Naji Gehchan: Welcome to Spread Love and Organizations, the healthcare leadership podcast where we explore leadership with purpose. I’m Najee, your host, joined today by Diana Haidar, Director of Direct Sales at NASCO Insurance Group. Diana has been a key part of the NASCO Insurance Group for 20 years, starting in third party administration and then moving into the direct broker business.
She now covers Middle East direct portfolio, including medical, general, and life insurance. Diana started her career as a certified psychotherapist. Then worked at a mountain hospital with children with special needs. She holds also a master’s degree in hospital and health management from OSCP and ESAR.
With 20 years of hands on experience in the medical field as a professional, as well as an insurance industry, Diana has been involved in various aspects of the business, from operations and sales to planning and growth. For over two decades, Diana has been empowering teams, encouraging fresh perspectives, and finding new ways for NASSCO Middle East to grow in the world of direct saves.
She’s a leader dedicated to making a lasting impact on the insurance industry. Diana, it’s so amazing to see you again after so many years and have you with me today. Yeah. Thank you, Naji. Really, it’s really amazing to see you too. We’re not gonna say for how many years, because let us keep our ages.
Diana Haydar: It will age us, yeah. Yeah. But a lot of years so far. And I still remember Naji from school days. From literally all the ups and downs and growing up, the teenager’s time, all these times that you spend together. I’m really happy and proud of what you are also Najee now, to be honest.
This is something that makes me proud a lot. Yeah same here, Diana. And really, my first question to you was, let’s catch up, let’s catch up on your journey from our school days, as you said, very early on in Lebanon to, then you did physiotherapy, and now you’re one of the known leaders in the insurance industry in the Middle East.
So can you share a little bit more your personal story with us? Yeah, sure. Naji, I grew up in a family, in a very modest family in Lebanon, Where my dad was in the army, in the Lebanese army. My mom was a housewife and we are four sisters. We are four sisters with very close ages. So we are really too close as you can imagine a house with four girls, how it looks like.
So growing up was extremely amazing. We have beautiful childhood memories. We have teenage memories, which are really amazing. We are so close to each other. Thank God. This is something this is a blessing that we still enjoy it till now, despite that we everyone is in different country. I have two sisters in the US, one sister in Lebanon, and I’m here in Dubai.
But despite all the distances, we are too close. And this is really what marks my childhood the most Najee. So we were at the same school. You and me at the same class, maybe for 14, 15 years, next to each other. So the school memories are the best memories that I have. We really enjoyed our time a lot.
And I think That our future started from school time because we were lucky to have a school where we had freedom of speech. If you remember very well, Naji, we used to do this political debate sociology, economy talking about the war, growing up during wartime. So we had a lot to talk about and which made made us a little bit older than our age comparing to to other schools where they didn’t have the chance to have these conversations with their teachers and with their superiors.
So it started from there. The leadership started from there being delegated the class representing the class. Many times you and me together. Also, actually, many times we were elected by our colleagues at school. So basically, my childhood was a very good childhood at home at school. The only terrible memories I have are the war times which we had to suffer from moving from a country, from a region to another, running away from where they are bombing now.
Are they bombing Beirut or or outside Beirut? So it was really it was really something that I can never forget. And having to struggle with, as I told you, Naji, my dad was a soldier in the Lebanese army. And at a particular time they were they were like attacked by other militia.
By other countries. There was like the civil war and then the war against our country neighbors and the Lebanese army were really attacked so many times. He had to hide at home. My mom had to clean his clothes and put them to, to dry inside house because nobody from the neighbor should know that my dad is here.
So that they don’t attack our house. So we have, I have this black side of my childhood. However, it taught me a lot, Najee. It taught me resilience. It taught me finding solutions. to any problem that we might encounter in life. It taught me all the family bonding that we have.
And the neighbors also, we were all on one heart. We were all hiding together in the same shelters. And so this war, wartime, it really marked my childhood also. We learned from it. We learned from it, especially that we don’t want it to happen again. So this is the childhood. I’ll move a little bit to my university university past.
So I started, as you said, as a physiotherapist in the Lebanese university, which is the national university in Lebanon. And I was lucky to to work at many at many areas, especially with the kids, with the children having special needs, with special needs, so that you meet these this segment of the population who are in need of, who are dependent who struggle, especially in Lebanon, at a country where it’s not really equipped.
