In my Emotional Intelligence blog attached to this portfolio, I addressed my emotional strengths and weaknesses. In this I mentioned self-management as one of my weaknesses. While working with others, the roots of my leadership flaws derives directly from that of my emotional weaknesses. My inability to properly manage my emotions has a direct effect on my performance as a team player. I let emotions that I struggle with, such as the anxiety during conversing or stress towards receiving a negative reaction, get the best of me. This weakens my ability to be a great leader. According to Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership article “leaders are supposed to stand up for their beliefs, so they’d better have some beliefs to stand up for” and “Leaders must find their own voice, and then they must clearly and distinctively give voice to their values”.
Those quotations can be found in the finding your voice section of the Modeling Your Way leadership characteristic. I used these examples because my emotional trouble consequently hinders my ability to be a leader, or more specifically, my ability to model the way through my ‘voice’. In many group projects in the past, I refrained from speaking, despite often feeling that I had ideas and opinions that could have contributed to our group’s efforts. Learn more through my Leadership and Development blog. This was all due to difficulties I faced in receiving direct attention, as well as my anxiety towards receiving a negative reaction. By not speaking my mind and contributing my ideas, I was having a negative impact on the overall effectiveness of my groups. If I wished to be a more effective leader, as well as a greater contributor to my group, then I would need to sort out this issue. More recent feedback from my CreativitO team stated that I had shown tremendous improvements in this aspect over the last couple of months and that I am working on having an even stronger voice amongst groups in the future.
Although I have my faults, I am a great group member through other qualities of mine. My ability to detect emotions from others, combined with the joy that I find through helping others, helps to make me a great team member-supporter. By this, I mean that I will often put effort into helping other members where I think it is needed. I will volunteer to help a member who I sense is struggling and will often ask if someone has anything to add if it seems they are feeling left out. I try to see the best in people and I will show them respect. I have observed that in doing this I can build a comfortable relationship with teammates, as members will often approach me for any help or question that they may have. I generally try to keep a positive vibe as well as to keep motivation strong, which is especially necessary late into the project. I speak more on these attributes when I cover the Encouraging the Heart leadership characteristics. This can be found in this portfolio under the Leadership Skills section.
Some of these positive teamwork qualities that I addressed above became much clearer to me during the course of our recent group project in my Leadership and Communication course. When our groups were assigned, we found ourselves working with an international student form China who was facing some language barriers. I made sure to frequently go out of my way to assist her by asking this student not only if she understood the materials form our discussions, but if she had anything she wanted to add herself. Through this, our group acquired some amazing ideas that we may not have gotten otherwise. I also feel that this student appreciated this effort, for she would come to me both during meetings and outside for help. My efforts to make others voices heard not only assists in the generation of ideas, which moves our project along in a more efficient manner, but also assists in preventing group-think as it may give others an opportunity to speak their mind.
Additionally, I demonstrate professionalism while working with others during CreativitO group meetings. I would always try my best to give my fullest attention to anyone presenting, I arrived early and motivated to work, and I am respectful towards any comments or ideas from other member. I believe that most group members that I have been associated with would best associate me with many of the qualities of a Doer/Contributor. A Doer/Contributor group member is dependable, proficient, and pragmatic. I am also continually seeking to contribute in some form, both inside and outside of group meetings. The work that I do outside of meetings has been complemented on by multiple members of my time. An example to support this claim can be seen when reading one of my reviews form my CreativitO peer evaluations, where one member wrote “Brandon comes to the team well prepared. It is nice that he does prior research and write-ups to help guide the group along.” Information of Doer/Contributor and the qualities associated with this labeling was found in my Leadership and Communication course packet, under the Team Play Styles section.