Chujie's Blog

At the beginning of this term, I wrote a Leadership Development Plan for this class based on my test results on 5 Practices of Leadership and Emotional Intelligence. My primary goal was improving on the area of “Challenge the Process” and being open to share my ideas with my teammates. Also, I would like to increase the ability of self-confidence and self-awareness throughout the term. I stepped up most parts of my Leadership Development Plan by presenting and sharing my ideas on group meetings and presentations, questioning on teammates’ discussions. Although I still have a lot of skills that needed to be improved for presentation skills, my presenting abilities have improved over the courses and I felt more confident to talk in front of many people. In the past 8 weeks, I was always being professional on group meetings, which made group works be efficient.

Before taking the class, I was really bad at modeling the way. I usually did not have any plan for what I should do next and when should finish my works. Also, I always tended to put off my works to the last minutes before. However, after grouping with my teammates, I realize this weakness would be a harm to reduce our group works’ effectiveness. I began to write memos on calendars and formulate to do lists for myself. By forcing myself to do these, I can always finish my part of works early and this was good of our group’s working process on proposal. However, even though I tried to speak more on group meetings, I still cannot fully contribute to the group conversations because of the language barrier. Many times I can only accept my teammates’ ideas because I did not know how to form my sentences to refute them.

I still need to improve my written and oral communicating skills. I will also need to be more active and open to talk with other people. I believe having more practices on writings and being active to do any presentations will help me to reduce the lack of these aspects. Writing memos and formulating to do lists are good starts for me to get works be done early. Therefore, I will continue to do these beyond every course that I will take.

I learned leadership is not only the skill of how to lead others, but also an ability of how to inspire your teammates and model the direction for your goal through collaboration. I really enjoyed this class because I had more chances to communicate and collaborate with people that I usually do not have, and also cannot be gained from reading articles. I learned presenting skills by my team experience in this course as well. After finishing two presentations, I felt speaking in front of many people is not that fearful compared with before. Also, I learned how to fairly giving teammates comments on their behaviors and receiving suggestion from my teammates. I believe what I actual experienced will really help me performance professionally in the future business world.

I would propose that I should get 46 out of 50 points on professionalism grade of this class. I will in this paragraph how other 4 points are deducted.

First, I attended every class, but I missed one group meeting. This action should deduct 1 point. But the rest of my behavior can meet the criteria. I always keep the positive attitude toward my class and assignment/project. During the class, there are a lot of writing assignment. Even though I am not a good writer, I spend a lot of time on it and asked for help. I chosen to present in the first presentation. This is a challenge for a non-native speaker, but I really enjoyed. By the end of the class, I am sure my presenting and writing skills has greatly improved.

Second, I respect all my classmates. Even a group only have five people, we have a lot of different opinion. I always like to listen to them and give response later. Though some of opinion is not appropriate for complete the project, I never interrupt anyone, but chose a other way to express my opinion.In the midterm peer evaluation, my teammates feedback some suggestions to me, I accepted these suggestions and in final peer evaluation showed I improved.

Thirdly, I personally feel that I was not initiative enough during  before the midterm. I felt uncomfortable to speak in the group discussion, though my teammates are very nice. This should deduct 2 points in my professionalism grade. But after I receive my midterm feedback from my teammates, I decided to be more active. I started to speak more, and propose counter-opinion. By the end of class, I feel I can fully participate the conversation.

Finally, accountability. I took more responsibility of our team project after midterm. So, the first part of this class should be the reason to deduct 1 point. In the second part of class, I started write and speak more for the team project.

Overall, based on my behavior, I think 46 points should be a appropriate grade for my professionalism.

The final presentation is really looming. After exchanging feedback with teammates and first presentation, our team seems doing really good job, and we are working on final presentation. I though after we done the in-class executive summary our final presentation will be much more easier. But I was totally wrong. During the group meeting, our team the first time experienced hard time. Everyone seems working on different things, even though we talk like we are on the same page.

For example, we started with discuss how to design the visuals of power-point slides, but some of us works on texts because they believe without text, there is no way to use a few words to generalize. Others are looking for different types of templates. We were being amazingly unproductive that afternoon.

Luckily, all of us know that this might not be the good time to keep working. So we all agree that we work individually for some time and come back later. Even though this experience is not that happy, but we did learn from it. We need to be frustrated to know what we need to improve, so that we can do better next time.

After receiving midterm feedback from teammates, this week’s life is much more easier. The only thing I have to worry about is cover letter. I consider this is the great chance to improve my professional writing skills.

Different from what I thought, the cover letter is much more complicated. From the work shop, I learned that cover letter is not the place to show your skills, but also a place to use logic to convince a company. Instead of throw out tons of prize you won, the better way is to explain the details you have done and what benefits have been added to the company.

Except prepared a version for homework, I spend some time and prepared 3 cover letter and submit them through Internship.com. And I am waiting for response.

The first thing of this week is receiving midterm feedback from team members. In general, the scores I received are not high scores. Obviously, I am not blaming my team members because their feedback truly reflected my performance in the first-half of this term.  And I really appreciate them for helping me to find problems. Though I personally feel my communication skills has improved, all my team members suggest me to speak more from now on. I am much more confident and comfortable now and I think my performance in the rest of term will have a good result. After us exchanging feedback face to face in the group meeting, all my teammates gave me a lot of good advice. And at last, I really want to thank them for understanding my feeling as an international student and not use English as first language. The whole process of exchanging is great, and I learned a lot from them.

The second thing of this week is we did prototype in the class. Our group is trying to find out students’ preference of news when tons of information in from of them by setting up 5 laptops with news blogs and news programs playing. The good thing of a class have people from different country is that they reminds our group how news is presented differently in different country. I had a great talk with a French Chinese. It was really interesting to know French peoples’ preference.

Overall, this week is check point for me. I have a very clear clue what I need to do now rather than being freaked out like I was in the first week.

By the end of this week, I have 3 feelings about this class.

1. This class is a great way to improve one’s communication skills. The class is organized in a good way, which left enough time for group discussion and also covered a lot of materials. The group member you selected and matched makes a group like a real community. Some people are really activated and some people are truly thoughtful. The video is the part I like most in the whole class. They reflected the concepts clearly and based on a true story at the same time.
2. I knew the course load of this class is overwhelming before, but it still surprised me until I really start to do it. Of course I am not asking you to reduce the course load for me, but I really want to make one suggestion. Can you offer some instructions for assignment for next week? For instance, I tried to do the “self-assessment and action plan” on Friday but I have no idea how long it should be or the format you prefer. Unfortunately, I have a big assignment due by Tuesday morning, so the rest of Tuesday would be the only time I can work on BA352. If you can give me a little more information, then I can start earlier and this class would be easier. Thanks for your patience.
3. Right now, I have no idea of what the rest of this class would be, but I do think the first week class would be one of the most impressive leadership classes in my college. Because this is the first time I know leadership can be learned and leadership does not necessarily rely on degree of education.

Chujie Huang