When approaching this project, I was determined to overcome some of my identified weaknesses. These weaknesses included managing my emotions and modeling the way. I knew from my past experiences and from reading the Five Practices of Leadership article that I often lacked the courage to make my voice heard due to inner emotions and conflicts. In the past, I would often feel as though I had some great ideas, statements, or opinions that could contribute to the group’s success. However, the issue presents itself when I would often choose to keep these thoughts and opinions to myself. Though it was hard to pinpoint the exact cause of this, anxiety among groups and fear of disproval seemed like likely contributors to this issue. In becoming a better leader, I would need to overcome any emotional barriers that I faced. I would need to not only use my voice to express my opinions and ideas, but I would also have to make this voice strong and confident. With this, I could not only be a greater contributor to the overall creation of our project, but my voice could be used to help lead our group and bring positive energy and ideas out of each member. My goals were to not only see an improvement in these qualities by the end of this project, but also to feel more comfortable in my own abilities.
To reach these goals, I made sure to implement the courage necessary to speak more frequently among group members, whether it is expressing thoughts or ideas of my own. There were a couple of methods that were taken to enforce this. Firstly, I made sure to do to a lot of research and brainstorming outside of our meetings. This would give me a chance to generate some ideas and possible routes for our project in its earlier stage. With this, I would then have materials that I could present with my group members during our meetings, giving me a chance to practice this method of speaking. Secondly, to be a greater part of the group conversation, I had to simply give myself a greater mental push to speak my thoughts and ideas. It’s was as simple as just telling myself to not hold back and to go ahead and present what is on my mind.
To measure my progress, I looked primarily at two main aspects; how much I contributed to the discussions and by judging the way I felt about myself overall, post each meeting. By feeling good about my performance as a team member, this will assist me in building the confidence that I need to repeat any attempts that I make to be a better leader. A negative feeling in the past would often preclude me from speaking out during future meetings.
Overall, I was able to detect improvements in my goals. Over the last several weeks I have done a good job of making sure that I contributed to the discussions. I feel I did well in expressing my opinions and challenging those of others. As the term went on, I was able to see a growth in this quality as it got easier and easier with each additional week. Not only did I try to stay an active member, but I was also able to contribute to the idea making/development of our project. Many of my own suggestions and ideas were incorporated into the project.
One big example of this can be seen when you at the direction that we took with our project; we used a proposed idea (international assistance) that I created as sort of the basis of our project and research. We then continued to build upon and evolve this idea over time. Before focusing on international students, our team was absorbed on an idea that we had previously, which sought to improve LCB students budgeting abilities. Another notable example could be when I suggested that we take Li’s GPS example that she made, and transform it into a theme that would connect to our final conclusion in our main presentation. I thought both of these would be good examples because they both were a result of my new model; developing ideas outside of our meetings. By having these ideas ready to present, I was able to benefit myself by putting myself in the middle of the discussions. This was also beneficial for the team as a whole, for many of these ideas were donating to the overall quality of our project.
I feel that I also left this project with greater confidence in my abilities as a group member and leader. Although there were a couple instances where I left our meetings feeling uneasy about my participation as a group member, which I will address later in this blog, I would generally leave meetings feeling good about my performance. My performance was largely measured by how much I would participate in the discussions, as well as by my displayed characteristic of a good leader. By feeling good about my performances, I was able to build up confidence. With this confidence I am able to feel more comfortable with my abilities and thus have more incentive to repeat this process with future groups. As I observed my comfort in my abilities and my confidence growing over the term, I noticed that this seemed to be directly correlated with my ability to be a more effective leader. By the end of the term I was noticing more and more times where I was not only a large part of the discussions, but often leading certain discussion as well.
I think the methods I used towards becoming a better leader were very effective in helping to grow my weaknesses. However, I found that these methods also introduced some newer faults of mine. As part of my plan to brainstorm before meetings, I would usually intend to do this brainstorming for only a short while. This was not always so, as I would often find myself putting a lot of effort and research into my ideas, many of which would end up contributing in some form to our project. However, when some of these ideas were rejected, I found myself having difficulties dismissing many of them, as I had grown attached to my work. This often resulted in me fighting for an idea a little more than I probably should have. I was called out on this during our first feedback assignment, and made no hesitation towards working on this issue. During our final feedback, members claimed that I had gotten much better at not doing this, but that I still had some work to do.
There was one more fault I noticed. As I put effort towards leaving my comfort zone through the process of speaking more with other members, I would find that the anxiety that I would feel while doing this would often result in me running on adrenaline. I noticed a few instances while in this anxiety-rush where I would unintentionally cut someone off while they were speaking or automatically dismiss an idea that I felt was too farfetched or just disliked. I would usually catch myself and feel awful. Although this issue never appeared in my feedback, I know that this is an obstacle that I will need to work on overcoming to not only become a more effective leader, but also just a person in general.
Overall, I think that our blogs and this assignment were very helpful in molding me into a better leader. This process not only helped me to build on some weaker characteristics of mine, but it also helped me to identify some newer ones. I will still have to put a lot of effort and energy in bettering both my old faults and my newer ones, and I am sure to discover more down the road. However, this assignment was a great start at becoming a more effective leader.