In the Leadership Development Plan that I wrote at the beginning of this course, I noted two specific areas I wanted to focus on to improve. The first, challenging the process, one of Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices of Leadership, and the second was relationship management, an area of Emotional Intelligence.
My initial goal for challenging the process was to be “assertive in challenging my group members, whether it be by simply asking a question, or openly disagreeing and objecting appropriately.” I planned to go about this by staying “informed on our group’s decisions, as well as personal opinions, in order to appropriately judge the situation so I would have specific feedback and suggestions.”
During the first half of the term, I still struggled to challenge the process. Although I made small steps in speaking up, I still wasn’t fulfilling my goal of challenging the process. This became clearly evident to me during the first session of team feedback. As I became more aware of this, it helped me see that my group felt they could benefit from my doing so. The specific feedback I received initially was all very similar – that I needed “to be more vocal” and that the group “could benefit from heading [my] opinion more often with more authority.” I took this feedback to heart and again set the goal of challenging the process by speaking up more. Throughout the remainder of the term, I made a point to take time to speak my opinion on every decision that we made, even if I thought the group was unlikely to be swayed. I found however, that the group often took my challenges seriously and with my additional feedback, we were able to analyze our choices differently than we previously had, which helped our success as a group. During the second team feedback session, my group clearly noticed my improvement, stating that I “kept the group focused and grounded”, “made sure ideas were realistic and relevant”, and “became more active and spoke more than before.”
Throughout the term I have made great strides in my ability to challenge the process; however, it is still something I need to continually work on. Part of my ability to challenge the process so well towards the end of the term was due to how comfortable I became with my group. This made me realize that I still need to work on voicing my opinion with people I am not as familiar with. I plan to keep moving forward by continuing to share my thoughts whether or not I believe it will have and impact and by keeping in mind that speaking up doesn’t only help me, but furthers the success of any group as a whole.
My second goal, for Emotional Intelligence, was relationship management. For this goal, I wanted to “be supportive and compassionate, not just on my surface interactions, but to actually have those things be true.” I planned to go about this by “getting to know my teammates on a personal level (i.e. finding out their hobbies, interests, wants and desires in life)”, which I believed “could help to build a foundation of a more personal relationship and also improve my ability to communicate, bond and collaborate with them.” Initially, this goal was easy to meet as we were in the forming stage.
Our formation stage lasted longer than I would have expected which provided me with ample time to form relationships through small talk with other team members. However, after team feedback, we hit the storming phase hard because of how long it had taken us to complete the formation stage. My ability to stay calm combined with my initial hesitance to disagree, actually aided me in this stage and enforced my relationship with teammates. While I found myself frustrated during this time, instead of taking an active role in the conflict, which I saw as unproductive, I instead stepped back and acted as a mediator. Through my calm approach to mediation, I was able to help us break down the issues that were creating conflict to help us move to an area of norming.
Once in the norming phase, I began to reflect on my improvement in relationship management. I discovered what really aided my improvement were my efforts to empathize with others and my calm approach, which helped cement strong relationships between my teammates and I. During our final feedback session, my group also noted my relationship management skills noting that I “kept the group level-headed.”
Going forward, to continue to maintain and improve my relationship management skills I plan to continue to take the time to get to know peers and teammates more personally. This project in particular, has shown me how important relationship management is to keeping the team effective and motivated.
While I learned a great deal in this class and was able to make vast progress towards achieving my goal, I do recognize that my ability to do so was largely due to my comfort level with my fellow group members. I realize that in future settings where the group may only work together for a short period of time, I won’t be able to rely on being comfortable with the people I am around. In order to continue to improve in these areas I will have to work on my confidence in my ideas and myself. By being confident in myself, I can eliminate some of the hesitance to speak up, which will allow me to challenge the process and more effectively maintain relationships.