Video Transcript
Tifair Hamed:
The leadership skills at Medill, I've taken two, digital leadership as well as another leadership class with Professor Candy Lee, they were very instrumental in securing the job that I currently have and will be instrumental for the rest of my life. But really understanding your value as a leader, how to negotiate salaries, how to manage people, etcetera, or how to even manage time and delegate, those are points that, throughout the curriculum from visual leadership and more, that helps to navigate those things that people can not discuss in the workforce. If you kind of have to figure it out and navigate those waters on your own. And honestly, in my opinion, they should be mandatory classes because it is impossible to really know that unless you have a mentor that can kind of guide you through those waters, and everyone doesn't have a mentor. But the professors, especially Professor Candy Lee, she guided me through that negotiation process, she guided me to say, you can go and you can actually be a chief marketing officer, you're ready, you have doubts in yourself like, “Am I ready? I'm a vice president here,” but how does that translate over to this world, giving you that confidence, that boost that's needed, but also, you know, the data to really back it up. Some of just reminding me of who I am and the experience that I've already taken over 15 or close to 20 years actually of being in the industry. So, the soft skills are just as important as like those frameworks that we discussed, because you can't really go further without understanding how to be a leader.
The leadership skills at Medill, I've taken two, digital leadership as well as another leadership class with Professor Candy Lee, they were very instrumental in securing the job that I currently have and will be instrumental for the rest of my life. But really understanding your value as a leader, how to negotiate salaries, how to manage people, etcetera, or how to even manage time and delegate, those are points that, throughout the curriculum from visual leadership and more, that helps to navigate those things that people can not discuss in the workforce. If you kind of have to figure it out and navigate those waters on your own. And honestly, in my opinion, they should be mandatory classes because it is impossible to really know that unless you have a mentor that can kind of guide you through those waters, and everyone doesn't have a mentor. But the professors, especially Professor Candy Lee, she guided me through that negotiation process, she guided me to say, you can go and you can actually be a chief marketing officer, you're ready, you have doubts in yourself like, “Am I ready? I'm a vice president here,” but how does that translate over to this world, giving you that confidence, that boost that's needed, but also, you know, the data to really back it up. Some of just reminding me of who I am and the experience that I've already taken over 15 or close to 20 years actually of being in the industry. So, the soft skills are just as important as like those frameworks that we discussed, because you can't really go further without understanding how to be a leader.