Informational Interview

Informational Interview Report Pr. Naziha Houki: Lecturer in Strategic Communication at AUI

Houda Touchen COM 2301: Professional Communication Supervised by: Dr. A. Agnaou Fall 2020

Table of contents: Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Background...................................................................................................................................... 1 Interview Script............................................................................................................................... 2 Lessons Learned..............................................................................................................................8 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 10 Appendices ......................................................................................................................................11

Introduction Given the fact that we live in a contemporary modern world, life and business opportunities increase day by day. The stock market may win a lot in a minute and lose a lot in the next one. Organizational companies may develop or fall off at any risk. Our world does not stop from moving; as same as us. When I was trying to build my life dreams that I want to attain, the first thing that constantly came up to my mind is communication. Therefore, my academic education is the first step that contributes to the achievement of my career plan. Then, I was exposed to professional communication perceptions, which are significant aspects of business communication processes. However, interviews may be a crucial part of understanding the real conception of professional communication and have a glimpse of my dream job, specifically intercultural interviews. Indeed, the main purpose of this multicultural interview is to acknowledge the nature of my dream job as a strategic communication academician and understand the real facet of that particular field. Moreover, it will allow me to start developing the required competencies in order to get a high position. Finally, this interview is a golden opportunity to get an overall insight about the multicultural global workplace and the efficacious method to approach it for success.

Background Frankly, when I was thinking about the person that should be my interviewee and who holds my dream job, I directly thought of Professor Naziha Houki. I am absolutely passionate about the communication part of media companies and any other organization that includes a conclusive communication team or teaching communication studies on a university level. As a result, Pr. Houki definitely matches the description. Actually, Pr. Houki is currently a lecturer in strategic communication at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane. She studied her bachelor degree 1

at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane majoring in communication studies. After 2 years of working in the advertisement agency Publicis Groupe as a communication executive, she applied for the Fulbright Scholarship, which is a US department and Moroccan government funded scholarship, that funded her full Master degree at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

During her Master years, Naziha had the graduate consultancy job that allowed her to get hired by clients and paid while she was still studying. After that, she came back to Morocco and worked as a product category manager for La Belle Vie Carrefour which is the second biggest Moroccan supermarket chain and international firms specialized in logistics and retail. Then, she joined Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane in 2014 as a lecturer in strategic communication and a faculty member. Currently, she is applying for Ph.D. programs in order to continue her career path in academia.

The main reason why I chose Pr. Houki to be the center of my interview is thanks to her passion about her career and what she is doing as a daily job. Usually, I see that devotion and dedication are important elements that should be included in oneself’s mindset in order to succeed, and that’s the exact thing that I noticed in Pr. Houki’s works and classes. She challenges herself every day to be a better person and be more productive in the future for her community. Personally, she became my idol and my inspiration as a great woman and as hard worker.

Interview Script Houda Touchen: First of all, let’s start by having a brief explanation about your job? I mean what are the duties/responsibilities/functions of your job?

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Naziha Houki: I’m a faculty member and a lecturer in strategic communication. Basically, my job is to create and design the courses in order that I teach in order to reach the intended learning outcomes. Overall, I teach four courses each regular semester and one course in the summer. I am responsible for the strategic communication concentration classes and public speaking classes. Along with my teaching duties, I have service duties which mean that I need to do an activity for the community and the university in general.

H Q.: Given the fact that I am interested in the concentration of strategic communication, what is the nature of the courses in this specific concentration?

N A.: The basis of the courses allows you to practice communication in communication departments or communication agencies where you need to develop communication action plans such as who should receive the message, what message, and which channel should go through with specific objectives. First, the courses taught in that concentration pertain to marketing communication. Marketing communication teaches you the integrated marketing communication process from understanding your environment to getting the intended results. Also, the second one is public relations concentration that is about building and maintaining mutually beneficial relations between organizations and their publics. And the last one is organizational communication which is about how organizations communicate within and understanding how to navigate an organization. Actually, organizational communications is more theoretical but with a great analysis in understanding the real world’s companies; whereas the public relations and marketing communication are more practical and are about building your tool box for what you need to use as a communication practitioner. And they are not only for the goal to get the job; they are also useful for an academic career.

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H Q.: What part of this job do you personally find most satisfying and the part that is most challenging?