For with people with determination, people with needs. So you have to, you feel with the parents, you feel with the children with the entire medical system, how much it’s, it doesn’t support these these diseases. They have to beg to do some surgeries for their kids because insurance companies do not cover congenital cases.
They have to go and get get help from the ministry of health. And the Ministry of Health in Lebanon is really is really politicized, if we can say it. So depending on from which religion you are, you might get help or not. So this is like the struggle that we used to have. And then I started to feel that I enjoyed the therapy.
To be honest with you, Naji, I worked as an establishment and as a freelancer for around from 2003 till 2011. But meanwhile I spotted in my character that I can be a leader. I can be more than a physiotherapist with my patient and one single and one single cell or cabinet. So I discovered some skills, which I didn’t know that I have.
And this is during my, my my career life. And this is where I was also hired as a consultant for physiotherapy and NASCO group. So NASCO at that time, we had the split with with an existing TPA, a third party administrator. Let me just explain what is a third party administrator. So we manage the the the insurance company’s entire cycle.
The insurance company, they sell the policy, the medical policy, and they pay the claims. The entire approvals customer service the contract with the healthcare providers, the claims processing, all these, the reconciliation, financial reconciliation are done by a TPA. So this was my area of expertise.
I started as a simple consultant for physiotherapy guidelines, So how many sessions to cover this? How many sessions to cover? What are the guidelines? And then I liked this job. I I got involved in in NASCO group for this role. And I did my MBA meanwhile, in the ESA, in Ecole Supérieure des Affaires, in hospital and health management, as you mentioned in the introduction.
And I started from there. And I started growing and and like getting promoted inside inside NASCO, and I’ve been with them for the past 20 years. So everyone now will guess the age, but it’s fine. And yeah, and now I’m I moved to Dubai three years and a half ago. I moved to Dubai when after the Beirut blast, There were so many signs.
There was the collapse the economical crisis, all the crisis, all this stuff. So there was there were so many signs talking in my head that Jana, you should leave. I have three kids, Najeeb. And I wanted so bad for them to be a little bit less afraid. Then I was when I was a kid, so the memory of the Beirut blast they heard it.
We were not in Beirut. We live far from Beirut. However, we heard it. My husband was in Beirut. We lost contact with him for about two hours, so it was horrible. This period was horrible to us. So and then there was, the revolution and before that in 2019, and which also we had to struggle a lot to reach work to all this stuff, but it was really horrible.
So I got this opportunity in the UAE and Dubai and I came here. I started. Literally from scratch. Picking a new house, all this picking new school for the kids meeting new friends starting from scratch, even though I’m still, I was still in Nasco. I was transferred from Beirut to Dubai.
However, you have to build. To to prove yourself in this new environment, and I can tell you, Naji, the environment in Dubai is the, is there’s a huge difference between the environment, especially the work environment in Dubai than in Lebanon. And I started, and thank God, now three years and a half have passed, and I feel that I’m, I’ve been here since forever, and I like it.
where I am. I’m extremely happy with all the changes that I’ve done in life. It only evolved me to the, it only took me to a better place for me and my family and my kids. So this is a small brief, not sure if it’s too small. Thanks, Diana for sharing. Obviously, a lot of what you said touches, goes to home.
I want to, before I ask you about Dubai, because I’m interested in what are the differences, as you said, really like leading cross countries, because I’m sure you are leading also a team across the region. So I’d love to go there. And for you being a woman in leadership, I’m really interested to dig in there.
But just before that, if we go back, you talked about school, you reminded me about the debates, the healthy debates we had, the revolutions we did sometimes. So what did you take from, from school, from your years in Lebanon with the childhood and war, really from a leadership standpoint, did you reflect about who you are today as a leader?
And what brought you to who you are today from what we lived before? Of course, Naji. I believe I am what I am now because of this period that we that we had in that we had in Lebanon and the school time and the war time. So you’re referring to school and war time, no? Okay. So it taught us a lot, Naji.
If you remember very well, we used to be at the classroom when they start when the bombs start falling. So they took us all in the bus, go back home or they call their parents, our parents to pick us home. So imagine you are a kid, nine, 10 years old, and then your life is at risk, your parents coming to pick you up.
