Salman Alarifi ENGR 408 Summary In this block we discussed three important lessons; understanding self and others,

building a companys vision, and how to be an effective executive. Understanding self and others is a very important skill that any leader or effective figure should have. To understand yourself, you need know your strengths and weaknesses, what makes you happy and what makes you stressed, trust level, intimacy, and assertiveness. You have to ask what factors affect my personality and persons personality. The factors come from the background and values. If your were able to determine someones background and values from the first meeting, you would be able to understand his decision and even predict his future moves. The benefits from such an approach are considerable. You would be able to understand why you feel sad or happy, relaxed or stressed. This approach also gives you strong understanding of others. For instance, you can determine why someone is lacking confidence or why someone is shy. Hence, you can develop a self-system where you can identify the sources of someones behavior and develop a selfunderstanding of these sources to avoid the bad ones and work on the good ones to develop your personality. Implementing the concept of self-understanding and other will affect my leadership style in the future in knowing myself better, understanding the behavior of the people Im working with, and developing my own personality. I never thought that the companys vision is so important when it comes to the business world. I have always thought of companys vision as symbol they just use when advertising for their products and services. It turns out that I was totally wrong. Companies build their visions based on the values that their leaders or founders believe in. The leaders want to convey these

values and goals to their employee and customers through the companys vision. It is the path the company needs to take to achieve its goals and retain its core principals. Vision provides the guidance what values or cores need to be preserved [1]. When building a companys vision, we need a definition of why the company exists and an envisioned future that encourage us to create and to create. Now, I find companys vision is one of the cores that entrepreneurs need to worry about when they want to establish a potential successful business. Being an executive comes with a lot of perks such as bounces, private cars, paid vacationetc. However, it requires a lot of leadership work to make sure that company is on the right track. At first, I thought executives role is to make big decision. I thought they do not interact a lot with their employees. In fact, the executive role is far different than most of us think it is. An effective executive take responsibility of his decision, develops the companys plan, takes responsibility of the communicating, and focuses on chances rather than problems. An executive also asks what needs to be done and runs productive meetings. It is more than just setting behind the desk watching how the company operates. An effective executive involves in the work as much a hard working employee in the accounting department. An effective executive communicates with all the departments and makes sure they all follow the companys goals and retaining its values. Learning how to be an effective executive is confusing at first since we (people) have a wide broad image of executive and their roles in their companies. After reading Druckers article What Makes an Effective Executive [2], I agree that an effective leadership is very needed in any company where they want to achieve their goals and retain their values because an effective executive can change the work environment to vision driven and positively charges when he or she takes responsibility and makes sure to communicate effectively.

Team Dynamics is essential when it comes to cooperative work. I learned the how important team dynamics in my news presentation #4 assignment. I chose this topic since I felt it was important and I did not know a lot about it. John Rogers, who is the CEO of Ariel Investments, was interviewed by the NY times and reflected on his experience in college about team dynamics. I learned that it is important to think about my team accomplishment instead of my own my individual accomplishments to keep the team as a one unit. Another thing I learned regarding the team dynamics was to lesson to every word that my boss or my supervisor wants me to do and always try my best to do whatever he tells me to do. Now, I am committed to do this same approach since I think it makes a lot of since in the cooperative world to build a healthy relationship with my teammates and my boss, so that I can maximize my chances in getting a promotion or in accomplishing something big for my organization with my team. Engineering ethics is an important topic that we should focus on in this semester due to its importance. I learned that many companies do yearly training to teach their employee about this topic and keep them updated to any changes. Employees may not realize how important this topic until they break it and see the consequences of it. For instance, I learned that accepting a gift in business trip from a supplier is considered somehow a bribe if I did not report to my company. I am committed to be professional in my future job and read the engineering ethics booklet that my organization will provide very well to avoid any ethical problems in the future that can hurt my reputation and my companys reputation. The biggest challenge I find regarding this topic is how we deal with the differences in cultures between foreign companies. In some country, the host should provide the visitors even if they were doing a business together a ride to the hotel and should give them gifts before they leave the meeting. However, when I face such a cultural difference where there is a slightly small chance that I will break the engineering ethics,