N A.: The most exciting part of my job as a faculty is seeing the lightbulb. The lightbulb happens in students, which is very hard with the online teaching by the way. What I love is being in the classroom and seeing someone seems confused, then, they have a lightbulb moment makes them more eager to learn. Personally, I really love it when that switch happens and I find it really interesting. You see that you add value not just through the content itself but that you were really able to lift that switch which makes it the most satisfying part of my job. However, the most challenging part is when the students take the class only because they are required to take the class and it is really hard to switch it on for them just a little bit.

H Q.: what other jobs can you get with the same background?

N A.: So many. I mean especially with the pandemic, a lot of people are saying that there no jobs and it is an insecure job market which is a total myth. With my background, you can become a pure marketer, you can work in consultancy jobs, or you can open your own communication agency. People with my background are brand managers, CEOs of their own communication companies who manage PR companies, create festivals and events, film production compa nies.

However, we can’t include journalism because I don’t have a solid background in writing, but if you have a good writing portfolio or get hired in a journalism company, magazines, or newspapers in your master years, it can be definitely possible.

H Q.: If your job progresses as you like, what would be the next step in your career?

N A.: Honestly, in terms of teaching, I feel like I explored it all right now. Especially with the online teaching, I feel like I challenged myself in understanding all aspects. However, the thing 4

that I have never tried before is teaching big amphitheater classes because in AUI, normally, communication classes are mostly 15- 20 people maximum. However, my next plan is research through Ph.D. degree about digital activism and feminism movements which will really make me able to move a step above lecturing.

H Q.: What are the major qualifications and skills, which are also important, for success in this occupation?

N A.: I have my own philosophical answer about that. To answer this question, you need firstly to answer the question of what is the definition of success. Success is whatever you think success means. For me, success is reaching my purpose in life, and to get it, you have to know what is your purpose in life. And I would like to mention what an AUI alumni, who works in the Economic World Forum, said about this. He said that AUI gives you tools. You can give the same tool box to anyone, but it depends on what you do with it that makes a change. So for me, what do you need in order to succeed is a tool box. And having a degree is not the essential thing. Everyone can have a degree. It’s actually how your brain is shaped with that degree such as your problem-solving skills, empathy and resilience values, connecting the dots, and going beyond the material. Those are the essential things which are required today to succeed. On another note, currently, we are experiencing a pandemic with the covid-19 virus, and a lot of organizations and businesses and young people have crumbled. Therefore, it pushed to change the gears. The question is are you able to adapt to this challenging fast-pace world? The key is good to be book smart, but better to be street smart.

H Q.: What courses have proved to be the most valuable to you in your work?

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N A.: There was a one course that it was one of my first communication classes which was called human communication and now it is communication and development. It was really interesting because we dived into identity and we did this paper about media deprivation.

Actually, the professor wanted us to use no media for a full weekend. Personally, I could not do it at all and it was really hard to do it because we were only able to work with the people who around us at that moment. Honestly, it was a great experience because it made me more selfaware of what I do and the impact of technology and the field I was getting at. Moreover, it contributed to my understanding of what I am doing what I am doing and why I think that communication is a fascinating field.

H Q.: What are the best/worst things about working in a multicultural global workplace?

N A.: That’s a great question. That’s a good question because we don’t realize the impact of a global workplace until we are in one. In AUI, it is actually the culture of it that is still present to the extent that we get easily at ease with each other. When you get outside of it and you dive deeper in a multicultural environment, you start realizing your biases, similar to my case when I was in the USA. In other words, you realize what you take for granted and all the assumptions you make on a daily basis. And if you go somewhere else different from your environment, the fact that you will want to start a conversation requires you to initiate it with a lot of background explaining every single detail. And when you listen, you ask way more questions while starting to analyze things that you stopped analyzing when you were in your own culture and your own bubble. As a result, it gives you an appreciation of diving into someone’s frame of reference. It increases your knowledge at a pace that you can’t even imagine. From my experience, I learned more in a diverse environment than I learned in a similar environment because I was challenging my ideologies and my own way of thinking, which allowed to acquire knowledge that I wouldn’t 6

have if I was in my comfort zone. From the other side, it teaches you about respect, inclusion and ideas integration that comes from different perspectives, which is about unifying individuals and not separating them. And that’s the beauty in the global workplace. The worst part is not appreciating the differences. For example, from my own experience in the USA, they will always edit my writing thinking that it’s grammatically wrong given the fact their English was on the speaking part. So they kept correcting me as I am grammatically wrong when it’s actually them who are wrong. But due to the fact that I am a second-language English speaker, I can’t have an opinion about that realizing that I have a less of a voice concerning that.

