Young Leaders Workshop by Dr Dimitriadis in Skopje

Another successful Young Leaders Workshop was delivered by Dr. Dimitriadis – in Skopje this time – with more than 60 high school students participating to gain leadership knowledge and skills and also have the opportunity to obtain a scholarship for our programmes. The 3-hour workshop took place on the 8^th of May at the TCC Grand Plaza Hotel.

The Young Leaders Workshop was led by Dr. Nikolaos Dimitriadis, lecturer at the Business, Administration and Economics Department and Director of the Educational Development Institute (EDI). In the interactive workshop Dr Dimitriadis awakened participants’ creativity, motivated them to express their leadership skills and to learn how to grow into professionals managing an effective team.  At the end participating students were asked to write an essay on a leadership-related subject. The best essays will win partial scholarships for one of our bachelors programmes offered at our main campus in Thessaloniki. All students received the Workshop Certificate.

“The older view of leadership is that some people were born leaders and some people were not, so either you are born a leader and you had all this charisma or you cannot make it in life. Now we know that this is not the case - everybody can be a charismatic leader and everybody can influence and transfer this passion to other people for what to do. So, it seems that everybody can do it, we have to find a way to release this energy and this potential and in order to do so, especially with young people, and we need to give them space. Young people, and especially this new generation, they have all the information they need, they are born and raised online, so they are very familiar with the searching the things they need and find them very fast. So, the role of us trying to develop new leaders, is not to teach them how to become leaders, it’s not to give them the knowledge or the energy - they have the energy and they can find the knowledge, but what we need to do is to prove them the space to naturally bring out the leadership skills, so we’re talking more about mentorship or even coaching, rather than teaching them to become leaders and push them. So, we need to speak their language, we need to show them what is possible and we have to give them the space and the confidence they need in order to become leaders.” - stated Dr. Dimitriadis.

This was the first time for the ‘Young Leaders Workshop’ to be delivered in Skopje offering a unique learning opportunity to students who also have the opportunity to get to know more about one of the top British universities, the University of Sheffield, and gain scholarships for the Bachelor’s programme of their choice.