A new Generation

Just two weeks ago a new Executive Board (EB) was elected to lead the Local Committee Munich from March on. At the following weekend we went to our great regional conference Bahamas with the old and new EB and many members. The EBs visited so-called TOMs (Take Over Meetings) to introduce the Elects to their future jobs and to start the Take Over.
Right now I´m packing my stuff for WMV (Wintermitgliederversammlung) a national conference where all Local Committee Presidents (LCPs) and the National Board (MC) meet to legislate motions, to discuss and to elect a new Member Committee!!!
I´ll go there wiht my successor Steffi and I´m so looking forward to this conference with her but at the same time I fear the moments when I will finally say GoodBye to my LCP-colleagues, my Local Committee and all the other AIESECers.
There are only 2.5 months left of one of the most important years of my life and I really wonder what will come afterwards: Sure, I will write my final thesis and I will look for a new job... but how will it be "without" AIESEC, without the huge responsibility, without all the meetings? Of course I will do trainings and visit conferences in the future, but my Leadership Experience comes to an end.
I´m sooo proud of the EB elect and of my LC. It was more than a pleasure for me to work in LC Munich for two years now and I´m so confident about its future because I know its potential and power.

But still, it´s not over!!!

Now is the time to rock the rest of the term! Now is the time to rock the "last" exchanges and the "last" projects of the year! Now is the time to take over all the knowledge! Now is the time to reflect and to party!

The new generation will have a great time - but right now it´s me and all the currents who are having an amazing experience and great fun!

Generation 2009/10 - Kick ASS!!!

Thoughts after MOMS

Yesterday in the evening I returned from MOMS, the local conference of Muenster and Osnabrueck. After having slept for 13 hours I now feel relaxed and start to reflect on what I experienced between Thursday and Sunday. I want to share some thoughts with you.

It was the first time for me to experience a conference from the perspective as a trainer. Together with Christine I was allowed to facilitate a workshop for twelve new members, leading them in their first discovery of AIESEC. I am very happy how everything worked out well; all the sessions we designed before ran smoothly and I think we managed to put a clear focus on the unique possibilities of AIESEC: having amazing leadership opportunities, the chance to start creative projects and getting intercultural experiences through our international network.

Random moments:

... listening to Lars, a member who joined my LC half a year ago, giving a small presentation on Taking Responsibility and realizing what an awesome experience every single member is living in AIESEC.

... talking to Mareike, LCP Twente (Netherlands), my colleague from our partner LC, about the life of an LCP and realizing, that 800 great people all over the world feel just the way I am.

... meeting our amazing chair Alina from Romania, France and UK for the first time in the office, knowing from the start what a good job she would do.

... walking through the venue and being greeted by "Muenster Monster" (a part of our LCs culture) shouts at every corner.

... having a goodbye-round with the executive board of AIESEC Osnabrueck - their LC will be dissolved now - a extremely sad moment. Looking into their faces and listening to the speech of Kai from my team I realized how much energy they have put into AIESEC and how much they personally have gained - even if in the end they did not succeed.

... going through the meetings of all our functinal teams, being warmly greated by all of them with a nice strong drink ;).

... geeting individual feedback from all the delegates in my workshop - both areas for improvement and praise... seeing how much they have learned in those three days and what great persons joined our organizations!

More than half of my term as an LCP has passed. Remembering the last MOMS in May I see how much I have developed and changed as a person. Obviously, the way was not always easy and I have been through a lot of rough patches (as my friends know). But it was definitely worth it!

Tomorrow we are having our elections. I am looking forward to listen to the speech of the candidate for LCP. I am looking forward to the period of transition and to three more months as a LCP. I am looking forward to whatever awaits me in AIESEC after my term.

Thank you all for this amazing weekend, for the last nine month, thank you AIESEC for the last two years! Special Thanks to all my Monsters!

Nicolas

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You can find some pictures from the weekend on our Flickr-Account - Micha and Philipp put them there.

