Amena Thabet
Director of People Operations at Raisa Energy LLC
Throughout my years in this world interacting with human beings, I realized that adopting a beginner’s mindset and staying passionately curious, is key to going places.<br><br>I'm Amena...
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- People Operations Strategies: Enhancing workplace culture and engagement
- Talent Acquisition Best Practices: Attracting the right professionals
- Performance Management Systems: Maximizing employee productivity and growth
- HR Technology Trends: Leveraging AI and data for decisions
- Curiosity-Driven Leadership: Fostering a beginner's mindset in teams
Meet the mentor
Tricky Workplace Situation Handled
- Foster a culture within the team of high-level trust & accountability Attract people in, and then help them learn how to be a team, by pressuring team leaders to train their members on norms for teams & technology
- By developing and growing my self-awareness level, I become more and more conscious of my feelings. So, I was aware when I was working lately on a project with a peer in the US office, and although we were collaborating, deep inside I knew I wanted my work to shine. When I reflected why I had these feelings, I realized it was because the effort put in the project was not equal and that I felt it was unfair not to have my effort recognized. I decided instead of competing, I will be giving my peer feedback that she should be having a bigger contribution.
- Cross-functional projects are key! I witnessed that firsthand when we did a hackathon and the team started to collaborate despite the difference in roles. The outcome was fantastic!
- I try to control it, or at least be aware of it, because it's inevitable. I have it towards my work experience, I might be biased towards what I tried before and was successful. I try to contain it by not jumping to the first viable idea there is and by questioning and observing.
- Through observing patterns of behavior, reactions, etc. Asking for feedback Consulting a non-biased person. Reflecting and questioning.
- By expecting different responses to our interview questions, but most of the time probing questions are contextual and cannot be tailored before every interview, they go as the conversation takes us.
- To give them a chance to better express themselves, amid all the interview stress and anxiety. To remove any vagueness around the answer and get a clear evaluation of the character. To make sure of the accuracy of the response, and not just settle to high-level answer. Sometimes contradictions are discovered when being probed.
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- I try to avoid WHY questions because they trigger defensiveness. I try to focus more on the HOW. For example "You mentioned that..., how do you make sure that happens?". I also like to always use examples from real-life experience to show what they mean, so my favorite is always "can you give me an example of a time you did...."
- They are different parts of the same process of trying to come up with ideas. Divergent thinking is going out and exploring ideas. Convergent is about taking the ideas, reflecting on them and improving them.
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- I would do a brainstorming session with the team who created the designs and ask them to come up with new ideas if they were to recreate the line from scratch. I then would gather the feedback costumers gave and sort it to categories, then share it with my design team to reflect on it; what do I want to keep and what I'm planning to skip according to many factors (budget for instance), and try to find an intersection point between the feedback, new ideas and already created designs.
- Yes! Whenever we face a challenge, a new situation, we try to avoid habituation and do a brainstorming session to think of a new approach. We try to ask reflective questions like "why do we want to change this?" or "why did we originally do this?". After brainstorming, we follow up with a reflective quick sync up to find what's next as action items.
- There's a morale problem because of layoffs and COVID at our company. I think if we present a specific problem statement to the team and ask them to come up with ideas to increase their own morale, it would be beneficial. One thing we need to highlight is that they cannot judge each others' ideas at this phase, to try to apply divergent thinking.
Tricky Workplace Situation Handled
- Foster a culture within the team of high-level trust & accountability Attract people in, and then help them learn how to be a team, by pressuring team leaders to train their members on norms for teams & technology
- By developing and growing my self-awareness level, I become more and more conscious of my feelings. So, I was aware when I was working lately on a project with a peer in the US office, and although we were collaborating, deep inside I knew I wanted my work to shine. When I reflected why I had these feelings, I realized it was because the effort put in the project was not equal and that I felt it was unfair not to have my effort recognized. I decided instead of competing, I will be giving my peer feedback that she should be having a bigger contribution.
- Cross-functional projects are key! I witnessed that firsthand when we did a hackathon and the team started to collaborate despite the difference in roles. The outcome was fantastic!
- I try to control it, or at least be aware of it, because it's inevitable. I have it towards my work experience, I might be biased towards what I tried before and was successful. I try to contain it by not jumping to the first viable idea there is and by questioning and observing.
- Through observing patterns of behavior, reactions, etc. Asking for feedback Consulting a non-biased person. Reflecting and questioning.
- By expecting different responses to our interview questions, but most of the time probing questions are contextual and cannot be tailored before every interview, they go as the conversation takes us.
- To give them a chance to better express themselves, amid all the interview stress and anxiety. To remove any vagueness around the answer and get a clear evaluation of the character. To make sure of the accuracy of the response, and not just settle to high-level answer. Sometimes contradictions are discovered when being probed.
- I try to avoid WHY questions because they trigger defensiveness. I try to focus more on the HOW. For example "You mentioned that..., how do you make sure that happens?". I also like to always use examples from real-life experience to show what they mean, so my favorite is always "can you give me an example of a time you did...."
- They are different parts of the same process of trying to come up with ideas. Divergent thinking is going out and exploring ideas. Convergent is about taking the ideas, reflecting on them and improving them.
- I would do a brainstorming session with the team who created the designs and ask them to come up with new ideas if they were to recreate the line from scratch. I then would gather the feedback costumers gave and sort it to categories, then share it with my design team to reflect on it; what do I want to keep and what I'm planning to skip according to many factors (budget for instance), and try to find an intersection point between the feedback, new ideas and already created designs.
- Yes! Whenever we face a challenge, a new situation, we try to avoid habituation and do a brainstorming session to think of a new approach. We try to ask reflective questions like "why do we want to change this?" or "why did we originally do this?". After brainstorming, we follow up with a reflective quick sync up to find what's next as action items.
- There's a morale problem because of layoffs and COVID at our company. I think if we present a specific problem statement to the team and ask them to come up with ideas to increase their own morale, it would be beneficial. One thing we need to highlight is that they cannot judge each others' ideas at this phase, to try to apply divergent thinking.