Day 5 - Belfast

Today our group ventured back to Komodo for the final workday and presentation. We continued to hone our presentation, refining the material into a concise format for the 40-minute presentation to the CEO on unemployed U.S. marketing strategies. Team member Christa worked on the final document and did some great research on market segmentation in the United States. Her background is in marketing and it was evident from her depth and quality of research. Team member Steven continued with his meticulous social media research bringing creative ideas and statistics for platforms such as YouTube. We were also joined by a new team member, Jesus, because of a scheduling issue with his host company. He was a great asset to the team, proactively offering contribution in any way. We were very lucky to have him for the short time we did, and I would have been honored to work with him for the whole project. He will be very successful in his career.

While I continued my "mommy" blog research, I also focused on the leadership aspect of my role. I thought deeply the night before of how I should approach this day and enable my team members to shine. I remembered Jan’s advice and an anecdote from a book I read this year called Multipliers by Liz Wisemen, in which a manager leads effectively by allowing his team to come to the answers instead of jumping in and solving for them. This allowed the manager to develop self-confidence in his team members instead of impatiently taking over. Doing this takes trust and my teammates deserved that trust. I told Christa that she would be presenting to the CEO as I felt she was more suited for the role and I wanted to give her the ability to display her skills. Steven and I would focus on our individual research projects presenting each toward the end. The decision paid off with Christa doing a fantastic job of delivering our work product effectively. Steven also articulated his research persuasively. For me personally, it was a different feeling to let go. It wasn’t that I didn’t have control of the situation but stepping back and allowing others to lead was immensely rewarding. While management books can describe this concept, there is no substitute for experiencing it. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have both Christa and Steven as team members. Both have bright futures ahead of them and I’m confident they will excel in future endeavors.

We are taking a Black Cab tour early tomorrow morning in Belfast and then off to Derry, or Londonderry as some around here call it. Belfast was so much more than I anticipated and a wonderful surprise in many ways. But I'm happy to be done with the project portion of the trip and excited to see the country as we finish with a cultural tour and spend more time with the group.