National conference

Last weekend, I went to one of our national conferences, SAM (Strategic Autum Meeting).
This is a conference where all the executive boards from 48 Local Committees come together to have a mid term meeting. There where around 300 people attending this conference.

For me this conference was so extraordinary because of the people. Meeting all the people that have taken the challenge to be in the executive board, to challenge themselves as a team to lead their local committees.

Most of the people I had already met on the first national conference at the beginning of our term, the NKK (National KickOff Conference). Then began our journey and now we met again. Every one of them has gained experiences in the past 6 months; some of them were great and some were not so good, but this is excatly what made me went to be a local committee president. I wanted to challenge myself. To grow futher. Until now I, as well as all the others, have grown in areas such as:

leading a team, celebrating success, acepting failure, facing problems one after another, feeling tired of the job, feeling not understood, feeling hungry for more etc.

And we are just in the middel of our journey, still 6 months to go to gain more experience and to grow further.

"Why not?" are the words that really touched me on this conference. A very challenging statement from our Member Commite President Gesa.

When was the last time you challenged yourself?

Experience an international conference

This is my first international conference and it´s just great.
The German Delegation consists of 15 Local Committee Presidents (LCPs) and Gesa, our lovely President of AIESEC Germany and we are simply rocking the house... ööööh hotel!!! :)))














EuroCo is a conference for LCPs from Western Europe and North America and from Central and Eastern Europe. So you maybe can imagine how it is to learn, talk and party with 160 LCPs from countries like Russia, Slovenia, UK, Sweden, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, etc.

This picture shows you one of our first moments at EuroCo: the Global Village!!!

I had very cool moments:
- Talking with Przemek from Poland and Mini from Belgium about national planning.
- Discussing eXchange with LCPs from Eastern Europe.
- Meeting the President of AIESEC International, Aman.
- Chatting with the girls from the German Delegation. Enjoying a walk at the beach with Jens. Having a party in the elevator.

You REALLY should go to international conferences... this is the view from my window!!! :)))

Happy greetz from Lisbon!!!
Betti & the EuroCo Delegation

154 days left

In 57 days my LC will vote my successor...
In 62 days my successor will go through Baaaaaaaptooooom and gets his/ her first insights into LCPs life...
In 65 days I will introduce my successor to the Board of Advisors...
In 75 days my successor and I will be at WMV (Wintermitgliederversammlung) in Augsburg...
In 81 days I will say the final GoodBye to my LCP colleagues...
In 101 days the Take Over will start...
In 126 days my EB and I will say GoodBye to our LC...
In 153 days my EB and I will hand over our local planning to the new EB and celebrate at the Take Over Party where I will have to say GoodBye to my EB...
In 154 days I will look back on a year with my EB and my LC: all the LC Meetings we had, all the Trainees that arrived and left, all the projects and events we organized, all the problems we solved...

154 days left - I will enjoy every single day...

Blogging is great and relevant

Just a short note to motivate you to start your own blog about your life and experiences - be they within or without AIESEC, in whatever country

There are definitely quite a lot of people reading this stuff. Every time a new article is published here, viewings go up. A lot of people come from Facebook or other blogs that link here. Also, some search on Google for keywords such as (just a selection of the most common) "leadership experience, aiesec, leadership and myself, impact of an amazing leadership experience, Learn from my experience of leadership" and, my most favourite search entry, that summarizes for me very well what AIESEC is about: "what local organizations can give me leadership experience".

(The map shows only the very recent visitors - storage is limited. It is funny, as I can see many friends and member of my local committee in other countries on the map.)

Cheers, Nicolas

Federal Elections in Germany

Leadership also means taking on resposibility - and voting is the responsibility of each citizen. On Sunday we are electing a new Parliament here in Germany. Trainees from all over the world meet in Hamburg and made this video to motivate all Germans to cast their ballot.
If you are living in Münster you might even find me handing the papers to you - I will enjoy that day helping organize and count the vote.

Enjoy the video!

Personal Notes from the Train

Hey!

