Name: Ali Mohammed Masmali

Title: Growth Manager

Organisation: NOON

A passionate Growth Manager, Helping to make better Decisions and shaping the reality driven with positive mindset and problem solving approach.

Working currently with one of the most exclusive eCommerce teams in Meddle East.

Optimizer and positive thinker, trying to have a good impact on my surroundings.

to be remembered, I hope.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Ali's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

As a leader it is a norm to be in a place where a plan is needed with no vision to the future, it is the job of a leader to shape the path forward for organization or entity, which might be challenging to convey such an understanding to team and ensure one hundred percent involvement.

So the challenge here is to inspire people and make them believe in the situation in order to give the best of what they can offer.

It is also possible through out some good communications and building trust among the team and understand their motivations.

“Plans drown by strong minds, people led by emotional heart”

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

Being a leader is about making decisions and keeping consistency in leadership style.

People usually like leaders who they can trust and believe, I remember once in a workshop we had in the past a small situation, when the trainer wanted two of our team members to do small activity, some of them could not make their minds and I just pushed them to step up. I did not think about it until the trainer told me it was a “Leader moment” which sparked in me.

After that I showed a clear desire to be a leader in order to change some of the things I used to unlike.

“Good Leaders maximize the output even if they did not know”

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I like to start my day with cold shower and review my duties of the day, in order to make mental mapping of my day and what tasks to start with.

I think the starting of the day with a clear overview of the duties can really help untie some time conflict before they even appears, which can help to be effective.

“Structure your day, structure your life”

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

Leadership is always about learning and developing and acquiring a growing mentality, which makes leaders in a continues learning journey.

One of the most recent lessoned I have learned is that a person cannot separate achievement from personal life and other way around. Professional integrity will carry out clearly in someone’s personal life and personal effectiveness will also help achieve big goals career wise.

Which can indicate someone’s tendency to have a positive or negative trend in general.

“Leadership is about reading signs and act accordingly”

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Some books have a great power of impact and alter perspective in someway.

My book was “Psychology of Money”, one of the ideas in that book was that some people make mistakes not because they did not know better, but more often they know that they do wrong.

Of course the book was talking about financial decisions, I feel like I can apply this into more aspects of my life including my leading style.

This is only on of handful valuable Ideas, but it was the most to stick with me.

I advise leaders and people to be leaders in the future to read the book and keep a nice habit of reading in general .

“A Leader who reads is a Leader who leads”

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

I always love the idea of scale up and improve day by day, that for my advice is to keep learning and take reasonable educated risks to be greater leader and improve your ability to drive bigger teams.

“Leaders Scale up in order not to Scale Down“

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

I usually keep my courage to continue by remembering the effect we can keep in people’s lives.

Once I have led a volunteering team to small hospital in my town, the team was amazing, communication was excellent, planning was great and my assistants were very helpful. We arrived in to the place and started the preparations to start the activities(which took a day to execute ). Within 3 - 5 hours of our activities I noticed the look in these patients faces. Believe me it will mean the world these looks of admire and respect.

“Leaders can be emotional sometimes”