Their life is at risk. Your siblings and other classes where you don’t know if they are afraid or not. All these it’s, it, it made us stronger. It made us stronger. It made us more agile in our corporate world now because change can happen like this. Everything is okay. You don’t know what’s going on.
Then suddenly you have something, a major thing happening around you, which you’re not involved in, but it is happening. So you have to act fast. You have to think fast. And most importantly, Naji, is the tomorrow. We used to go to home and we did, we do our homework because tomorrow we might be going back to school.
It’s not that the word stops. So I’m not sure if you also, my parents used to be extremely strict at that point, is that if today there are bombs, Tomorrow there are no bombs. You’re going back to school and you’re going to focus on whatever the teacher is telling you. So this split between the fear and focusing on your future is what we apply on every single day in our corporate life.
Because everything is moving. Look at the pandemic. Look now what’s going on in the Middle East. And I work in the Middle East. And then suddenly you have to shift this is going on. However, I need to go on also with my career with my objectives with my vision with leading my team with what’s going on.
What should be going on in my career. So this really made us what we are. So to double click on this, Gianna obviously you’re in an industry that is by itself transforming we’ve been hearing it for a decade at least now, and for sure tomorrow will be even more change and you’re in a region, as you just said, In custom turmoil and challenges.
So how are you applying those leadership skills that you just shared with us? And I love how you framed it. I’ve never thought about it that way, but I certainly lived exactly the same as you did, like dealing with the unexpected, but then immediately refocusing on tomorrow as if tomorrow will just be normal again, regardless, right?
And you have to go through it and doing your homework, right? I think this discipline of you have to do whatever you need to do, regardless of if tomorrow would exist. So how are you transmitting this Largely to your team now, and several of them did not live this right. I’ll you, I’ll give you a small example.
Before I came here I moved here to Dubai in 2021. So in 2019 there was the revolution in Lebanon, the civil revolution. And it was, it was a big thing back then. So half of the population was like participating to these riots. And I live, as I told you, I don’t live in Beirut. I live a little bit far from Beirut.
So they used to close the roads. With with how do we call it? Tires, like flaming tires. So I have three how do we call it? Obstacles of flaming tires on my way to work. It’s, if it’s, there’s at J’ita, there’s at Dawra, and there’s at Jisr al Watin. So I have to pass only because I live in J’ita and Zouk Mosbih, mainly.
And I have a team and we work in medical insurance. where people will not stop falling sick. People will not stop needing for for their medication, whether chronic or acute medication. People has have planned surgeries. You have all these stuff. And I used to handle the portfolio, a very big portfolio for best assistance.
So I had a thousands of members, which I need to take care of about. their, about their experience, their claims, their complaints, all this was part of my job. And I had a team of four, four people, and we all live outside Beirut. So every day, because they close the road at 5 a. m. Imagine they start closing and putting fire to these tires at 5 a.
m. And personally, not only because whether you are supporting the revolution or the riots or not, in my perspective of life, nothing should stop you from doing your job. I cannot make excuses that they are closing the road, the roads, they’re blocking the roads. I have to be there and so is my team.
So I used to wake up at 4 a. m. and it was the entire time of the revolution at 4 a. m. get dressed kiss my kids goodbye and my husband and go to work before they close the roads. And so is my team. And I had to do this you So that they also have the courage to do it also on their own and to come to the office because in our job, we cannot work remotely, especially with the internet condition in Lebanon, and there was not also the pandemic was not there when the revolution starts started.
So no one was really ready for a work from home environment. So I made sure. I didn’t skip one single day. We were there for our clients. We were there for everyone who needed us. Of course, we limited a little bit our moves because when they block the roads, you cannot go anywhere. We made sure to leave the office at also the exact time where they open a little bit the roads for people to go back home and then we reached we and we reach our home safe and we look at the tomorrow.
What time we’re gonna move. Would it be worse? Would it be good? So this is a small example. Where nothing stopped us where I have to to be the strongest. I have to look the strongest. I have to behave like I’m the bravest. Although I cannot tell you, Naji, that I wasn’t scared. There was a time where I moved a little bit late from home, and they blocked the road in front of me at Zouk Mosbih.
