Written by Redwan
21 Apr 2015
Hej Hej alla!
Guess you all are doing great as we here are all pretty amazing – the scorching sun, warm wind and bright sky. Really boosts up the vitamin D and the vitamin for happiness within you!
I wanted to share with you guys an amazing weekend me and some other SI scholars had in Karlskrona, the south-most city of Sweden. Remember my blog post about ‘sustainability’? Yes, you can say this post is a practical version of what I wrote.
Courtesy to the ever-cool Swedish Institute, some selected SI scholars were invited to a very insightful 2-day event, whirling around the two opportunistic words of ‘sustainability’ and ‘leadership’. It was a very interactive first day, talking and discussing sustainability and how we perceived it to be before we came to know about it. Hence it has been a bit of history and memory digging on our side! Our mentor for the workshop, Kajsa, an experienced consultant, then gave a good understanding of the various angles and types of sustainability and we were pretty amazed to learn that it spans across all possible domains. Doesn’t matter if you study zoology or software engineering or law! There is always an approach which can be taken, that satisfies the interest and requirements of all the stakeholders and people you engage with within a professional sphere. That is why the concept of sustainability is very important here in Sweden.
On second day, it was time to become leaders! Oh yes, fun isn’t it?! Kajsa started off with a very interesting activity where we had to work in groups and identify what we think is our attributes that make us a leader. Followed by that, we had to note down qualities what we think our group members perceive of us! But there are no bragging rights unfortunately! Later we went on to discuss the different types of leaders that we know of around the globe and what makes them unique in their fields. Additionally, we took cases from some various companies around the globe that deal heavily with sustainability and combined it with leadership to see how we can bring changes that positively affect the business on every scale. A very interesting mock speech was done on it, where we posed to be company executives, and it was hell lot of laugh and fun!
All in all, a great time for all of us and few alumni too… who made time to join us from various parts of the world. We have been able to learn a lot, get a practical grasp of sustainability and identified ways to improve our skills and aspire to become leaders of tomorrow. Definitely looking forward to similar events in the future!
And oh, yes that’s me in the center of the picture. I somehow thought lying down would be a cool idea! 😛
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Photo taken by Han Nguyen
