STeLA Leadership Forum

A couple of days ago, I came back from Dubai, UAE and now write down this blog. This is to share my experience in the Forum to all STeLA Family around the world, in this time, exceptionally I will all describe in English.

Contents in the forum

- Leadership Session
- Thematic Session: About Renewable Energy
- Keynote Speaker
- Reflection Time: Individual, Group
- Group Project

It consists of mainly Leadership Session in the morning and Thematic Session in the afternoon including Keynote speaker and site visit. Also, it finished with the reflection time in individual and group every day. We had thought through what we did, felt, talked, heard...etc. It helped me so much that brought me to think about my behavior in each discussion. I don't care about my action and words in a team, based on my leadership style in usual, but I tried to apply myself to each role: Mover, Follower, Opposer, Bystander described in Four-player Model, which finally made it clear that each of them needs to work in a team with me being in charge of a role depending on the situation.  In this perspective, I can say that I am better at being Mover&Follower, but not Opposer, this is what I found in this forum. Every time, I always suppose the ideal situation than the actual one to draw a big picture for the direction and make it forward in fast-paced. Thus, I am good at stating from the affirmative perspective as Mover&Follower. Or more, in this case, it is the most crucial to figure out my own characteristic and utilize in teamwork in an efficient way.

I will describe 3 most impressive experience, gotten thorough every reflection from here.

1. Feel lonely

Sometimes, in this forum, I felt "Lonely" through the discussion. No matter how I stated, nothing reflected on talking. Also, I had nothing to do at times. These all made me feel lonely. 

This is never blaming my brilliant teammates, nor making fun of myself, I am just writing down my feelings. I know it was hard for us to cooperate with as I had some troubles in Japan and repeated going in and out of the discussion and a little bit difficult to figure out the big picture. 

But, or more, what I learned and thought from here is that I would like to help these people as I really believe the word, heard in STeLA that...

Everyone has each leadership and each of them is necessary to get good  results. We all have different perspective on each topic, based on experience, knowledge, background...etc

Once someone is not joining in talking, the team loses its force and cannot make a relationship between them.  It is not only me but also others too, to have an experience, being out of the loop in a team. I still remember tho I cannot help these people in this opportunity in actual. 

2. Meeting great soulmate

If I am asked who is the best friend in STeLA, I can say it is Khulood. First I came there, Dubai, I didn't imagine we got so close friendship with other participants. But it finally achieved.  It is embarrassing to write and show here, so not everything I describe her, but she had always taken care of me and be kind to me whatever happened. I still remember the day, we talked about our future with aimed leadership at the time I was in trouble.

That was also impressive her waking up in the morning, the day half of the Japanese delegates leaving, and coming to the airport with us to see us off. I have no idea for what makes us so close, but we did beyond our nationality.

3. Criticize efficiently

Through 10 days, I had overcome my weakness, criticism. Our culture, in Japan, it is high-context culture and they tend to refrain from saying "No", as felt it is a little bit rude to say that. However, this forum is consist of multi-culture, from low-context to high-context. In this environment, if I don't state at all, then the discussion will go on without me and as you know, it is totally different from our culture, trying to figure out what others feel. Step by step, I tried to show my own opinion on each topic clearly and finally I had come to state without any hesitation to others. 
This experience is little bits weird, but really interesting. It can be archived as they gave us the environment on cultural diversity.

Finally, I really thank all the people met in this forum, STeLA. I hope we will keep in touch with each other. For a little bit, we take our own journey, vary from person to person, but in somedays, I believe we will meet up and work together beyond borders as the real global leaders. Thank you.