MELA 2011 Agenda

Saturday, March 12

Arrivals and check in throughout the day

Mövenpick Resort & Spa Dead Sea
Sweimeh, Dead Sea Road
Jordan
Phone +962 5 356 1111, Fax +962 5 356 1122
resort.deadsea@moevenpick.com

8:00 - 9:30 pm Optional informal dinner

Sunday, March 13

10:30 - 11:00 am Registration

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Welcome and Program Overview

Welcoming remarks, general introductions and preview of the program, which combines lectures on key leadership skills, breakout sessions to clarify and reinforce the concepts, exercises to solidify the learning and exemplary speakers who serve as role models sharing their real world experiences. Session includes an opening ice breaker and introduces participants to their breakout groups.

12:30 am - 2:00 pm Lunch & Participant Introductions

MELA participants are seated in pre-assigned pairs for lunch, giving them time to get to know more about their partners. After the main course, each pair of participants will briefly introduce each other to the group as a whole.

2:00 - 2:30 pm Break

2:30 - 4:00 pm Take Your Leadership to the Next Level

So you think that you really know what it takes to be a leader in the information age -- an age with profound implications for you as a leader as people are more and more substituting belief for knowledge and hope for expectation? Do you think people really understand your organization’s vision? If someone took away your title, would they still follow you? Do you believe that some things are impossible to accomplish? If you are seeking the keys to leadership for the modern age then this presentation is for you. It will challenge your beliefs about leadership and make you wonder just how good you are. And then it will give you the insights necessary to take your leadership to the next level.

4:00 - 5:00 pm Breakout Session Introductions

Participants are pre-assigned to smaller leadership groups moderated by business leaders who serve as facilitators for the program. This session provides an opportunity for participants to meet their facilitators as well as other members of their leadership group, collectively establish the ground rules for group learning, address any questions, understand the individual goals each participant wants to accomplish during the MELA program and link those goals to specific issues they currently face in their careers, organizations and communities.

5:00 - 7:00 pm Free Time

7:00 - 7:15 pm Group Photo

7:30 - 9:30 pm Guest Speaker & Banquet Dinner

Monday, March 14

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am Know Yourself First: Meyers-Briggs -- Part I

You cannot lead others if you don’t understand yourself first. The need to understand yourself, and thereby others, is critical to so many aspects of effective leadership. Using the globally recognized Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator framework, you will gain insights into your individual personality type and how it affects your ability to communicate and lead others as well as how your personality complements and conflicts with other people’s personality types. Session exercises show you in real time how you can either improve or hurt your effectiveness as a leader and team player.

10:30 - 11:00 am Refreshment Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Know Yourself First: Meyers-Briggs -- Part II

Prior to the start of the MELA program you will have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment, the most used personality assessment tool in the world. In this session, you will receive your own customized assessment which will provide you with important insights on your preferred way of leading, team building, problem solving, and conflict resolution. You will be surprised at how your personality affects your ability to lead others, and you will gain insights into how to build on your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses.

12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 - 2:00 pm Break

2:00 - 2:30 pm Telling Your Leadership Story

Everyone has a moment when they realize that they want to become a leader. For some, it happens as a result of an important event in their life. For others, it was because of a person who had a strong influence on their life -- a parent, teacher, instructor or coach -- or even a brief or distant encounter with someone who inspires them at a crucial moment. For some, it happens at an early age; while for others it may be a gradual realization. The ability to tell your story is a key element of establishing relationships, which in turn are critical to effective leadership, persuasion, team building, and negotiations. In this session, you will hear the leadership stories of Jim Crupi, President of Strategic Leadership Solutions, and other prominent leaders. Their stories will serve to inspire you and provide you with an example that you can use to tell your own story.

2:30 - 3:30 pm Breakout Session: Telling Your Leadership Story

You will share a personal story with your small leadership group about a defining experience in your past that helped shape your character and influenced your future leadership choices. The stories are captured by “story writers” assigned to each leadership group. The storywriters will prepare a written draft of your story for you to review and edit. Once approved by the individual participants, the stories will be compiled into a special storybook which will be distributed at the MELA graduation ceremony on the last day.

3:30 - 4:00 pm Refreshment Break

4:00 - 5:00 pm Breakout Session: Telling Your Leadership Story

Continuation of the storytelling process.

5:00 - 8:00 pm Free Time

8:00 - 10:00 pm Dinners by Country

Participants will dine in small groups by country to get to know one another and to discuss plans for sharing their cultural heritage with others as part of the upcoming dinners.