H Q.: What is, from your perspective, the most commonly held misconception about people of your culture?

N A.: There was that thing of that I am white because my country Morocco is located in Africa, and that I was not wearing hijab. We can also add the fact that I spoke English and wrote it better than them, but there was always a debate about that obviously. The thing that I knew a lot about the American system knowing that I am Moroccan also was a mystery for them.

H Q.: Have you ever felt excluded based on your gender?

N A.: Frankly, it was not my experience in a sense that I was lucky. I am formal with the people that I don’t know and I give them respect playing the games and the codes, but I break that barrier very easily. However, I am friendly with my colleagues and the people who I know.

H Q.: What offends you the most?

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N A.: I guess the subject of emotions is what offends me the most. The concept that emotions are bad and that you can’t be emotional when you are living in a men’s world is widely generalized in the workplace.

H Q.: Do you have any advice for someone interested in this field/job? Are there any written materials you suggest I read?

N A.: For people who are in the communication sector, I see that it’s really essential to be selfaware and develop the ability of observing without judging, because that’s when you see the most exciting dynamics and evolve the best communication campaigns and dive into the world.

That’s why I really see that to be a communicator, you have to learn to dissociate yourself from situations and be an observer. And it certainly relates to mindfulness and develops your observational skills which are important. I would definitely recommend you the book “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. It’s such a beautiful book that allows you to develop a sense of observation and understand how people are influenced by others. Also “The Crowd” by Gustave Le Bon is a great book that talks about how ideas spread and social contagion which is the basis of communication of the physical crowd.

Lessons Learned The first significant lesson that I grasped from this interview is the job passion. My interviewee is a person who is really passionate and eager to discover what the industry holds of upward opportunities and valuable experiences that she can get benefit from personally and professionally. The communication sector is currently characterized by its dominance of women more than men, which highlights their competencies and increases their self-confidence about

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their performances. Therefore, I learned that being someone who is truly interested in what they are doing and giving their topmost efforts to succeed is the real purpose of life.

After this particular interview, I am more familiarized with the commitments and skills that a faculty member and a communication expert need to complete and have on a professional level. The duties of my interviewee’s profile include having extensive knowledge about communication processes and the way of how organizational communication works in companies and firms. On the other side, the acquired skills contain critical-thinking, problemsolving, and being an individual who has a professional vision that can see beyond the present and think about the accomplishments of the future and what can be done now to attain them.

The third lesson that I learned during this interview is that there is no limit to have an education. As I mentioned before, my interviewee was an AUI student before becoming an AUI faculty member, and she studied her master degree abroad. Currently, she is thinking about Ph.D. programs. Her job that she loves did not stop her from expanding her education, and that is a side I truly admire in people. Indeed, I am now determined more than ever that my education will always be a priority to nourish my mindset and extend my life knowledge.

The last lesson that I was really surprised to learn relates to the right method to approach the intercultural workplace. There are several points that help adapting to the global workplace’ needs and expectations including self-confidence, authenticity, openmindness, and respect.

Being confident of myself will offer me the opportunity to expand my social multicultural environment. Being authentic will show my credibility that is a significant trait of my work and profile. Being open-minded will allow understanding others’ various perspectives of several

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concepts in order to see the biggest picture. And being respectful will show my individualistic value and professional position that is considered important in a certain organization.

Conclusion This interview showed me that the best advice you could give someone who is interested in the same field is having the value of agility. Given the fact that any job could face fundamental changes due to a certain happening, it requires that individuals should be prepared and equipped to adapt to the new system in a quick pace. On another note, the leading recommendation that could be offered to anyone who wants to conduct a similar interview is that you should be definitely prepared. Organization of questions and understanding them gives you a step ahead to elaborate during the interview and reflect on yourself the information given.

Overall, pursuing this peculiar career definitely requires pure ambition, true patience, and the most basic element of our existence: clear communication.

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Appendices

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