Report :

I have applied to attend the Political Leadership Seminar organized and sponsored by Friedrich Naumann Foundation in the period between 3rd and 10th of September 2011 in the International Academy for Leadership (IAF) Gummersbach in Germany as a member of the Free Egyptians Party (Elmasreyeen Elahrar).

Countries' representation was as follows: -
1- South Africa
2- Brazil
3- Ukraine
4- Egypt
5- Lebanon
6- Honduras
7- Argentina
8- Indonesia
9- Malaysia
10- Uganda
11- Ghana
12- Malawi
13- Russia
14- Srilanka
15- Tanzania
16- Thailand
17- Sierra Lione

Facilitators were: -
1- Mr. Arno Keller, Germany
2- Mr. Tauseeq Haidar, Pakistan
3- Mr. Tymoor Lutfullin, Germany

During the seminar, we have been trained on the following topics: -
1- Communication

2- Theoretical ideas of leadership (leadership psychology, motivation chain, factors of leadership, role of a leader, how people become leaders, types of leadership, principles of leadership

3- How to communicate in the world

4- Communication face to face

That was done through practical and interactive exercises: - 1- Political leadership in our Regions; commonalities and un-commonalities. That was a very important exercise that made a smooth entry to the seminar, because we had an idea of how different regions work politically. We all found many similarities between our regions despite the geographical differences. For instance, East Europe and Latin America was more similar to Egypt rather than Lebanon. During the seminar, delegations with similar circumstances, have discussed many similarities and the way forward in each of our respective countries based on our current situations. To me personally, this session, was very influential, because we had some sort of a Q&A session about Egyptian revolution. I had the chance to represent revolution point of view to people from all around the world, who wanted more information to better understand the situation in Egypt. I have also been given the chance to have tips from people who had our same experience like Ukraine.

2- Political Leadership Values: We have worked on this topic both theoretically and practically;
a. we have worked on identifying the political leadership values, skills, character, attitude, traits and criteria b. We also did a funny exercise that was very interesting to all participants. We presented scenes from fairy tales, like Snow White and Cinderella that embody the leadership values.
c. Analysis of political leaders: We have chosen the most significant world political leaders and analyzed their traits and performance in comparison to the political leadership values that we proposed above

3- We discussed the different roles of a leader as a: -
a. Communicator
b. Motivator
c. Team builder
d. Change agent
e. Strategist
f. Implementer

4- Mr. Uwe Ufer, was a guest speaker to the seminar, to talk to us about his experience in Hukeswagen as a mayor that is definitely a success story that needs to be cascaded to our countries.

5- We had a session about communication in social media. I had the chance to comment and talk about the Egyptian experience. It was a practical session, as we had the chance to create accounts on facebook, twitter and blog for our seminar group

6- We had some theoretical and practical training on the face to face communication in terms of: -
a. Doing public speeches
b. Debates
c. Discussions and negotiation
d. Interviews (role play)

We have learnt more about the types of audience and how to face them and the do's and don'ts of each of the above mentioned forms of dialectic

7- Last day was focused on developing our abilities as potential political leaders in our countries. Seminar facilitator chose 7 participants and assigned 2 consultants/mentors to each one of them and had the responsibility to develop their Leadership Development Action Plan (mine is attached)

8- Yesterday Click: That was the exercise that we started our morning with on daily basis. It summarized what touched each one of the participants in the previous day. It made us evaluate what we have discussed and what affected us the most. Many participants decided that that was a best practice that we need to use after the seminar when we go back home and cascade it to our colleagues

Finally, this seminar was a great opportunity for me to learn from other people's experiences, to develop my capabilities as a political activist in a newly born Egyptian liberal political party, to practice and apply tools that enhance my leadership skills.