And khalas, there was fire everywhere. So I had to go from the mountains and Abu Mizan area, if going from Layat, Bikfaya, and going down like one, one, one hour and a half just to to skip all this in the mountains and then go to work. And I was extremely scared. Because I don’t know the roads.
I’m alone. I’m a woman. The security and safety at that time work like you can forget about them in Lebanon. So and but I made it I made sure to make it every single day for my team. And then I knew that if anything happens to me. The team will do the same with or without me. They will never skip a day.
They will never stop serving the people that they are supposed to do to serve. And this was for me and I believe for them, a huge lesson and resilience. and staying positive and on knowing your responsibilities, Najeeb. Yeah. And you’re touching something super powerful that, we talk a lot about, it’s this huge, true care for one another.
You said something powerful, like they would be here for me. They would be here for, Each other and they would never skip a day for again, because you’re the purpose also that you’re driving is you said something super powerful. Nothing can stop you from doing your job and I would add like because you see your job and it’s true, super important for patients who need it and they need you.
So you were here for them and your team was working in the health care industry. It’s a huge responsibility and an insurance particularly. At that time and the country like Lebanon is not something that that it’s easy. The insurance, the health, the access to health care is not something for granted in Lebanon.
They pay a lot for their insurance or their private insurance because the, like the national insurance, the ministry of health, no need to tell you how they work. So they pay a lot. For their medical care, they have the right to get the right access to this. So since you opened this, I had this question in mind because usually insurance in Middle East plus globally, I can tell you here in the US, it’s the same and Europe is the same.
They don’t have this. Very positive, let’s say, image on truly helping people getting access but rather, and I’m in an industry, as I’m in biotech, biopharma, where it’s also like the image outside can be different from, leaders like you doing what you do on a daily basis to get people access to medications and healthcare.
So can you speak a little bit about this and what you’ve done? Because obviously as you shared your story, everything was driven to make sure that patients get their treatment and you lived with with really, not full justice or fairness towards who can get treated. You talked about the kids you help who were not covered by the government.
So what is your perspective now that you’re a leader in this industry, in the insurance industry and how you make sure that access is equitable for patients? Actually, this is a very sad, ugly truth that we live in. So if the access to healthcare are splitted between Lebanon and the UAE okay.
In Lebanon, the access to healthcare, it’s it’s sitan looks. It’s something that not everyone can afford. It’s luxury. Yeah. It’s luxury. It’s non-regulated. It’s you can insurance companies can just put limits and exclusions on any disease. You have a cardiac disease story.
They can just put some limits unless you fulfill some some obligations having all this stuff. This is in the private insurance in the public sector. You have, unfortunately, Nagy, these are the statistics like three years ago. You have only 28 percent of the Lebanese population, they have private insurance.
All the other, all the remaining people, they fall under the public sector, which is broke, which is, it doesn’t even exist. The infrastructure is not even there. So the government, the governmental hospitals are somewhere where you run from, you run away from them, you don’t trust them because the employees at governmental hospitals are not there.
Our governmental employees. I don’t want to go through these politics. But unfortunately, the corruption in Lebanon because of the corruption, we lost all trust in anything that is related to the public sector to the government, including the public scheme, the healthcare scheme, including the governmental hospitals, including all these, all the entire healthcare system.
So you have this 80 sorry, 78% of the population without any insurance. Okay. Having to back at the Ministry of Health. To get their health care to have to get their procedures done. And this is was also part of a project which I worked on in 2016. I’m gonna tell you about it later on. It was a beautiful project that it’s one of the success stories that we made.
It was when the Ministry of Health did some privatization on the health care management, and they outsourced with TPS with third party administrators, but it was only for a period of four years. And we did a lot. Unfortunately, then they don’t have the budget. They don’t want to do it again. So they went back to the to the old to the old public man.
So you have all the the people that are not insured with the private insurance are all left. Alone, left alone, you have somebody who has who has a heart disease. If they have a heart attack, they go to a hospital. They would not admit them unless they put a huge amount of money as a deposit.
They will refuse to treat them. So imagine the, this, the struggle, the amount of struggle that people have in Lebanon for this. Moving from Lebanon to UAE, UAE is much more how do we call it? Regularized, excuse my English, Najee, sometimes. It’s regulated, yeah. It’s regularized.