At the moment it is approaching 1 am, I have slept around seven hours altogether in the last three days and still, somehow I feel like writing a short note :).

I just returned from Bonn, were I meet with the other members of the team on external positioning (see my post here) for an intense two days of working long hours, discussing and having fun. In the train back I realized, that working in this team alone I have gained so many new skills. Also, just minutes after leaving I was getting good-bye messages from friends I have made in this team.
In every part of my life so far I have met lots of people, most of whom I do not see very often any more. But there always are some people who will stay with you. In the last two years in AIESEC I have met so many incredible persons from so many different backgrounds as I have never met before and it is nice to know that some of them will also be there in the future :).

On a different topic:
Sitting in the train, reflecting on this, I got a short message from Natalie. She is my pre-predecessor and one of the most amazing persons I know, even though I do not hear from her very often. Right now she is doing recruitment for Google. From Paris she sent: "aiesec is amazing. just wanted to share that with you. send greeting to my local committee". Now, I do no know what made her send that message to a person she hardly ever sees at 11:30 pm - but I am pretty sure it must have been a strong experience. And it feels to good to be working in an organization that is creating experiences like that every day, everywhere for so many people.

Sorry if this got a bit sentimental, maybe will be more factual next time.

Nicolas

Manager? Or Leader? Or both?

Dear readers,

First of all, I want to use the chance to thank Nicolas, Local Committee President from Münster, for lately admitting me for this blog, as I have not been belonging to the initial group of LCPs who wanted to start this – I am now here because I feel the will and motivation to share my thoughts and beliefs to you as well…

Just to shortly introduce myself: My name is Johannes Köhn, I am the Local Committee President of my lovely AIESEC & IAESTE Local Committee at TU Berlin. I have been elected in November 2008 and started my term then in March 2009. In 2008, I was Organizing Committee President (OCP) for the issue-based project Energy Forum on production and distribution of energy - concerning renewable and conventional energy sources. Before that, I was member of the Incoming Exchange Team (ICX) at TU Berlin, being responsible for getting available traineeship positions in Berlin companies and finding trainees that fit to the requirements.

I study industrial engineering since the winter semester 2006/2007 at the TU Berlin when I also joined AIESEC; in October, my 7^th semester will start already. Also, I have a lovely girlfriend coming from Finland and a lovely family living right outside of Berlin.

Now, here it comes: Manager? Or Leader? Or both? This question often comes to my mind when reflecting about my job and what I do in AIESEC… In a first step, one of course has to define what a manager and leader actually is. I will skip this, as I don’t believe there is a universal definition and the terms are much interconnected. To me, it is more important how I fulfill my responsibilities to my stakeholder!

But still there is the question of what I am? Am I rather a manager, as I plan and organize meetings, set up agendas, do strategic planning, get together with companies, write tons of e-mails, have telephone conferences with the AIESEC network? Or am I a leader, because I stand in front of my Local Committee and talk about what leadership means to me, because I want to motivate my team and my LC, represent my LC at national level in taskforces or at conferences, because I want to have an impact on the development of people, being a role model?

I think that one cannot be just a manager OR a leader – there is always the need to have qualities of both in order to be successful. The one cannot go without the other.

I believe that the true question lies within finding the answer to how you should prioritize your both roles as a manager and a leader – what comes first in what situation! To me, I have sometimes the feeling that I am a little bit more the manager for my LC, as it is my environment and the situation that ask me to be this. It is always a balancing act, as there is no obvious right or wrong…

Finally, I wanted to share those thoughts to you; talk to me if you want to share your thoughts as well.

All the best for you and many greetings to my Local Committee you see on the picture below! :-)

Cheers,
Johannes

My network AIESEC video

New views on University

Hey there,

I just want to share a small thought with you, no big story:

Yesterday I realized how much my view on the university has changed since I became LCP. Because a member of the executive board of AIESEC I represent the world-wide organization in my city, I was suddenly getting to know more people and recieved more information on structures and processes than I did before. My team and me now know the heads of the university and of the city administration, we got insights into the little fights between different faculties and departments about lots of money and power and of course got in contact with a lot of other student initiatives. I did not know before that an organization that often seems so dull is such a jungle inside :). And of course we are sometimes asked for our opinion, our recommendations or just to give interviews explaing AIESEC (I already had to give three :) ).

