17
March
2014

Personal Leadership Development0

Through the personal leadership development plan that I made over eight weeks ago, I intended to accomplish two distinct goals. The first was to excel at the Challenge the Process attribute that is highlighted in Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices of Leadership. The second goal that I aimed to achieve was to increase my emotional intelligence by removing negative thoughts from my head and replacing them with positive ones.

In order to achieve these goals, I did a couple of specific things that were designed to help me be successful. First, I made myself be more outspoken when it came to my group work. Typically, when I’m first entering a team environment, I stay quiet. It usually takes me a couple meetings to really get comfortable with people, so my plan was to become outspoken immediately. In my own opinion, I thought that I achieved this within the first couple of meetings. My other 4 group members were extremely outspoken as well, so sometimes it was hard to really speak out. After receiving the first set of individual feedback, I learned that my group members thought that I was the most shy member. This was a little discouraging because at this point I felt that I had made progress. So after the midterm feedback, I made it my personal mission to become even more outspoken. I felt as if this time I really did make progress, especially with where I was at the beginning of the term. When we received the final feedback from our group members, people did notice that I made progress with my shyness, but they still saw me as the most reserved member of the group. With this feedback, I was extremely dissatisfied because I feel like I made a lot more progress than my team members gave me credit for. For me, my actions made a huge difference in how I interacted with my group members. In the past I haven’t really gotten to know people at all, and because I was actively trying to become more outspoken, I feel as if I became close with the other members of my team.

In order to achieve my goal of becoming more of a positive thinker, I set up an alarm on my phone that would wake me up every morning with the message “What are you grateful for?” so I could start everyday with positive thoughts in my head. In theory this was a good way to start off each day right, but in reality I just hit the snooze button and avoided the question all together. After a while I realized that this tactic was unsuccessful so I tried just actively thinking positively about my schoolwork. I focused only on school work in order to not overwhelm myself. As I go through all my blog posts, I noticed that several times I mention my successes in positive thinking. My actions were clearly successful through my repetitive mentioning of them in my weekly blog posts. I honestly feel like my actions did make a difference because as the term went on, I felt more confident in myself and my ideas. I was contributing more to the group and remaining positive about the work that we were doing. When you are positive about yourself your contributions are more successful in a holistic sense.

Clearly I still need to work on challenging the process. I honestly didn’t achieve this goal like I would’ve hoped and this is something I would love to improve on in the future. I think that I need to not let people speak over me in a group setting. I need to be a little more aggressive when it comes to groups and my ideas. I need to not be afraid to take the reigns on something. What I’ve learned about myself is that if I’m not 100% confident in my abilities to perform well in a certain situation, I let someone else take the reigns in order to avoid failure. This is a weak quality that I will continue to work to overcome in the future by changing my reserved behaviors.

Leadership is something that some people take to naturally. For me, it depends on the situation and how confident I feel on the subject. During this class, I learned that I still haven’t found my groove of confidence at U of O yet. I am a transfer student and this was only my second term here so naturally I’m still a bit more reserved that I would like to be. I see my fellow classmates excelling at leadership skills because they feel comfortable here. That is something that I’m still working on but it’s getting easier every day. I’ve learned that comfortability and confidence are the keys to success in leadership. You’ve got to be comfortable in your own skin and your surroundings in order to be a successful leader. This is something that I don’t think was widely mentioned in the articles and models we discussed in class and is highly underrated. My personal experience with leadership at this point is still in it’s infancy, but as I grow older and more comfortable with myself and my surroundings, I start to really see what I can accomplish through simple leadership.

16
March
2014

Professionalism0

Of the 50 possible points that can be awarded for Professionalism in this class, I believe that I deserve 47. There are a couple of reasons why I deserve to lose a couple points, but there are many reasons why I deserve to retain 47 of them.

Throughout the term I had excellent attendance, I only missed one class due to being out of town for personal reasons. I remained very active and involved with my team project and was committed to our group meetings which we held up to three times a week. It is very difficult to work around the schedules of 5 very busy individuals, but we did this in the most professional and efficient manner possible. Most of our meetings everyone attended, which is honestly a feat of its own.

In other regards to our group meetings, I always maintained a professional attitude that my group members noticed. Several group members noted in our midterm feedback that I kept our group efficiently on track. I made sure that we were using our time wisely and not wasting time on other topics. I was also extremely respectful of my fellow group members and their time by staying on track with our discussions.

I deserve to lose a couple of points because I was late to class once and I did not follow the proper guidelines on the initial survey that you used to place us into our groups. I recognize that I should have read the directions more carefully in order to be proficiently professional. These faults are what ultimately lead me to determine that I deserve only 47 points out of 50.

11
March
2014

Thinking Positive0

After giving our final presentation and listening to the presentations of the other groups in our class, it was clear to me that my group was one of the best. Our presentation was clear and concise and there were very little questions at the end, and none from Bramhall which honestly was a little unsettling. We were all just waiting for him to grill us with questions and we got nothing! All of us were thrown for a loop a little bit, but we decided to remain positive and view it as a good thing which is directly related to my personal Emotional Intelligence goals.

Throughout this whole process, I found ways to stay positive about our project and hold it in high regards. We all put a lot of effort into this and to see it finally get finished was such a good feeling. We spent countless hours going over each and every little part of our proposal and presentation and still managed to stay positive even when we were banging our heads against the wall. In regards to positive thinking, I believe that I made significant progress throughout the term.

4
March
2014

Constructive Critisism0

After finally giving our final proposal of our project, I feel so much relief. All of the hours of work that we put in were finally paid off in the fact that our presentation seemed to be the smoothest of the bunch. We worked on the presentation for upwards of five hours on the sunday before we presented and it really showed.