You have the medical insurance is mandatory by law. In the UAE, it is mandatory. No one is entitled to stay in UAE unless they have medical insurance. They will not even issue your visa, your residency visa, unless you have a medical insurance. So this is a major change that I saw here. And plus, in UAE, they don’t have the right to exclude diseases.
to put limitations to to, to all this, like the struggle that we have in Lebanon. However, due to the difference and the and the purchase power and the UAE insurance is extremely expensive. And I was going to ask you like people, so you have to have it, but you should be able to afford it.
Exactly. So you have to be extremely at a certain wealth to be able to afford good insurance. Yeah. However, there are some basic products done by the government, which are okay. At least you don’t die at the doors of hospitals, even though they take care of you, depending on your policy, which is a little bit normal, but at least here in the UAE, you know that you can be taken care of.
In case you are in and this was an extreme relaxed mindset that I had when I moved here and I was extremely happy that I live now in such country. Yeah. So it’s interesting because obviously healthcare systems are pretty broken all over the globe. Like I’ve been in Europe as now in the U S so there is what you’re saying is true.
There are, there is this limit of. At least people in urgent need are covered for their health care. But still, unfortunately, we see it in every single country. And in the U. S., I’m sure you’ve seen all those debates about people not being able to afford health care. Because of as you said it’s either so social economics, it can also be because of diversity, certain minority groups.
So it’s certainly something that we we need leaders like you to keep on working and making sure that healthcare is is a human right as it is, but unfortunately it’s not applied that way. Yeah, exactly. If you, if we go back to my very first question I wanted to talk about, which is leadership in different countries and being a woman in leadership in the Middle East.
Can you share with us a little bit your learnings along the way? Yeah. Actually, I’m lucky that I work at NASCO, to be honest, where they really value women at all positions. I cannot tell you it was an easy journey. Because being a woman in the Middle East and the Arab countries, you are always labeled as fragile, you are labeled as dependent, you are labeled as being emotional at not being able to to, to think objectively, et cetera, you are labeled.
Whereas, now actually, I can tell you, not because I’m a woman, the hardest decisions, That are made and decisions. I want to split between decision making and execution. I can only see in my surrounding. I’m sure there are lots of leaders, men who are extremely amazing. But from what I see around me, the decision making and the execution, when it’s a woman leading these two areas, it is certainly a successful result.
Because we want to prove that we can, when men don’t feel that they need to prove it. It’s already for granted. He’s a man, he can do it. Whereas and they fall in this trap, because they take their work for granted sometimes. They don’t. They are not. I don’t want to say decision makers, but you know the confrontation between men and men, the frictions that happen in the corporate world whenever it’s a woman versus man, it’s softer.
It reaches to a middle ground. So I see this a lot. And again, I’m proud that I’m at NASCO because this is this. This place gave me a lot of empowerment being a woman. However, it’s not an easy journey at all. Every single day in every single meeting, Naji. Of course, I’m not comfortable in my skin as my men colleagues.
Especially when I am the only woman in the room, especially when also I’m with a client. And when I’m with another executive, I need to make this huge first impression to be able to crack the preset mind. If I miss this first impression, I will, I might be labeled with the nonsense that I told you previously.
So it’s not an easy job. It is doable. Again, it is how much the woman is focused to prove it and she can do it and she can prove it. But she has to stay focused really Najee. We women, we cannot take our jobs for granted. Unfortunately, like you guys, we need to fight harder. But again, fighting harder is also getting where we want and giving results more than anyone else.
And I certainly agree when you say about decision and execution and that you do it, we see it all over the world. Women leading get to better outcomes. And there is something I’ve also learned by moving to different countries. It’s what you’re saying can also apply to. To to minority groups, if you’re the only different person in a situation, it immediately becomes you want to prove that you can, right?
I love how you framed it because it’s You try harder. You try harder. You try harder. Yeah. Yeah. Which, which sometimes is, it feels unfortunate and unfair, right? Totally. Like why would we get all those assumptions as you said, why do women have to prove, over prove themselves to to get what, where they want, but you’re bringing the other side of it, which is actually, you will prove that you can and you’re doing it.
I want to move now to a section where I’m going to give you a word and I would love your first reaction to it. So the first word is leadership, heart and mind. Oh, tell me more. Two words. So this is something that I read recently. I had some leadership course with a great professor and he, he used to describe Leadership is winning the heart and mind of your team.