Cheers,

Nicolas

Totally unrelated, just because it is so dark here, a picture from the AIESEC in Münster cake we had at our anniversary last year (Thanks to Julia and her great OC):

Motivation

I already learned a lot about diffrent methods of motivation... but the most motivating thing in my LCP-term has been and still is my EB-team and my LC.
Let me give you an example:
There are moments when you are sad, tired, desperate or unmotivated. Yesterday evening I had such a moment: There were some troubles with diffrent projects. Furthermore I suddenly feared to not reach the X-goal we set at the beginning of the term. I really felt desperate and tired then.
But today at the EB Meeting we talked about the diffrent things and I got some good news, we created new ideas and found solutions for the problems. My team - again - gave me so much motivation and strength and now I really feel great again.
My LC will rock this term and we already have and for sure will have success - even though we might fail in a project or have less X than expected. The experience I make - and I´m sure it´s the same for my VPs - are so cool, I learn so much and I have so much fun together with my EB and my LC - this is the greatest success for me.
Another good thing for motivation is: Look back from where you started and where you are now. I took over a very good LC (thanks to the EB 08/09) but still we´re improving things and try out new ideas. I already can look back to cool events (like the LC Global Village or IMAS or Trainee Parties) and good results. And so much more will come up in the next month like recruitment, like projects and like elections!!! :)

Let´s get it started!!!

Video on why it´s good to be an LCP

Now post from me for today - instead I found a cool video from a Local Committee President (LCP) from the US. Now, I´ve never met this guy - but I´m pretty sure that most people in leadership positions in AIESEC can identify with what he says.

Working in an invisible team

Together with around 14 other AIESECers (Ken and Johannes are two of them) I am working in a national task force that is basically doing market research to better position AIESEC towards our customers. (Sounds like serious economics - and it is. Stay tuned here or follow the wiki in our intranet myaiesec.net for contents.)

Working in a taks force is one possibility (not only for LCPs, but for every member!) of many to leave the local level for a while and work on the national or international one. Now the special thing about this team is that it works completely virtually. That was a new challenge for me: Of course I use mail, skype, spradsheets, wikis etc on a daily base. But relying completely on them was new to me. Conflicts can come up much faster when you do not see your opponent. And we all learned a lot of small things, such as: More than two telephone conferences a day are really tiring. Call all 50 Local Committees individually if you want to get answers. The station of Hagen has no W-LAN, Hannover does. Virtual irony does not work. Some virtual rooms for telephone conferences tend to kick you out from time to time, others don´t. Google Docs are really cool, but when importing excel sheets, the design will be lost... I could go on much longer.

We also learned that working together in such a big team only works, when you know and trust each other. I am really thankfull to be allowed with this great team, coordinated by the one and only Arne.

Nicolas

Picture taken on our kick-off in Bonn - only a part of the team could be there, unfortunately.

Johannes is joining us

Dear Readers,

in the last few days it has been quiet here. That is normal, above all we are students - and right now we are studying for our exams or recovering from the ones we just had :). But rest asured, new posts are in the pipeline.

To help us, one more Local Committee President will join us. I am pleased to announce that Johannes from the Local Committee at the Technical University (TU) Berlin will also share his experiences here.

Yours,

Nicolas

Why the word responsibility means so much to me!

Hey! Let me shortly introduce myself to all the readers from cities with less bikes than two per inhabitant (i.e. not from Münster, Germany): My name is Nicolas and since March 2009 I am the Local Committee President of the lovely LC Münster. This is me and parts of my local committee at our small conference (the MOMS, together with lovely LC Osnabrueck) in May. I study Politics and Economics in the fourth semester; originally I come from Bochum and Berlin, so I somehow feel connected to these cities, and I have lived a few month in Jyväsykylä and have of course.friends there. I want to write a few entries here around the topic "what is that guy actually doing all the time we see him in the office" :). So here goes the first one.

