Take a stand!

Nice to chat with all of you, guys!

It's my turn.

In the wake of the other Fulbrighters I want to share with you my impressions about the first seminar of Leadership I attended.

The speaker was Mike Selfridge, head of global products division, Silicon Valley Bank.

I’m really struck by his speech and so it has been difficult for me to condensate all the . First of all he spoke with great convinction on his experience from which he directly learnt what he said to us all. Certainly he dealt with a great deal of topics but I would like to underline the issue concerning the relationship existing between ethics and leadership.

-Fortunately all the MBA people had the possibility of reflecting on his speech because we had to make a reflective essay as an assignement.-

In my opinion he presented a really interesting and new idea about it (or at least in my eyes, but i'm utterly convinced that all the people there had the same impression).

Basically, at the beginning of his speech there was something odd... “is it possible that a leader could speak about “your example is more important than your advice” or “personal attributes and ethics””? This question suddenly raises another one: “which ethics is the speaker referring to”? His? Or a common ethics in leadership has to be defined? This questions inspired my reflection. I’m sure there’s not only one answer to this questions. But I’ve tried to find mine. That was really food for thought! I'm really enthusiastic about Leadership seminars because this subject will really give you a lot of indications on how to be a leader in your own reality, I mean, not only at work.

M. Selfridge really said something applicable to my own reality. I join a research team as a researcher and sometimes i have to be a leader for my team. In a research team you have to face the problem of how to innovate and to manage your scientific experiments. Which one is the best to invest on? Which are the risks? As a leader I have to "take a stand"! In this case i really agree with Selfridge when he said “fear might be a great motivator but only for a short time”. Great Mike, thank you for this!

Let's get this show on the road! [Emanuele]