So anyone can be a manager, Najee. Anyone can calculate your KPIs. Anyone can make the job done, make the task done. Anyone can monitor your presence at the office. But not anyone can mobilize you to be a better person to look at the same vision to have a strategic mind. Mindset unless it’s a real leader.
So if you don’t win their heart and mind. With your empathy, with your humility, with your leading by example, with all this stuff, in my opinion you are, you will never be a leader. You are, you were never, and you will never be a leader. It’s not about having things done. Everyone can have things done.
It’s about it’s about looking at your team, talking to your team as if you’re talking to yourself, feeling for them as if you’re feeling for yourself.
What about insurance? Security.
So can you share a little bit more, especially how you, because security is very interesting and I’d love to get your thoughts about the future of insurances in the next decade. So imagine Najee, you are now you are now sitting in your room and your child is playing with the ball at the garden and then he falls.
Or she falls and they break their leg. Okay? You don’t you don’t know what to do, okay? You have the medical part, which, where should I go? Which doctor, which facility plus will I be able to afford if a surgery is needed? What if they need this? What if they need this? Having an insurance, I’m not, I’m only talking about medical, but I also manage all the other lines, but this is maybe the most like personalized example.
So imagine all of these, whenever you have a medical insurance, you don’t think of all of these, Najee, you just put your kid in the car, go to the hospital, which you have access luckily with your insurance card. You don’t have to worry about all the logistics. Somebody else is paying the bill. Somebody else is checking the eligibility.
Somebody else is doing the medical due diligence etc. You only, you are only taking care of your kids. Emotions and the trauma that they had, and you don’t have to worry about anything at all. This it was a lot. It was a lot because look at the countries where they don’t have this luxury. Somebody falls sick, they might think 100 times before they take them to a doctor because they cannot afford, they might take them to low level doctors or hospitals or whatever, because they cannot afford an average.
Medical facility. It’s not within their insurance cover, or they don’t have access to it for some reason. So they have ipso facto, they have a low level of health care. And this will this might mark all their entire life know how many people die because of lack of health care access.
Whether not being accepted at the emergency hospital, whether being treated by Medjugorj medical facilities or doctors, because this is the only way they can afford medical medical health care. Being late at their treatment, for example, in Lebanon now, Naji, I’m sure that cancer drugs are not imported anymore to Lebanon.
There is a shortage in cancer drugs. You know how many people in Lebanon are dying because they are not having their chemotherapy? I have one relative, two relatives actually, who are suffering. One of them died because there was no treatment. She was out of chemotherapy for more than six months. There’s no, because she’s not insured under a private insurance.
She has she has to go to the public insurance where they tell her, sorry, the government is broke. We’re not getting, we’re not getting any aid from anywhere. So imagine, so whenever you are insured, all this stuff you don’t have to worry about. And this is vital. This is not a luxury. This is vital.
So But would Jana, would the affordability of insurance become something where it is vital and accessible? Do you think we will be in a future where people can afford it? Honestly, they cannot all afford the same level of health care. We are not in like socialist regimes here in the Middle East or in the Arab world.
And which, in my opinion, it’s not something really bad. Because to have a good medical insurance, you have to be successful in your life. Which also, it might be tough a little bit, Najeeb, but people who invest on them, on themselves. at school, at university, at work, work hard, it will pay off. They will be able to afford whatever they want.
I’m not saying that everyone had the chance for this, but whenever you had the chance and you work on yourself, you can afford. Unfortunately for the people who didn’t even have the chance, the people like living in a war zone or in a very poor area, They will not have the chance to get proper education and then get high positions in, in, in in their work life and then get good insurance.
But the minimum, the bare minimum can be accessible for people as long as governments are regulated and not corrupted. Na. Yeah, and you’re bringing like that. That’s a whole different story. We can talk about trying to bringing the two visions of the word, right? And what a place like more in the U.
S. is actually very similar to this where you work, you succeed, you get what you want. It’s a capitalistic view of things. So those who can’t afford it would be considered the lazy ones versus those who work hard. And then there’s another view of work, which is more some parts of Europe where actually it’s not lazy, it’s just bad luck and the society has to take care of you as a human.
