Ahmed Al Haddad ENGR 409 Section 001 Personal Interview of a Leader

For this assignment I decided to interview the President of The Emirati Student Association at Penn State. I have chosen this organization because I am currently a member and was really curious about pursuing a Leadership position within the organization. He was the treasurer last year and was appointed as President recently. His role in the past was basically managing the finances of the organization and hosting various events throughout the year such as Arab Movie Night or The Gulf Soccer Cup.

As the President and Leader of the association he realizes through his past experiences that he has many responsibilities and has to maintain the other roles within the organization and set up meetings to listen to their feedback and suggest a point of action. He mentioned that one of the problems that the organization was facing is the lack of communication and he understands that the majority of the students have very busy schedules but he personally makes the effort to meet up with everyone and uses social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to keep us up to date. According to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, there is a set of guidelines and a systematic approach to lead organizations. Some of these criteria are used within the ESA. As president, he leads other groups of people to maintain a level of organization. When planning events and deciding how to manage the finances and host events, Strategic Planning is used.

Ahmed Al Haddad ENGR 409 Section 001 Personal Interview of a Leader

Customer and Market Knowledge are also evident within the association. The President is able to understand what the students want and respond to their needs through events and meetings. The ESA also has a great Human Resource Focus. It is clear that the organization operates as a family or one unit with a various set of skills, which allows them to compensate for each others weaknesses and mistakes and trust each other in order to get the job done.

Moreover, the association believes in learning from its past failures and mistakes and avoiding them in the future and this applies to the Business Results Criteria. They constantly discuss failures of particular events and strive to learn from their mistakes and host better events in the future hoping to satisfy all parties. In conclusion, after this interview with the President of the Emarati Student Association, I found inspiration and passion from within to play an exciting role and become a leader in the near future. From a leadership standpoint, the things I learned and took away are that you always have to have continuous communication within your organization in order to ensure transparency and the flow of information. Also, you have to trust yourself in order to trust your employees and look at every failure and remember what you learned from it and try to sell your values and vision and inspire others to become leaders.