Tuesday, March 15

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am Matching Your Leadership Style to Your Challenge

Leaders face a myriad of different challenges -- dealing with rapid growth, the need to downsize, mergers & acquisitions, sudden crises. Effective leaders are able to bring to bear different approaches to meet the specific needs of each situation. This session introduces various leadership styles, explains the goals and appropriate context for each, and indicates the signs that show you whether each is working or not working.

10:30 - 11:00 am Refreshment Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Communicating Effectively Across Cultures -- The Theory

In today’s world, successful leaders must be able to lead and communicate with people from many different regional and global cultures. This session explores your cross-cultural style of communication based on the acclaimed CultureActive model developed by Richard Lewis.

12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 - 2:00 pm Break

2:00 - 3:30 pm Communicating Effectively Across Cultures -- Exercises

This session places you in various exercises to illustrate the different cultural styles of communication and highlights the importance of how understanding the styles of others enables you to achieve your personal and organizational goals.

3:30 - 4:00 pm Refreshment Break

4:00 - 5:00 pm Communicating Effectively Across Cultures -- Feedback

You will receive feedback on the exercises as well as a customized report on your personal communication style based on the CultureActive assessment taken prior to the start of the MELA program.

5:00 - 6:00 pm Free Time

6:00 - 7:00 pm Parallel Sessions -- Informal Discussion with Successful Business Leaders

These sessions give you the opportunity to sit down with a successful business leader and your peers to discuss the topic of your choice:

Business Development Track: Starting a successful business from scratch
Personal Development Track: Secrets of building an effective personal and professional network
Executive Development Track: How to create the talent to succeed you as a leader

7:00 - 8:00 pm Free Time

8:00 - 9:30 pm Dinner & Cultural Exchange

Wednesday, March 16

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am Social Media: The Impact on Marketing

This session starts with a powerful video that shows why social media (Facebook, twitter, and other B2B internet media) is no longer just a curious cultural concept. This new dynamic is impacting business models, processes, mindsets and most of all, how organizations relate to their customers. The outcomes promise to create new markets and shifts in old ones. Those not prepared will feel the results -- less results!

10:30 - 11:00 am Refreshment Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Overcoming Personal Conflicts with Others

The better one understands oneself and others, the more effectively one can work with others. Nonetheless, personal conflicts inevitably arise. This segment presents specific steps for dealing with interpersonal conflicts and confrontations, including in-session, videotaped demonstrations that illustrate the most important methods for managing interpersonal conflict.

12:30 - 2:30 pm Lunch & Guest Speaker: Royal Jordanian Airlines CEO Hussein Dabbas

2:30 - 3:00 pm Break

3:00 - 5:00 pm Video Analysis -- How well do you deal with conflict?

You will have an opportunity to try out your skills at dealing with interpersonal conflicts through role-playing exercises with members of your small leadership group. These exercises are videotaped so you can see how you handled a personal conflict situation and discuss with your peer group better ways for you to improve your ability to handle such conflicts in the future.

5:00 - 8:00 pm Free Time

8:00 - 9:30 pm Dinner & Cultural Exchange

Thursday, March 17

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am The Art of Persuading Others -- Part I

If you cannot persuade people to follow you, you will not be successful. Persuasion is a critical element of any successful endeavor. No matter what your position in your organization, each of us has a “sales pitch” for explaining what we can do. And whether we are “selling” products, services, or ideas, the goal is to persuade our “customers” -- whether those customers are our followers, colleagues, subordinates, bosses or actual external customers. This session will give you a systematic approach to mastering the art of persuasion.

10:30 - 11:00 am Refreshment Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm The Art of Persuading Others -- Part II

Continues the earlier session. Prior to this session, you will have been videotaped giving your personal one-minute “sales pitches”. This session will use selected videos (with permission) to illustrate key elements of the art of persuasion and how you can be more successful in getting your point across to others.

12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 - 2:00 pm Break

2:00 - 4:00 pm Persuading Others: How Effective are You?

You will meet with your small leadership group to review and refine your individual “sales pitches” with an opportunity to test your efforts in role-playing exercises with your fellow leaders and business mentors.

4:00 - 5:00 pm Individual Appointments with the Story Writers

The story writers will meet individually with you to review and edit drafts of your stories as told in the earlier breakout sessions.