It is a big debate. But it’s. It’s one, I think we can go into in another podcast, but the third word I want to give you is Antoinette, yeah Antoinette everything that is beautiful in life. at school. Najee, you cannot know how much I owe this establishment.
You don’t know how much they, I have done great friends such as yourself and all the other friends that I have. The personality that we had, you remember Najee, one time we did a revolution because there was one student who didn’t pay his tuition. Oh, I don’t remember. You remember very well. So all these movements that we did at school, all the culture that we have.
I still remember, if you remember The teacher, the talks that we had about World War Two, about all the political regimes with Mr. Malham Nassar, teaching us what is Marx, although he was an Arabic teacher. We used to debate about communism, about Marxism, about socialism, about all this stuff.
I, I am so grateful to this period of time and which I I envy the students there now. I hope it has the same culture now. I don’t know, honestly, I’m too far from it now. I hope it still has the same culture. Yeah. So for everyone, Antonia is obviously our school where we went to the first 15 years of our lives.
Yeah. Yeah. And certainly, you’re bringing something that is so true that I feel I try at least to replicate along the way is having those healthy debates, right? You can have different views and we were a mix of different cultures, religions, backgrounds, but you can still open up and debate them respectfully while understanding others view.
If you remember Najee, we were few, like few schools had this diversity of religion and cultures. So we were really lucky because we had these debates. As I see some other, like my friends who used to be in a more closed school communities. They didn’t know there’s the other person, the other side of the religions of the cultures.
They didn’t know until they were, they, they were at work and their work life. We were lucky that we had this experience when we were too young. Yeah. Yeah, certainly. And again, like that’s a full topic, but it certainly helped you take out what unfortunately these days a lot of leaders are trying to do is putting fear in our heads about the other.
And if you really don’t know the other, the fear bubble up. But when you sit with them, play with them, you realize that as human beings, we’re all similar. You think they are all your enemies until you, you see their point of views. Yeah. Yeah. The last one is spread love and organizations is sorry, spread love and organizations.
A must, the word that I would think of is it’s a must. The corporate world is such an evil world Naji, unfortunately you have, I am sure that you know that very well. It’s the selflessness. that it’s not there anymore. It’s the selfishness. So everyone wants to reach their goals by crashing the others, by labeling the others, by ruining the reputations of others, by whatever.
So this teamwork, this spirit, the love, the culture, I’m not sure it’s there. enough anymore, unfortunately. But you are here, we are here, and there’s more than 150 leaders I interviewed who certainly are spreading it and trying hard to do it. Any final word of wisdom, Diana, for leaders around the world?
It’s not for the leaders. Actually, I’ll start with the people who haven’t discovered yet that they are leaders. So I would say this if my team is listening to me now or my old team in Lebanon is listening to me now. You all guys can be leaders. It’s just believe in yourself and be yourself because this is the most important bit.
Most important advantage that you have. It’s only be yourself and you can make it. This is for my team now and for the leaders across the world. This is a song like a cliche, which is nothing lasts forever. You will not be sitting in the same chair. You will not be sitting in the same position.
People will remember you for the good impressions that you made. And this is this comes with leadership. It’s not an easy statement, Naji, because we all struggle with stuff, with mental issues. The conflicts, the trauma that we have from our childhood. But, and we, unconsciously, we spread them on our team.
We might be tough, we might be non empathic, we might be, all this stuff. Guys Again, nothing lasts forever. Just keep this good impression while you’re here on Earth so that people will remember you. Now, my first boss, actually, this is a side story, he is my mentor. He used to be my mentor.
It’s been a long time I haven’t spoken to him. So Also, he marked a lot my leadership style because he used to be a great leader. So what I try to do also now is to have the same print on the team that I need. I wish that they will remember me the way I remember my first boss. I’m sure they will.
And what an amazing way to finish this conversation. Jenna, thank you so much for being with me today and sharing all those stories. Thank you so much, Nadia. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Spread Love in Organizations podcast. Subscribe at spreadloveio. com or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Together, let’s inspire change and make a positive impact in healthcare, one story at a time. Thank you.
Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to SpreadLove in Organizations podcast. Drop us a review on your preferred podcast platform
Follow us on LinkedIn and connect with us on spreadloveio.com. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and feedback. Most importantly, spread love in your organizations and spread the word around you to inspire others and amplify this movement, our world so desperately needs