''I'm a cooperator''

Yesterday we were all at Egerton university, Kilimo complex where we had a powerful training on leadership from the perspective of cooperatives. The training was dubbed 'I'm a cooperator' and was a joint initiative by CIC Insurance and Edge Consult. This was a training with a difference. We learnt that one of the strongest route to financial sustainability is through joining the cooperative movement.

PLO Lumumba was present virtuously and gave a hot talk on getting rid of the jiggers of the mind. He was very disgusted by the fact that the young people are getting more and more infested by the jiggers of watching soap operas and Arsenal while their fellow colleagues in the Western countries are busy learning Nano technology. At this rate, we are not headed in the right direction.

Personally my point of highlight was when AIESEC EGERTON  got an opportunity to show the audience a short video. I mean leadership and AIESEC go hand in hand. And when talking about training university students about leadership, there is no  better platform to work on other than AIESEC. This is because AIESEC is ran in universities and one of our values as AIESEC is 'activating leadership'. As an employer, you would be very delighted to employ a person who has had previous experience in leadership through AIESEC. Such an employee won't need much of your organizations time and resources doing on the job training.

AIESEC Team Leader

Watching a team of young facilitators from Edge consult managing this project excellently from start to finish was also a nice experience. And their project manager was also young and the kind of coordination her team exuded was worthwhile. I know most people didn't take too much note of this fact but I did because this is the kind of leadership we desperately need in Africa. The kind of leadership that is excellent regardless of whether the leader is a youth or an elderly person. This is one of the situations where a youth team made the youth proud.

The other huge lesson learnt from the training was in the form of demystifying the whole idea of cooperatives. Like someone in the audience commented, the training made us see cooperatives as what they are, not what we have been made to perceive them to be by some few bad examples out there. These training was one of those trainings that ensures you leave as a more enlightened person if not different than the way you came.

-By S.K.

(VP Comm & IM)

LEADERSHIP VS RELATIONSHIPS

(Disclaimer: This post is based on the opinion of the author and should not be taken to necessarily mean the opinion or beliefs of AIESEC Egerton as a whole.)

Since I joined AIESEC in Egerton, I must say I've learnt a lot by doing a lot. But little did I know that this was just the tip of the iceberg. I have a couple of areas I needed to learn about. Obviously when you produce good stuff in an organization, you in one way or another trigger some attention towards your line of duty. Now, ifyou are in the introduction to AIESEC stage or better still, in the taking responsibility stage(TR), then this article is not meant exactly for you.

This post is meant for those in the Leadership role(LR). Yeah you had it right, those in the LR level. This is because when you are in that level in the AIESEC experience, what you do or say can either build or tarnish the image of AIESEC in your respective LC or MC. I don't mean to be harsh or naïve but as indicated in the title, leadership and relationships don't mix. Relationships in this context mean "an emotionally close friendship, especially one involving sexual relations".

In public offices, (at least I experienced this when I was in primary school) a married husband and wife are not allowed to work in the same school. Among the values of AIESEC is activating leadership and demonstrating integrity. How can a leader demonstrate integrity when he keeps getting into 'relationships' with members in his/her LC? Now I know some of us are wondering 'why is it an issue as long as you keep it well managed? My answer is simple, when you get into a relationship with someone, things cease to be business as usual. Your business becomes the business of the other.  And this leads into a conflict of interest. As a leader your interests should be first and foremost, to uphold the interests of the entity you are leading, which in our case happens to be AIESEC.

Now I know AIESEC is very involving and I also know no one is an island. Everyone of us needs someone to keep us going every once in a while. So my advice is simple, if you must get into relationships while in the LR stage, find someone in another LC or MC. That way, the risk of conflict of interest is minimized. Leadership is about guiding, influencing and leading people, and take note of the word people( not a person) but relationships are about one person being with another. Leaderships involves taking care of the interests of everyone while a relationship is about taking care of the interests of someone.

In conclusion, lets take stock of the many examples of good leaders who fell/got into scandals because of not acting right when it came to relationships. Some were even forced into resignation. You don't want to be forced to quit do you? I won't mention names due to the nature of this blog but I know we all have good examples of such leaders in our minds already. But again this post meant to act as a thought leader for those currently in the LR stage and those who will join this stage in the AIESEC cycle in the future. In one way or another, this topic will affect you and you need to know how to deal with this.

-By Comm. & IM team, 2011/2012