This week has been the busiest group week out of the entire term. It has taken a lot of work to reconstruct our proposal and because of that our group has met everyday this week. I have found myself through working hours on this proposal improving my ability to be socially aware of other’s thoughts to improve the quality of our proposal. Being able to empathize with others was an idea I wanted to improve on when coming into this class and this week has shown my improvements. I have learned it is important to understand different points of views from each group member in order to create the best possible ideas. This has helped our group develop the best possible ideas when constructing our proposal. For example, when working on our situation analysis our group realized we needed to use more evidence when backing up our claims. As a result, we invited each group member to express ideas that we could use to improve the claims we made from our first draft. This allowed our group to develop more solid claims that our evidence could back up, whereas before our claims were not supported strongly enough.

This process challenged my ability to be aware of every idea presented whether it was right or wrong and it resulted in our group coming up with our strongest ideas of the term. Before this class I might have been irritated with some of the ideas presented, but after working in a group for several weeks I have learned to welcome new ideas instead of reject them. By writing down that I need to be more socially aware in my Leadership Development Plan, it has helped me reflect on the last 8 weeks and point out the improvements I have made in this area. Overall, I have improved on my ability to value each group member’s perspective on each decision that we make as a group and as a result, our group has came together and worked well when developing our final proposal.

In class on Monday, I got my face to face feedback from a member of my team and received my overall performance in the group halfway trough the term. I was very humbled and excited to see my feedback as mostly positive and I believe it reflects the time and work I have been putting into the group. When getting back my feedback I compared it to my leadership development plan and saw the progress I have made in five weeks, but also the areas I still need to improve on. One area in which I was given high praise was in offering knowledgeable insight in group meetings. In the start of the term I tended to listen more and offer less insight, but to hear that feedback from my group means I am doing a good job communicating and expressing my opinions on certain topics during group discussion. Another area that I am progressing in is developing new ideas to help the team move forward. This was an area I wanted to improve upon in my Leadership Development Plan, and to receive that feedback encourages me to keep bringing new insightful ideas to group discussion each week. One area that I need to continue to develop is my ability to encourage other group members to participate on every topic in group discussion. I plan to bring new ideas to the table, but forget to invite other group members ideas by asking them what they think about a certain topic. I feel if I continue to improve this concept our group will be even more successful than it already is.

Overall, I feel I have made tremendous strides in my leadership development and try to improve on at least one idea every time I meet with my group. So far in the term, my group is working well together and communicating on a daily basis to reach our goals. I feel if I continue to work on my own leadership skills and encourage others our group can reach our full potential.