Personal soft skills training with “Zheti Qadam” is excellent!

“Zheti Qadam” program, which I was able to enter only at the second attempt, has come to an end. And I have to say that my expectations from the program were more than justified: it was not only an informative course and theoretical ascent through seven stages of personal and professional growth, but also a practical movement upwards – towards my goals.   

Asset AMIRBEKOV, Head of Repair Service of CHPP-1 named after B.Orazbayev, Chairman of Youth Organisation “Zharkyn Bolashak” of AlES JSC.

Now I am in the top 50 young and ambitious employees of the Joint Stock Company “National Welfare Fund “Samruk-Kazyna” under the 7 Qadam program for the development of young leaders. And I am very grateful to the Samruk-Kazyna Fund for such a contribution to the development of our company’s personnel and my personal growth.

Under the program “Zheti Qadam” I took a course on the development of young leaders. The whole program consists of 7 modules on which we were trained in different cities of Kazakhstan. In particular, we underwent leadership trainings. We were taught how to develop leadership qualities in ourselves and become a leader. We learnt techniques of stress management, understanding and identifying the causes of stress. It is important for a manager, a leader to clearly realize that you are under stress, how much your productivity and the general climate of the team depends on it. That is why we were taught how to identify our state and how to get out of stress.

The top business coaches of Kazakhstan worked with us on the project. With them we analysed the strategy of our lives, the reasons, motives and actions that helped us to achieve our goals or, on the contrary, to fail. We learnt what strategy to develop in order to achieve our goals. We learnt how to speak publicly in front of a large audience, how to overcome our fear, to speak confidently and clearly. We gained a lot of emotional practice, got a lot of information, learnt the basics of self-analysis. All this, I am sure, will allow us not to fixate on ourselves personally in the future, but to learn about ourselves, noticing our strengths and weaknesses.

Another course was devoted to financial literacy. We were taught to manage our assets, including financial ones. After all, money loves counting, and the expression “not counting money” is akin to the word poverty.

Sabira Dautkulova, Senior Manager of the Human Resource Management Department of Samruk-Kazyna JSC and I developed our project and defended it. Our project was called “EcoPlast”. It was devoted to the problem of waste recycling for the production of paving tiles from ash and plastic. This idea came to us when we studied the energy market close to us. We initially wanted our project to be in favour of the ecosystem. This is not only a problem of Kazakhstan, but also of the whole world: it is no coincidence that nowadays the fight against industrial waste is being waged all over the planet, more and more companies, scientists and public activists are involved in this issue. And many foreign companies in the energy sector are increasingly moving to new technologies for secondary processing of industry waste, in particular, ash. Besides, in Kazakhstan there are already successful technological cases, which are devoted to the technologies of production of tiles from ash and plastic. In our project we also offered a real solution.

In general, the project “Zheti Qadam” has become a great experience for me personally to pump up my soft skills – personal qualities, behavioural patterns and interpersonal skills, the ability to communicate effectively and harmoniously with people. After all, to understand others, you need to understand yourself. That is what we did, having passed the programme “Zheti Qadam”.

These skills are extremely important for me, as I am already a line manager, and for me it is a big baggage of knowledge, which I already apply in my managerial decisions. After all, a leader is a person who takes a lot of responsibility, who knows how to support his team, motivate employees, who can drive his team to results and win. Behind a true leader people want to follow, develop together and reach new heights.

Upon completion of the training programme, I see that my knowledge has become more systematized. This opens up new horizons and prospects for personal growth. Both in my profession and in public life.

But our way of leaders from the team of top-50 of the Fund “Samruk-Kazyna” is just beginning… As they say, we were given only a fishing rod, which will feed us all our lives. This old wisdom that still works today: “Give a hungry man a fish and you feed him for one day. Give him a fishing rod, teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”.

At the end of the program, I can definitely say that my skills and knowledge have improved, but the further depends only on myself, on how I will use and apply it in my life. Now we are 50 young leaders of the “Samruk-Kazyna” Fund. These are realized, motivated people ready for changes, for the development of our companies. And it is very important, because the capital of human resource is difficult to overestimate.

Thank you to the organizers, trainers, Samruk-Kazyna Fund for the support, for the long and motivated way we have gone through the project “Zheti Qadam”. We have learnt ourselves, our capabilities, our potential, and we are ready for new achievements.