Name: Mwaka Miyeye

Title: Regional commercial officer

Organisation: Dar es salaam water Supply and Sanitation Authority

My name is Mwaka Miyeye, a regional commercial officer supervising and coordination a team for all activities in order to collect revenue from water bills and new connection charges. Team work is my number one strategy for making sure all task going in direction of achievements, I am optimistic and very drive. Failure is my biggest enemy, I always wish and push to win. I carry confidence with me as it helps me to penetrate any where and get what can make my job easy.

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

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

Cheers,

Jonno White

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

Leading a person who have already lost interest in his or her job, the person who is already given up.

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

It was on first day of a month, after a meeting I was ready to go home but before that I was running here and there between other colleague looking for good phone so I can take a passport size photo in order to process my passport to go out of the country just for my friend business event, and one of my supervisor was also in the middle of cloud talking to someone I don't know on the phone, he called me and asked Can you be a RCO(Regional Commercial Officer)? I said yes, why not, he then said it is in Bagamoyo, I sad yes I can, as I can live anywhere, he said, Mwaka I am serios, because he thought will I manage to live there, I said yes I can,,,, then he said okay, and everything followed is history.

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

I have a time table which goes with reminders, alarms and to do list,

Morning before 7.30 is for my family, 0730 to 1700is for work, 1700 to 2000 is for my personal activities and work emergencies, 2000 to 0730 time for family and sleeping.

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

How work morale can be affected by being a boss and being a leader. How it is is easy to demoralize the efficiency of a good team by you as a leader, if, instead of showing direction you keep blaming without providing alternatives or way forward.

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?

The book: The diary of CEO

The author Steven Bartlett, gives some principal based on his experience from those experience I discover the most principal which I practice on my leadership, the first is self awareness knowing my limits and capability and compare with what the people around see me how do they evaluate me, so for that I add the knowledge and skills that I lack, which help not only me but also my team on our daily activities. Second is to know what kind of team I need, the type of people in my team and see if it is supportive system or not and if not to find people who will help to push the dream of achievement and I call them my destiny helpers, this includes not only at work but also at home, and lastly we have different believes on different matters, if other believes doesn't tally with yours do not give a panic attack, this will lead to be disrespected by the whole team, silent sometimes is a big weapon when being attacked with what you don't believe Infront of team, just receive it as an idea and then find a way to present your believes in a way will convince the team to do it.

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

Take a time to understand your team, know their limit, make sure you give way forward or alternatives, acquire more knowledge which can simplify work and train your team and be friendly but not over friendly

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

One day it was Sunday, we came to work overtime because we were far to reach the monthly target, in the morning meeting I didn't see the shinning face on my team, I decided that we go for breakfast on cassava vendors we ate cassava and sardine then we enter site to work, we collected 90% of the target on that day it was over my expectation the morale was high people didn't get tired until evening.

The lesson was: sometime the motivation to our teams it is not huge amount of money or a lot of things but just small act of kindness can make a person alive and full of energy.