5:00 - 6:00 pm Free Time

6:00 - 7:00 pm Parallel Sessions -- Informal Discussion with Successful Business Leaders

These sessions give you the opportunity to sit down with a successful business leader and your peers to discuss the topic of your choice:

Business Development Track: Taking a family business public
Personal Development Track: Attracting a team of mentors
Executive Development Track: Being an effective coach/mentor

7:00 - 8:00 pm Free Time

8:00 - 9:30 pm Dinner & Cultural Exchange

Friday, March 18

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am Building High Performance Teams -- Part I

Are you sure you are getting the most from the teams you are building? Teams are crucial to accomplishing the goals and objectives of modern organizations. This segment brings together the concepts from the earlier sessions and highlights the keys for building and running successful teams. You will be placed in teams and accomplish things you believed were initially impossible.

10:30 - 11:00 am Refreshment Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Building High Performance Teams -- Part II

This session is a continuation of Part 1 and includes specific steps you can take to use what you have learned to improve the performance of your own organization.

12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 - 8:00 pm Free Time

8:00 - 9:30 pm Dinner on your own

Saturday, March 19

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am A Model for Making the Best Decisions

The ability to make good decisions on a consistent basis is one of the most highly rated leadership skills. This session provides a systematic decision-making process that includes framing the decision, collecting the relevant information, drawing proper conclusions and learning from the results to improve future decisions. It gives you a model you can easily apply when your return to your organization after the program, and you will see the results immediately.

10:30 - 11:00 am Refreshment Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Pitfalls in the Decision Making Process

This session focuses on common pitfalls encountered in the decision-making process, their consequences, and how to avoid them. As a result, you will learn how to increase the accuracy and quality of the decisions you make.

12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 - 2:00 pm Break

2:00 - 5:30 pm Team Building/Decision Making Simulation

In this intense and challenging simulation, you will learn just how good you are at leading other leaders. You will have the opportunity to use all the capabilities you have built since the first day of the MELA program -- leadership, interpersonal relations, cross-cultural communications, persuasion, team building, and decision making -- all under the watchful eye of successful business leaders who will provide feedback at critical stages of the exercise.

5:30 - 8:00 pm Free Time

8:00 - 10:00 pm Dinner and a Movie!

We feature a popular and entertaining film that also offers a case study on leading change under difficult circumstances, providing insights into what works and why as well as how to deal with setbacks along the way. The leadership lessons in the film will be relevant to the session on Managing Change & Shaping the Future.

Sunday, March 20

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am Creating a Strategy that Makes a Difference

In this session you will be given a model for developing a successful strategy for your organization. Strategizing is much more than just visioning, forecasting and planning. In the new and rapidly changing economy, all issues of strategy have been redefined as issues of implementation. Today, strategizing is concerned with the match between the internal capabilities of the organization and its external environment. "The modern subject of business strategy is a set of analytic techniques for understanding better, and so influencing, an organization’s position in its actual and potential marketplace". Strategy today is a subject of application, rather than a discipline. The underpinning disciplines for strategy are economics and organizational sociology. You should employ them to define a structure in which the process of strategy formulation and its implementation are bound together.

10:30 - 11:00 am Refreshment Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Creating a Better Strategy for Your Organization

In this session, you will take the model you learned in the first session and use it to develop a better strategy for your organization.

12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 - 2:00 pm Break

2:00 - 5:30 pm NEON BUZZ: The Secrets to Building an Effective Organization

The moment you walk into the room, you will be inside a simulated organization where you will experience the secrets of organizational change and discover the power of moving to an efficiently designed, well-led organization that taps into the energy of individual empowerment and teamwork. This powerful simulation shows you how to:

Build commitment to a team structure
Energize existing teams
Create an organizational vision and mission that people actually understand
Gain commitment to the need for change
Dramatically increase your organization’s productivity by 5000%
Open lines of communication and cooperation among departments and units

5:30 - 6:00 pm Free Time

6:00 - 7:00 pm Parallel Sessions -- Informal Discussion with Successful Business Leaders

These sessions give you the opportunity to sit down with a successful business leader and your peers to discuss the topic of your choice:

Business Development Track: Participant Designated Topic
Personal Development Track: Participant Designated Topic
Executive Development Track: Participant Designated Topic

7:00 - 8:00 pm Free Time

8:00 - 9:30 pm Dinner on your own

Monday, March 21

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am Becoming an Effective Negotiator -- Part I

In this session you will be part of a team that must engage in an extremely difficult negotiation. The entire process is live and real time. If you want to trade you have to negotiate, the alternative is to accept what you are offered. There are many opportunities to negotiate better deals and terms, however these chances are often missed because neither side makes it clear that negotiating is an option. Many people wrongly assume that nothing is negotiable unless the other party indicates that this is the case -- a more realistic view is that everything is negotiable and in order to be successful, you will need effective negotiating skills. The complexity of the negotiating process will vary according to the size and complexity of the proposed deal as well as the attitudes adopted by the parties involved. Nearly all negotiations are characterized by four phases -- preparation, opening, bargaining and closing. You will learn that in large scale negotiations each of these phases are normally tackled sequentially. However, in smaller scale negotiations it is quite common for these phases to merge -- possibly into a single unstructured process. Where this is the case, a good understanding of the logic that underpins the four-phase approach can guide you, even when you are negotiating smaller deals.

