Seminar "Towards Effective and Responsible Leadership" in Life Sciences

Written by: Nora Mohammed Bugaith

A member of the academic staff in the Department of Information Sciences at the College of Life Sciences, Dr. Dhari Al-Huwail, organized a seminar entitled "Towards Effective and Responsible Leadership" within the leadership development course, in which retired Colonel Mr. Mohammed Ali Al-Farsi lectured, at exactly 2:00 pm on Monday, 4-11-2024, in the College of Life Sciences.
First, after welcoming the attendees, retired Colonel Mr. Mohammed Ali Al-Farsi stressed that life skills differ from theoretical skills, and in order for a person to succeed in reaching them, he must write down his goals, explaining that the characteristics of the goal are that it be clear, realistic, and achievable, even if after a while.
He stressed that the general goals should revolve around developing the mind, nourishing the soul, caring for health and sports, and increasing monthly income, providing some examples to achieve this by reducing phone use, organizing time, reading about 100 pages of a book daily, and maintaining worship, and explaining the danger of the dominance of the Internet today by presenting a statistic that showed the difference from 1930 to 2024 and how interest in social relations, family and religion declined compared to interest in the Internet.

He stressed the need to strike a balance between time and money and motivating the soul, stressing the need for teamwork to achieve goals better than individual work, "because group members complement each other, and the elements of weakness of one are hidden by the elements of strength of the other, and so on."

The retired Colonel Al-Farsi also presented several rules that help organize time, including the two-minute rule, the 5/25 rule and the time allocation rule, providing examples to achieve goals with time arrangement.

In conclusion, Dr. Dhari Al-Huwail thanked Mr. Al-Farsi for the information he provided in the seminar, stressing that it served the course greatly. He also asked him about the definition of leadership from his point of view as a lecturer for the seminar, and Al-Farsi answered that he finds that leadership is the art of influencing, motivating and guiding others. Mr. Al-Farsi received the students’ questions, including a question about the qualities of a successful leader. From Mr. Al-Farsi’s point of view, the most important quality that a leader should have is justice, then patience in dealing, accepting the circumstances of others and being patient.