IATSS Forum

Sabaidee! Greeting from Vientiane, it is my great honor to be part of the 54th IATSS forum. I have been told by my friends who had previously joined IATSS of how much this program had changed their mind set and inspired them to become who they are today. I was about not to show up for the interview due to my job restriction and various reasons but finally I made up my mind and been through the interview. With all the question posed by the interviewers which had actually motivated me of how this program will help me improve myself and to contribute back to the society. As a young Manager here, I would expect to grow up professionally by participating in various seminars and activities, I am confident that I will learn especially from the experiences and lesson learned from the leading professors and eventually among participants. I am looking forward to attend and to contribute to the program with all my best. Lila Kad-oudom

Sabaidee IATSS family new member batch 55th, my name is Lila from Laos! Congratulation for your successful selection to be part of batch 55th IATSS Forum. When I first heard about IATSS forum and by reading their website I was thinking that I will studying about Leadership in a classroom where professors will provide information and theories on how to be a good leader. Thus, by attending the program, it was not at all like academic programme, with IATSS leadership programme, they will not teach you the theories or how to lead your team but to put us in a kind of platform which was perfectly arrange and set up by the IATSS team. We learned not from textbooks but from successful stories and experiences that eventually happened in Japan through visits and talks from people who have been through all process and have either survived or continuing following their goals as to sustain the community and to preserve their best practices and tradition. It is for us to set our own objectives of why we want to participate in this programme, we all need to prepare ourselves mentally and physically, the programme will be very tough depend on its tight schedule which IATSS team would like to provide us as much as possible the information and the knowledge in order for us to succeed in our own project implementation. We need to take our own initiative as a leader on how to manage time and identify our resources in order to achieve the objectives set. Through the process, we have learned that we all have our own ideas and with different background sometimes it leads us to conflicts when working in the group. The important is how we see our common objectives and how we could come out with the most appropriate solutions, always remind ourselves that we are there to learn and not to win or lose, the different ideas will be our biggest challenges but it is our choice whether we want to achieve the objective together which will take longer process and time or will just follow our own ideas where we can achieve faster but might or might not sustain. IATSS Forum had taught us a lot, we learned how to respect each other and to embrace the differences. It is fine to make mistake as long as we learned from it. From the first day when we felt like strangers to the last day where we departed with families and friends. I have gained a lot from IATSS and hope that you all will gain even more. Good luck and most of all have fun!