Individual Relational Meeting Sample

I met Mr. Jamil Bandar in a gathering of Saudis and other Arab students at the student welcome event organized by Saudi Cultural Mission in Washington DC. He is of 30 years of age. The reason that I decided to arrange this meeting with is that he is the student representative of Saudi Cultural Mission as well he deals in interacting with Non-Saudi students regularly to get them to participate in their events. In other words he is acting as a bridge between the Saudi and Non-Saudi students by bringing them together at different events. I had his phone number and arranged a meeting with him by informing him about my assignment details.

I had prepared my questions in prior but I tried to keep my meeting informal to get as much information as I could about Jamil’s interests, relationships and leadership capacity. I asked him about the set of interests that he has in his professional and personal life. He was quite open about his interests. He said that when he was young, he wanted to own a travel company. His father was also in the same business which influenced him deeply. He used to go to his father’s office on regular basis and would listen to people who were going abroad and were there to acquire travel services. He listened to their stories about foreign countries and got interested in knowing about diverse cultures. He also got a chance to travel abroad a few times. With time, Jamil came to realize that he has developed an interest in an actual contact with multicultural people and he needs to explore the world. He lost his interest in doing the travel business as sitting in an office and doing the usual things for all his life was not what he could have done all his life. He has always been in search of adopting to a life where he could really enjoy what he was doing.

I asked about how he then pursue his passion and did he get what he wanted? Jamil said that since his earlier interests was owning a business, he pursued education in business administration. He got an opportunity to study abroad after he was selected for a scholarship by the Saudi Government and his believe of pursuing a career where he would be able to enjoy his work grew. He came to America and did his MBA from Montana State University. He has always been eager in attending and helping to organize the events of Saudi Cultural Mission. After his MBA he was offered a job at the Mission’s Washington office which he gladly accepted. At the moment he is the Public Relations Manager.

I asked an agitating question by inquiring that he wanted to interact with multicultural people but his current job only allows him to deal with Saudi students, how is this the kind of professional career that he said he would enjoy? He replied that the job position used to be functioning exactly the same before he took over. This job gave him an opportunity to explore his interests and try new thing by making the job interesting. After he joined the job, he has started to regularly build relational networks with university students from not only Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries but also other countries. I asked him about the different relational networks and their importance in his life. He said that he has developed multilayered relational networks. He develops relationship with the Saudi students who arrive at the Mission for student related help. Then he requests them to invite him to different cultural events at the educational institutions that they study in. He tries his best to attend these events when invited and over there he further develops relational networks with student from diverse cultures. To strengthen these relations and get more out of it, he organized events in his job capacity and invites the students that become his relational links. I asked about what is the utility of this practice? I mean what he means by “getting most out of it”. He said that the main benefit of this practice is that he can encourage Saudi students to interact with people from diverse cultures and get well informed about other people of the world. Jamil said that Saudi Arabia is a conservative country and most of Saudi students try to make friends with other Saudis only. He wants to help them open their minds and try to learn from the social and professional experiences of other people. I really appreciated the openness of Jamil in talking about the society he belonged to and the steps that needs to be taken, at his level, to address some of the social problems they had.

At the end of the interview I asked about his leadership role in the future and then I also made some prediction about it. He said that he is ready to play leadership role at any level. He recognized that he needs to learn many thing but with time, he said that he would be well equipped professional person with a leading role.

There are many variables that I believe would make him a good leader. The first thing is that he believes in himself. This is a must to possess leadership quality. He is a person who is not afraid of take the first step. He is the one who changed his current job to be more innovative and interesting. He loves what he is doing which adds to his efficiency. And most importantly he is open about his or his culture weaknesses and want to convert them to strengths. In my opinion he is already a good leader and he has bright future prospects in achieving a leadership position.

From the meeting notes I was further able to analyze about his leadership capacities. He was able to analyze his own self and felt comfortable to be in a position where he can lead. There are cases when leadership roles are offered to people but they are too afraid to take the charge. Jamil on other hand can discover situations where he can lead the way and bring constructive changes to the organization he is working for.