لخّصلي

Communication skills play a vital role for a leader to achieve their goals. This essay demonstrates a proof by examining a workshop that succeeded in finalizing a joint work paper between 23 humanitarian organisations, this paper served as a framework during the response to the 6th of February 2023 earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria.

The meeting hosted 23 leaders from local and international humanitarian organisations. Many of those leaders have been working on the ground for years, whilst others are new to the region. Technical experts also joined from various sectors, such as health, water and sanitation, and shelter and nutrition. The meeting also included advocacy consultants, representatives of coordination networks, data managers, and protection experts. Attendees were native speakers of different languages. They also attended physically or virtually. Attendees came from different professional and technical backgrounds and varied in familiarity with international response frameworks. Some organisations had political or religious backgrounds. Although all participants shared the goal of the convention, not everyone shared the same expectations about outputs. During the talks, it was clear that there were different types of leadership styles and cultures. Speakers demonstrated different styles of followership, either effective, alienated, or passive impacted by the disaster.

At the introduction, the attendees appointed a leader who presented the goal and deadlines, and justified the objectives based on technical, geographic, and administrative information. To facilitate the sessions, the leader presented the agenda, virtual app and translation rooms. He also appointed one facilitator to collect inputs, and present the final draft, as well as approved on needs calculating standards and sources of information. Afterwards, all participants introduced themselves and their organisations. Participants were then divided into groups, each working on a geographical area to prepare:

• Required support for each technical sector.
• Potential donors.
• Work structure for integration on the ground.
• Revive local response mechanisms.
• Draft working paper, share it with other groups.

The leader employed different styles of leadership during the session, given that participants have different capacity and motivation. The leader's consideration for the participants did not prevent him from being decisive with attempts to drag outputs into any organizational or political interests away from the goal.

While forming groups, the leader ensured that the members of the groups were balanced in terms of technical expertise, access to the field, familiarity with the structures of international action, as well as passive and effective participants. To ensure everyone's participation, virtual participants had access to the real-time online translation. The leader kept engaging silent participants by asking them direct questions during filling the agreed outcomes form.

When it comes to challenges, virtual attendees did not fully communicate their emotions and attitudes which also made it difficult for the leader to choose the appropriate communication style. The absence of one language also consumed time and efforts, also, it was difficult to engage alienated participants since they lack confidence and the unfamiliarity with other participants and their reactions. Virtual attendees felt their presence is incomplete, in fact few of them have left because they felt themselves unheard and not fully included in decision making.

If I were to arrange a similar meeting in the future, I would ensure the following: Equipping the leader with essential virtual leadership skills and fostering their charisma to effectively shape and impact the virtual environment; the quality of tools and applications used in virtual working sessions is crucial for enabling participants to collaborate in real-time and access the latest information; also, minimising the number of participants can help develop a more friendly communication; grouping participants based on their speciality; giving participants space to initiate small talks before activities, sharing any relevant and vital data prior to the meeting.

In conclusion, effective communication and the quality of its tools are crucial to the success of the leader's mission, along with a profound understanding of the nature of the followers who share a common goal. Equally crucial is clarifying roles and methods to achieve this goal. Last but not least, a leader may implement an appropriate leadership style for each group at each stage depending on the context.