goes with students and other professionals in the workforce. A lot of the technology was already set up at the workplace or establishment by the facilitator, but moving into your home, everyone had to understand how to work their devices and make them collaborate properly with their work environment. For students, it may have been difficult to adapt to using virtual classrooms effectively. For myself, I am very technologically adept and understand it at an intermediate level. I was able to adapt to the virtual lifestyle with ease, at the same time help my group members from the classroom setup outside applications that would have helped us with our schoolwork.

3. Empathy: With the quarantine situation, I know of some cases where international students were sent back to their countries because of implications with the government during this time. This interfered with their schoolwork and of course being in class was significantly harder being across the globe. So far, I have one student in my other class which is part of my group and he is currently in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, he must be up around 4:00 a.m. to attend one of the classes. I took the liberty as the leader of our group to lessen the workload he received without telling the other group members and just took it upon myself to do those extra parts; he is an exceptional worker and sometimes you have to understand what others might be dealing with especially during times like these.

4. Conflict resolution: Working in groups can be tough for everyone. During a group assignment, someone can decide they don’t want to finish their part of the project or they might decide to drop the course and not notify the other group members. This can turn into a big problem, which is why leaders can to develop the ability to resolve conflict within groups ahead of time. A strong way to combat this would be to set timelines that instruct group members to submit their parts days or weeks before the deadline in order to maximize effectiveness of feedback and to proactively fight against the students who don’t want to do their work.

5. Courageous: Sometimes at home or in the workplace or any other area where many people are involved, you must make decisions that are detrimental to the success of the process. With the Covid-19 situation, a lot of companies had to make difficult decisions on letting many workers go, although the idea of this is not a courageous thing, these kinds of decisions have to be made at a dire situation.

[usamayk]

Week 1 (My Leadership)

Before Covid-19 and the quarantine situation that is currently happening, I was working part time at Cineplex. I am currently a team lead cast member, to sum it up, takes care of and manages regular cast members under the managers supervision. I am a new team lead and I have had a few situations where I’ve had to take a strong leadership position, which is basically my job requirement. It was the opening Friday of Frozen 2; the theater’s showtimes were all booked to maximum capacity and the lobby was consistently full throughout the day. During times like these when a highly anticipated movie is about to release, there are going to be a handful of sick calls because some members might decide they don’t want to deal with a rush in customers that day or week. I was one of the two team leads available that Friday night and while my other team lead was busy behind the counter making sure everything was stocked for the guests, I was to allocate the floor team and any extra available hands to the theaters for swift cleanups so we can make way for the next showtime to enter. This was the first time I had to deal with such a rush and the experience, although was beneficial for me, it was also exhausting and tough to manage. I had to make decisions quickly on where extra hands were needed and where we could ease up; this was also tough because break times were in the evening and we had to work quickly so everyone was able to make their breaks on time. The most important thing I learned from that situation is that you should always be on your toes, metaphorically speaking, and be able to manage time to the best of your ability through past experiences.

My current leadership strengths and skills that I currently acknowledge are having context, adaptability, and empathy. I have a lot of past experiences regarding leadership and understanding situations that give me context into situations that might occur in the present or future; it is always a good thing to be able to keep those experiences fresh in memory to expect the unexpected. I strongly believe in learning from your previous failures and success. Adaptability is a versatile strength that I believe everyone should try and develop; although it doesn’t happen overnight, and may take weeks, months, or years, you will eventually start to understand the complexity of being able to adapt to any type of problem that comes up in front of you. Lastly, with empathy, I have a strong sense of appreciation for this strength because of how it lets me perceive situations that come about. I can use my emotion to deal with situations while not allowing them to overtake my decision making, but just enough to positively impact the process. There is one leadership strength that I would like to develop and that is communication; although it may sound simple, I believe it is very complicated. Communication branches into many different avenues, this is because of how people prefer to communicate or reply on communication to understand others. Everyone has a different way to communicate their thoughts, feelings and opinions, and understanding these communication barriers can help you develop a new way of acknowledging someone else’s thoughts.