Damien debriefs what he has been doing for his MBA. He has been staying up late until 2am to do readings for Social Responsibility and Ethics that are on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This includes a case study reading for the afternoon. He has been continuing to work on the Leadership Syndicate assignment.

Damien was only able to do a 30 minute gym workout this morning. For work Damien has been having meetings with clients, both Indigenous businesses and corporates wanting to procure from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses, especially some second and third tier corporates supplying into projects.

He talks about companies with good Corporate Social Responsibility and ethical investment. As a Melbourne Business School student he also gets free membership to the Lincoln Square Fitness gym.

Damien talks about how is endeavouring to organise and create a routine around his study, work and personal life. This includes going to the gym, preparing healthy meals for the week for lunch and dinner for work and going to classes, and his work attending meetings with Indigenous businesses and corporate partners.

Damien is a Relationship Manager working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses for their business development as well as working with Corporates who want to procure from Indigenous businesses to meet their Social Procurement requirements with Victorian State Government targets. Finishing work at 5pm he then goes straight to work to have his prepared dinner and then start study on Social Responsibility and Ethics at 6pm, quoting from Socrates. Finishing at 10pm he goes home to continue study at home until 11:30pm when he prepares his lunch for the next day and be in bed by 12am.

Damien discusses his day doing class exercises and activities including a group activity involving dropping an egg to learn about group dynamics and personality traits, role palying exercises around conflict management and negotiation role plays. Damien uses the days activities to self reflect upon his own traits as someone who is likeable and is agreeable with others. He reflects on how being agreeable and not wanting to enter into conflict can be seen as not having an opinion or to be perceived as agreeing to things he doesn’t beleive in. He reflects he does need to speak up as it is more important to be seen as ‘fair’ then it is to be liked.

Damien does a recap of his day, discussing personality traits as Briggs Myer, assessing our own personality traits, both the pros and cons of these traits. He talks about his mindfulness and meditation and his learning about himself as an extravert and relationships with introverts. He touches on the group activity about what is leadership, the difference between extroverts and intraverts, leading by example as a follower and can you question the objective. He talks about his contribution to the syndicate assignment on self awareness of personal traits. Readings were around emotional intelligence, intraverts and extraverts. The benefits of intravert leaders with extrovert followers, the effect a leaders mood has and how it can be transferred to the team and affect productivity. The succesfulness of leaders being able to win over hearts before minds.

Damien discusses how he felt for his first day at the Melbourne Busienss School for his first class. He talks about the issues with Canvas and how this affected himself and other students. He talks about the orientation for the first part of the day. He talks about the demographic of the students undertaking the part time MBA in this terms intake, including age, place of birth, undergraduate field of study and who had children. He talks about the importance of Self, Family and Friends, Community and Work and his expectations of these on his commitment to them while doing the MBA. He talks about the first class on Leadership. Damien refers to the need to do debrief notes after the class for reinforcing study and knowledge. He also provides a summary of his reading of the article “How to be a better leader”.

Damien talks about his study in leadership and discusses an article by Deloitte on the transition to the”Networking of Teams” model away from the heirarchial functional model. He also talks about personality types of the Big 5. He also talks about his day at work talking with corporates wanting to procure from Indigenous business and talking to someone wanting to start an Indigenous business.

Damien discusses the pressure of only being able to login today to the Melbourne Business School’s Canvas learning management system. This has placed him already behind in his readings, not including the other pre-course work required before the start of classes Friday morning on the 13 September. He talks about the article by Marnie Vinall on “Privilege is the hidden ingredient for success that we don’t talk about enough”. The lack of gender diversity in ASX 200 boards, the position of power a multinational company has in negotiations with a small Indigenous business, the figurative and literal significance of being ‘hungry’ to succeed as expressed by Gary Vaynerchuk. Damien talks about the great meeting he had in the afternoon with an Indigenous business around their sales, pricing and marketing.

Damien discusses the issues of trying to log onto Canvas, the learning management system used by Melbourne Business School, he needs to access his reading material only 2 days out from starting the class. He talks about his day and starting his first day at his new job where he spoke with corporates from procurement and worked with an Indigenous business looking to establish a partnership with another company. He has started listening to the audio book “Crushing It” by Gary Vaynerchuk.

Damien talks about his day, what he has learnt and where he has learnt it. From listening to an audio book by Robert Kiyosaki while in the gym, to doing an online course, working in his own business, finding information from mentors and watching the movie “The Big Short”. He considers his options of a a career or being an entrepreneur, the benefits of working in an international organisation for the overseas experience with the possible bureaucracy but with the benefits or working for a small organisation without the benefits but having the autonomy to deliver value for the business and its customers or clients by value adding to the product or services. He also mentions his learning about volunteering and giving back to the community. Damien also mentions his starting a new job working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander / Indigenous businesses.

Damien catches up with a friend for coffee and discusses the importance of scheduling time with family and friends outside of work and study. The importance of talking with your partner about your time commitment to study and how that will work. This leads into time management for everyday activities as gym, groceries, cleaning, cooking etc.