I will report that to my advisor to suggest the right action that I should take. Understanding the engineering ethics and being connected to my advisor will allow me to work ethically with breaking any rules in the future. One of the most important takeaways in this block is to know how to deal with people from different generations in work. They have different mechanism in doing work and they have different views about communicating within the company. Joseph Valencia and Carol Shumate presentation helped me to realize how important this top is by sharing their stories with us. Understanding your coworker is the first step in building a healthy relationship. Always try to analyze the people you work with to know how to approach them and to avoid the things that they do not like. For instance, Generation Y do not want to be approached out of work, as they want to separate their personal life and their work. Baby boomers do not mind if they are approached out of work if something is going to help the company since they feel that they should value what they get paid for. Hence, understanding the differences between generations will help me in the future to choose the best approach of communication when dealing with my future coworkers to guarantee the best outcomes. I am committed to being a leader by understanding the personal aspect of the people that I work with, so that I can build a healthy work environment which in turn will result in the best outcomes.

Block 3: Technical Leadership and Innovation

Empathy is one of the great senses of understanding that a true leader should possess. It is the capacity to experience and relate to the emotions, thoughts, or experience of others. Empathy is more of putting yourself in someones shoes to experience what that person is going through emotionally and physically. One great example of applying this feature is in the designing phase. Designers tend to put themselves in the customers shoes in order to think of a design that can be beneficial from the customers perspective. The example from Africa, where the two girls were pressing and squeezing corns, helped them to understand what women in Africa were going through and how tough the jobs they were doing. It is important for leaders to have empathy since it connects them to people around them and hence improve the overall communication level as well as productivity. Creativity has always been at the heart of business. It is needed since it affects the audience or the employee in the organization. Many argue that creativity is the most important leadership quality because it makes the organization capable of creating something novel and appropriate at the same time. Due to this, organization rise and grow faster than ever before. Therefore, many organizations look for leaders that can encourage individual leadership and creativity within the organizations to maximize their inputs. The role of a creative leader is not answering employees questions; the leader role is to assist employees in finding solutions and being creative. Fostering the work environment is crucial for creative leaders where creativity is encouraged and rewarded. However, there is always risk associated with creativity. Creativity requires implantations and causing changes. Leaders should engage high level of optimism to reduce the risks. Finally, creativity requires continuous learning through sharing challenges and finding solution to them. The article How Creativity Works explains what makes people

creative. It gives an example of Steve Jobs and how he redesigned Pixar studios to maximize collaboration and creativity. Steve wanted let his employee to share their stories and increase productivity by building bathrooms half way between all the buildings, so that employees from different department had to know each other better by sharing their stories and thoughts in bathrooms. His idea seemed to work very well. Pixar was a leader in making animation movies and sound effects. Steve Jobs is a great example of leaders who can encourage employees to be self-motivated and creative. Working across cultures is essential for leaders to be globally active. Many presidents of companies go abroad to find new opportunity and new markets. They are certain roles in going across cultures. A true leader should always have great background about the region and the people he or she is going to deal with. It makes the negotiation part goes a lot smoother. Andy Molinsky, author of Global Dexterity, gave an insight in his interview about how to adapt yourself and understand the culture you are going to. First, it is important to know the differences between cultures. Then, accommodate your behavior in the light of these differences. It is normal to feel unauthentic by trying to adapt to a new cultures. Global dexterity is the capacity to adapt your behavior in a new culture without losing yourself in the process. It helps people to adapt to new cultures and still maintain their identity. People unfortunately think that by fitting in foreign cultures they are more likely to lose their identity. To solve this issue, Milinsky introduced the idea of zone of appropriateness which can be described as the range where you can feel comfortable while you are fitting in a new culture. Leaders can reach this zone by customizing their behavior to the new cultures while feeling authentic.

Citation [1] "September 1996." Harvard Business Review. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. <http://hbr.org/1996/09/building-your-companys-vision/>. [2] "June 2004." What Makes an Effective Executive. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. <http://hbr.org/2004/06/what-makes-an-effective-executive/ar/1>.