A major part of the LCP-position as I see it is responsibility. This is not someting that you do, but something that you take on and live. And it is a very rewarding experience.

You may know, that in AIESEC Germany the LCP is partly financially liable for actions of the LC. In practise that means for me to sign a lot of stuff - e.g. all the project calculations or reimbursement sheets my great Finance team is putting together. If something went wrong, then I would be the person to blame. This is not always easy: Sometimes it means stopping people from fulfilling great ideas because legally or financially they are too risky. Luckily, AIESEC has a great system of checks and a cool supporters; so it´s not that hard :).

Responsibility also mean always standing behind and supporting your LC. When I visit a member of our Board of Advisors, they sometimes give me a hard time - because the love our LC and want to see it performing, they may ask: "Why did you drop that project?", "Why are your number in that area so bad?", "Somebody from AIESEC promised me this or that two years ago and did not deliver!". I would never blame the respective member or company for that, but have to do my best to explain. I learned a lot that way.

Why is this still so rewarding? Well, because 95% of the time great things happen. And as LCP you get a lot of acclaim for that. I often get called by people from all over Germany about small things, about a small project they heard went well and they want to know more. Standing up for my LC, I somehow really started to identify myself with all those people. (You realize I always say my LC :)). When I hear from our Incoming Exchange Team that they closed a deal, when I get the notification from google news about a new press article that got published, see a new member lead the Local Committee Meeting and speak in front of fifty people, when a girl from France asks where she can apply to chair our local conference - in those moments I am extremely proud of my members and happy to have taken on this responsibility.

Yours, Nicolas

This is a video on the topic of responsibility, shot at the LCP-Conference SMV in June. It is in German, I am sorry.

Internationality... in your daily life!

I wanna share two experience with you which I made during the last week:

On our last LC Meeting we had a Global Village organized by our Trainee Coordinator Andreea and our Resort Leader Internal Marketing (OGX) Mo. There, members, trainees and returnees presented 14 countries with food, drinks, pictures and music. For me it was a very great night because I really saw the internationality that we can live here every day. And I know that this cool Global Village is a direct outcome of our daily AIESEC-work.

The other event was Saturday night: Together with members and trainees from India, Norway, Taiwan, Egypt, etc. we went to see a great fireworks at Olympiapark. So we were sitting on a hill, watching the sunset and the fireworks and enjoying some drinks. Afterwards we went to a club where we danced like crazy until the morning. Again this was an event with people from very diffrent countries and backgrounds and it was so much fun.

Why do I tell you this?
I just wanna show you that being engaged in AIESEC is basically about internationality, fun and cool experiences - things that you can have every day! It´s up to you to take part in that.
For me these are the best experiences in my Leadership Role and this makes the job so amazing. We do have an outcome and an impact with our work as I can see at all the great events in my LC and the more time and power you invest in AIESEC the more you get out of it!

Kick-Off

Some days ago I realized that I am having a really intense experience in AIESEC, in my Local Committee here in Münster. I am learning so much and there are so many great moments, but I am not sharing them with that many people.

Talking to other LCPs, we noticed that we all had had similiar thoughts: How can we share our experiences? How can we increase transparency, so that the people who elected us see what we are doing? How can we raise awareness for leadership, apart from exchange probably the best thing you can do in AIESEC? How we can we strengthen our network and better explain to other people what other people are doing?

Well, this blog is supposed the be one part of our answer. Of course, personal communication is much more important and you can always approach us. You are also invited to use the other communication channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Xing, Homepages or our intranet.
We love to hear your opinion!

We - that is Ariane from Jena, Betti from Munich, Ken from Bielefeld and Nicolas from Muenster - formed as a group quite randomly, just because we wanted to represent different cities.

Now... let´s begin!