During our preparations we were luckily enough to be able to practice our presentation in front of the Vice President of the Entrepreneurship Club, named Jimi. He gave us an abundance of good critiques and ideas on how to make our presentation better. Before we presented to Jimi, we had thought that our presentation was pretty good and near finished. Afterwards, we realized just how much work we actually had to do, it was immensely helpful. Peer feedback is an excellent tool to perfect your presenting skills.

26
February
2014

Wrapping It Up0

As the term is quickly winding to a close, we were wrapping up the final draft of our proposal. At this point, we have spent countless hours on this project and honestly just want to be done with it. Bramhall warned us that there would be a point in the term when you want to murder your project and we’ve hit that point. I’m really proud of our endurance though, we all are aware that we are beating a dead horse, but we are relentless in the fact that we are staying committed to meeting multiple times a week sometimes for hours on end.

Once this final proposal is submitted, we will then begin working on our presentation. It feels like a never ending stream of work in this class, I’m just glad it’s work that seems practical in a real world setting. It takes a lot of emotional intelligence to remain focus after working on the same project for 8 weeks.

19
February
2014

Second Chance0

This week we got the chance to look over the first draft of our proposal and see all the mistakes we made. After spending countless hours on revising and editing the first draft, I was less than thrilled that we didn’t get the grade we think that we earned. Luckily, we get a second chance to revise our proposal and make it the best that it can be. Our group continues to stay positive even when our hard work is smashed down by bad grades. This quality of perseverance is something that I love best about my group because we are all aware of the effort it takes to produce a good quality assignment and we are not hesitant when it comes to throwing out bad ideas.

As a whole, I still feel like I am addressing my Leadership Development Plan goals by speaking up more in meetings. This is sometimes difficult because the other 4 members of my group are extremely social and outspoken so it doesn’t really leave any time for me to speak up. However, I am consistently trying to make a conscious effort to voice my opinions and ideas.

14
February
2014

Self-Evaluation0

After hearing all the feedback from my group about my performance I was very humbled. It’s really nice to be appreciated for all the hard work that you are doing. Their criticisms were to be expected however, most of them were directly related to the Leadership Development Plan I made for myself. One of my group members mentioned that in the beginning of the term I was a lot more shy and reserved and have thus far made progress when it comes to speaking up. This makes me very excited for what’s to come if I’ve already made lots of progress this far.

As each meeting passes by, I find myself becoming more comfortable with my teammates and therefore more inclined to speak up. I think that the main reason I initially don’t speak up is because I really want others to think highly of me which prompts me to only share my ideas when I think that they are high quality ideas. Now that I’m more comfortable, I’m more willing to share ideas that might not be amazing but they are really important to share in case another one of my team members can elaborate on them and turn them into something truly amazing.

So far, I believe that my team has really strong ideas and we can convey them in a concise and clear manner. We have worked really hard on the first draft of the proposal so I’m really hoping our grade reflects that since we were less than thrilled with our presentation grade. We do have high hopes however! Time will only tell what’s in store for us.

4
February
2014

Adding Value0

When working with my BA 352 group, I have been putting a conscious effort into speaking up and sharing my opinions on things. This has been working extremely well for me and my group because I feel like we are all very motivated and we all add some value to our team. We don’t just go through the motions in order to get a good grade either. For example, we had to completely restart our need idea a total of three different times because we kept finding flaws in our arguments. I honestly believe that this shows great emotional intelligence because it shows that we can recognize when an idea is going no where and we can correct those flaws in a timely manner.

In order to truly add value to a team, you need to be present. Our group decided that we should meet several times a week to be able to make the best presentation that we possibly could. All of us were able to make it to these meetings on time and ready to work (with the exception of one teammate who had Super Bowl tickets). I think that in the last couple weeks I have really added some value to my team by not staying quiet which is directly correlated with my leadership development plan.

30
January
2014

Positive Outlook0

This week we were given the task of creating a presentation surrounding our thoughts on the needs of LCB students. At a first glance, this assignment made me very nervous about what we were going to bring to the table. It’s a very vague assignment, and I know that it is that way intentionally but it doesn’t make me feel any more confident about it. Once we starting really getting into the details of what we needed to do, I realized that we are more than capable of having a great presentation. Each of us in the group brings ideas to the group and we also find a way to challenge each others ideas when we see a hole.

By simply noticing that we are an effective team, my positive outlook on the presentation increased. When my attitude is a positive one, it becomes much easier to actually be productive and produce good ideas and results. This is directly related to my leadership development plan because I had mentioned that negative thoughts are one of my downfalls. Confidence in myself and my team makes having those positive thoughts that much easier so I’m proud to say that I’m moving towards my ultimate goal.

24
January
2014

Confidence0

Throughout my weekly endeavors, I continued to notice how showing a little bit of confidence in yourself and your ideas will get you a long way in life. Most of the time when I am put in a group setting full of people I don’t know I feel very intimidated and my first reaction is to be shy and nice so hopefully people will like me. I see this as a weak characteristic however, so whenever I can consciously see that I might react that way, I make an effort to change it. I try to become the confident and energetic person that I strive to be in hopes of making a few new friends and asserting my ideas.

A constant struggle that I face is the fact that I look years younger than I actually am. I have found throughout my studies and my work that people aren’t going to take me seriously if I behave like a silly little girl because unfortunately my appearance already backs that up. In order for people to see me as the professional that I want to be seen as, I need to exude confidence and have conviction in everything I say. People want to listen to someone who knows what they are talking about. It’s hard to always know everything about what you want to talk about, but it’s not hard to convince people that you know what you’re talking about with confidence. I honestly believe that is the key to gaining the trust of your peers, and also the key to becoming a great leader.


Skip to toolbar