10:30 - 11:00 am Refreshment Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Becoming an Effective Negotiator -- Part II

This session is a continuation of Part I but includes a detailed evaluation of your individual and team effectiveness as negotiators by successful businessmen. You may find that while you may have gotten what you wanted in the initial negotiation, you may lose everything in the long-term relationship with the other negotiated party. This session will challenge everything you ever thought about what it means to be a successful negotiator.

12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 - 2:00 pm Break

2:00 - 3:00 pm Identifying Key Issues Facing the Region

Key issues facing the region will be identified by you and your fellow participants as the basis for group discussions and presentations. Issues will be selected that foster cross-sector and cross-border interactions among the participants on important issues relevant to the development, growth and prosperity of the region as a whole.

3:00 - 3:30 pm Refreshment Break & Sign Up for Key Issue Groups

You will self-select the topic of interest to you in order to form groups around each of the key issues determined in the previous session.

3:30 - 5:00 pm Breakouts by Key Issues Groups

The breakout groups will utilize their leadership skills to organize themselves to address their issue and begin the process of developing a presentation to be given to all MELA participants. Each group will be assigned a pair of successful business leaders as group mentors and facilitators for this portion of the program.

5:00 - 5:30 pm Break

5:30 - 8:00 pm Informal Work Sessions by Key Issues Groups

The groups continue to work, as needed, individually and together to collect relevant information and prepare their presentations.

8:00 - 9:30 pm Dinner by Key Issues Groups

Tuesday, March 22

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am Breakouts by Key Issues Groups

The groups continue to work, as needed, individually and together to finalize their presentations.

10:30 - 11:00 am Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Rehearse Presentations in Breakouts

Individual groups have a chance to rehearse their presentations with feedback from their group mentor/facilitators.

12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 - 2:00 pm Break

2:00 - 5:00 pm Group Presentations on the Key Issues Facing the Region

Participants take turns making their presentations to all MELA participants as well as a panel of experts from throughout the region who will serve as judges. A prize will be given to the group that makes the best presentation in terms of style, content, and impact on your target audience.

5:00 - 5:30 pm Break

5:30 - 7:00 pm Transit to Amman

7:00 - 9:30 pm Guest Speaker & Dinner with SIBF

You and your MELA colleagues will have the opportunity to meet and interact with distinguished members of the Amman community and approximately thirty successful American business leaders visiting the region as the newest members of the Society of International Business Fellows (SIBF).

9:30 - 10:30 pm Return to hotel

Wednesday, March 23

7:00 - 9:00 am Breakfast Available

9:00 - 10:30 am Managing Change & Shaping the Future

Managing change requires that leaders challenge the customary ways of doing things, demand new approaches, and deal with the resulting conflicts. Leaders become vulnerable when people resist and push back. This session will equip you with the tools and insights you will need to initiate and manage change effectively in your organization.

10:30 - 11:00 am Refreshment Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm Breakout Session Review & Evaluation

You and your colleagues will have an opportunity to consolidate what you have learned, solidify newly formed relationships, and commit to leveraging your skills and relationships to solve the specific challenges you will face in your organizations, communities and countries as current and future leaders from the region.

12:30 - 2:30 pm Guest Speaker & Lunch

2:30 - 3:30 pm Understanding the Power of MELA

Having completed MELA, you and all your MELA colleagues will become members of the MELA network. This session explains the MELA concept, the potential power of the network, and the benefits and responsibilities of membership. You will also learn more about the Society of International Business Fellows (SIBF), a US based network of experienced international business leaders, and the Central Eurasia Leadership Academy (CELA), a network of leaders from business, government, and civil society in Central Asia and the Caucasus originated in 2002 under the aegis of SIBF.

3:30 - 4:00 pm Refreshment Break

4:00 - 6:00 pm Graduation Ceremonies

Participants are individually recognized, receiving individual graduation certificates and copies of the participant storybook.

6:00 - 8:00 pm Free Time

8:00 - 10:00 pm Grand Finale Dinner