Lessons from ECA Participation

Leadership Lessons

It is undeniable that every aspect of life starts with leadership sense and leadership begins with self-awareness.

Therefore, based on this cruciality, it leads to the ability to lead and drive others towards a common goal. People may confuse on what differentiates leadership from being a team player. Well, they are two distinctive terms used in organizational management or what we know as soft/personal skills.

Now, in my journey of leading projects, I learnt a lot and the learning came by making mistakes instead of assuming. This is how I grew from my comfort zone and of course, there were lots of setbacks or what we deem as challenges for self-growth.

Based on my personal experience in more than 25 events cumulative since foundation studies, I have picked 3 important lessons which play a vital role in my life.

Joining more than 25 events wasn't easy. 

What I learnt from 25+ events:

Rule 1:When you form your team, never ever recruit your friend.

Now, as a leader, you will need to be firm and sometimes you will have to make decisions which will be not in favour of everyone. Therefore, these decisions might not be liked by some and if the team member is your friend, it may affect the relationship. The key to this is to always recruit or work with new people because you will not only learn new things from them but as well as build a new network of friends through the project. I am not telling it is not good to take your friends under your team but it depends on the way you manage.

Key takeaway: Recruit new people to build a new network in the working relationship.

Rule 2: When you delegate tasks or commands, effective communication is vital.
As a leader, proper communication via verbal and written is important because this is how proper and effective communication happens in peer to peer relation. This assures that the message is transmitted well and understood for actions to be taken efficiently and effectively. Always, keep it direct to the point and effective for everyone to understand quickly without including emotions.

Key takeaway: Proper verbal and written communication are vital for effective task delivery so that there need not be repetition in information delivery.

Rule 3: When you are in the execution phase, always remember to follow-up and be firm.

As a team lead, it is vital to be firm no matter if it is your own friend. There is always a tendency for  bias, and for this reason, always keep following-up even it is your own friend and be fair to each and everyone in the team in the aspects of how everyone is treated. This is important to avoid any misunderstanding and lack of respect between a leader and a team member in case in the future you will have to work in the same team.