Mr. Frank Xu, a guest facilitator guides a group of students from Tianjin University and Chonqing University through a group discussion.
January 31st, 2010 Guangzhou- Developing Leadership Day was held for the first time ever with a full-team of entrepreneurs at Guangzhou city, with 140 AIESEC student leaders from 20 top universities in Mainland China.
This is the first time that this event was conducted with start-up professionals as guest facilitators. The purpose of this initiative was to connect entrepreneurs with our student leaders to bring more external perspectives and helping them relate to AIESEC as a business.
This ˇ°first everˇ± guest facilitators team was made up 13 business founders including Mr. Parker Fairfield (Fusion Consulting), Mr. Alex Ho (IWODE), Mr. Brian Ho (CSR Asia), Mr. Dee Lee (Inno Community Development), Ms. Monita Mo (Ascend Capital Partners), Ms Laura Luo (boraid.com), Mr. Fritz Demopoulos (Qunar.com), Mr. Frank Xu, (AIL Consulting Limited), Mr. Fang Yi (Hangzhou Meiri Technologies), Mr. Leo Ku, (Best Food In China), Mr. Cui Weidong (GID Product Manual Inc.), Mr. Chen Zhigang (ECHOM) and Mr. David Zhu (IPROCHEM).
The theme of Developing Leadership Day this year was ˇ°Connecting to the Marketˇ±. The event was made up of two main parts, the first was a direct sales competition and the second was a business case competition.
For the direct sales competition, each team was given either a stock of environmental bags or portable chopsticks, and they were judged based on how much income they could generate within the given time. For the latter, the teams tried to pitch business services to their facilitators who acted as potential buyers or partners.
Each facilitator guided and observed a team of 8-14 people throughout these exercises, taking notes of their group discussions and behavior and helping each team reflect on their performance.
The event was concluded in the Golden City Hotel with each facilitator sharing their observations and advice to all 140 of the students. The students also took turns to express what they learnt throughout the day and thank their ˇ°mentorsˇ± and newfound friends.
Developing Leadership Day is an annual event hosted by AIESEC for student presidents that lead and manage the operations of AIESEC in their university communities. Each year, Developing Leadership Day connects AIESEC leaders with senior business professionals and enables them to strengthen their management skills and business understanding through hands-on practices as well as direct external interaction and experience sharing. |
