Find a Place of Calm

Komal Ahmad

03.11.20

What are Komal Ahmad's biggest strengths as a leader? Her weaknesses? Inspiring others is a major strength. Staying focused in the middle of a demanding, chaotic environment -- that takes some work.

Summary:

What are Komal Ahmad’s biggest strengths as a leader? Her weaknesses? Inspiring others is a major strength. Staying focused in the middle of a demanding, chaotic environment — that takes some work.

Too many balls to juggle? Let the rubber ones bounce, but don’t let the glass ones fall. Komal shares some of her secrets for finding focus n the middle of chaos.

Thuy

What are your biggest strengths as the leader?
Komal_Ahmad

Komal Ahmad

Yeah I have the ability to go to any room whether it is a room of Fortune 100 executives or a room of you know waste haulers from Middle America or the United Nations and I have the ability to inspire them and compel them to want to act in something that they might not have considered a priority or they might not have even known was an issue. So I think that the ability to inspire and galvanize people is a strength of mine.

Thuy

What are your biggest weaknesses?

Thuy

As a leader?
Komal_Ahmad

Komal Ahmad

Patience maybe.

Thuy

Lack of patience?
Komal_Ahmad

Komal Ahmad

Yeah you know one of the things that I've really tried to do is operate from a place of calm. You know I remember in ROTC we we have a week with where we're training with the Marines and you haven't slept in like three days and it's 4 a.m. and you know you're being constantly screamed at and you have to you know put your your like rifle together after not having slept after kept keeping watching in the freezing cold and you have to put your rifle together and they're screaming at you and there's alarms blaring and you know the more you try to like assemble it in this like in this state of chaos the more mistakes you make but if you just like drown everything out and you just calmly lay out all the pieces and then you put them together yes it's gonna take longer you're also gonna do what right and so like stepping back is something that I'm very much you know forcing myself to do.

Operating from a place of calm and not becoming reactive but proactive I think so many things are coming at you as a leader when you're in a startup period and so just kind of prioritizing is is something that I'm continuously improving at. You know if everything is a priority nothing's a priority and ensuring that letting the rubber balls fall but making sure that the glass balls don't right so, what are the things that's yeah it's gonna suck if we can't get to them but when you're six or seven people there's only so much you can do and so making sure that you are staying on top of what are the most critical things of that day of that week and not getting sidetracked. So that's something that I've been continuously improving on.