Helina Blogs

As I reflect on my career path, the constructive feedback received from my peers, learners, mentors and loved ones, and the personal and professional challenges I had to overcome, nothing summarizes my leadership style better than the famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt, known as the “Man in the Arena.”  "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."  When I first immigrated t...

An organization is only as good as its culture—and building that culture is not only a role for the human resources (HR) department, but it is also every leader’s responsibility. As a leader of an organization, you can help make your organization a more supportive and engaging place to work by understanding the psychological processes that impact the ways employees interact. It is important to first define organizational culture.    Do not confuse organizational culture with a company’s strategic goals, core values, mission, or vision. Culture is not merely about the press releases the company sends out explaining their positions on things. It is also not about benefits like casual dress codes, flexible working hours, and weekly happy hours.  Culture is core values plus leadership behavior . A culture is created through consistent and authentic behaviors by leadership. In other words, a culture is when the leaders take the core values off the wall and live them. Organiz...

You deliver more than anyone in the team, but it’s your well-connected colleague who wins over your difficult boss and gets the promotion. You work hard and are the brains behind a successful new innovation, but you find out your boss has taken credit for your work and feel defeated. You try to be a team player, but this one team member is always cozying up to the boss and sucking up all the oxygen in the room. You think that if you do better work it will be acknowledged, but it turns out that feeding your boss’s ego means more than any of your accomplishments. If any of this sounds familiar, you may be working for a narcissistic boss.   According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-V (DSM-V), a person with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) displays long-term signs of a grandiose sense of importance, a lack of empathy towards others, and a constant need to be admired and unique. When it comes to identifying someone with narcissism, the clinical...

  Bekhal, a Kurdish woman in her early twenties went missing from Zakho. Kurdi was a mentally disabled woman who lived on her own. She became pregnant after she was raped and that was when she went missing. Rumors circulated that her father had committed an honor killing to stop the shame she brought upon her family. Bekhal and her unfortunate situation lives with me to this day. It was not until two years ago, that I woke one morning with an epiphany, realizing how my whole life has been consumed by the destructive power of shame! Shame ruled me like a substance ruling the life of a person with substance use disorder.  Shame has made me lash out at my loved ones. I would go into hiding for fear of being exposed and the pain I would have to endure once exposed. Though I am a pharmacist, shame made me go to the extent of thinking and behaving irrationally to justify some of my missteps in life. Shame has caused me to be untrue to myself. Because of shame, I have learned to co...