Describe what you intended to accomplish (your goal), report the progress you made and how you measured it, and the impact. In other words, what were you aiming to accomplish, what actions did you take, how successful were you, and what difference did your actions make?

 Before I was going to take this course, I’ve heard about how difficult and busy this course were. Since this class is about leadership, I set up my goal as learning how to be a leader from this hard and busy course. However, this was just my imagination about this class before I really started taking it. Then, when I read the course materials, I got to know Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices of Leadership and Emotional Intelligence. So I set up my goal as improving my “Communication” skills and trying my best to “Model the way”. In order to achieve the “Communication” goal, I tried to express more and more opinions on the group meetings steps by steps. As an international student, it was hard for me to catch the pace of my other members. Therefore, I did lot preparations before every meeting so that I could bring up new and useful ideas to talk. When I looked back from my weekly blogs, I found that I was going through 3 different stages on communications:

1. Week 1 to 2, seldom talk on group meeting.
2. Week 3 to 5, start to get engaged with the members and prepare for the presentation.
3. Week 6 to 11, get encouraged from the Midterm evaluation and be confident to express minds.

Those 3 stages show my progresses on “Communication”. Even though I still cannot express my minds 100% as clear as the native speakers, at least I am not afraid of expressing my minds and I am being better! In order to achieve “Model the way” goal, I paid much attention to act professionally and speak logically. I am proud to say I am always punctual and well prepared for every group meetings. And my words and deeds are consistent. From the evaluations, my group members’ comments on me were: very unselfish, always punctual, well prepared and being able to help others. Those comments became the most encouraged power for me to keep modeling the way! After I consisted modeling the way during those 11 weeks, not only did I gain the leadership skills but also I gain the personality of persistence.

What aspects of the process you designed for yourself worked, and what did not? Be concrete. Use detailed examples and stories.

 As one aspect of “Model the way”, I set up one goal as being enthusiasm. This goal did work and guide me be better. Even though I couldn’t catch my group members pace at the beginning, I would not hid my confusions and I was very eager to ask to make sure that I fully understood the topics. For example, when we were writing the first proposal draft, my group members wrote with some euphuistical words that I didn’t understand. Then, I would ask them the meanings or use the dictionary to help me understand. At first, I felt embarrassed and nervous, but I kept my smiles because I didn’t want to bring negative energy to the team. As a feedback, my group members said they loved my smiles and I was the one who always brought positive energy to the team.

However, my process on “Communication” did not work as well as my other goals. Even though I felt like I have improved a lot on communications, my final peer evaluation reports still showed that I should express my thoughts to the team before being asked. Because of the culture difference, most Asian students are reserved and introverted. For example, I would not ask other members “What do think?” because I think they will say their opinions when they are ready to say. In other words, if they are silent, that shows they are still thinking and not ready to share their minds. However, that is just my opinion. For me, I will say my opinion spontaneously when I am confident and ready to say. However, because there are time lags caused by the language barriers, sometimes I express my opinions after I am asked to say. For the future, I think I can say what I have came up with and then add my opinions, in other words, I don’t need to express my mind until I have organized all the sentences.

What do you still need to work on and how will you do that beyond this course?

I think I still need to work on how to get engaged with group discussion. I’ve heard that joining the group discussion is like playing football, which means that if you want to hold the ball and run, you need to be in a good position and chance. For me, I am not good at finding the chance and cut into the conversation. I know the ability of catching the chance to speak is very important in a discussion. Therefore, I planned to go to more networking events and talked to people in a group. Hopefully, I can find the pace the join the discussion properly.

What did you learn about leadership from your team experience in this course that is not captured by the leadership articles and models we discussed in class? In other words, in what ways are these articles and models incomplete, as confirmed by your team experience in this course? (Go beyond the obvious. That “leadership development takes time” is obvious.)

During the whole term, I feel like the most useful thing I have learnt is focusing on developing long-term skills. At the last class, Ron talked about that people usually pay a lot attentions to the urgent issues. However, those urgent issues just pump up, and then, you tried to solve those and then the urgent issues just disappear. In the end, people are just pushed to solve those urgent issues but don’t get much feedbacks. At the contrary, it is the process of building long-term skills that can help people keep learning and teach people being persistent, such as health management. When Ron talked about it, I felt very inspired. Even though many of us do have long-term goal, we usually focus on solving urgent issues and treat those urgent issues much more important than the long-term issues. In the end, we delay the long-term goal or even forget about them. Therefore, no matter how busy we are, we can’t lose our long-term goal. Thanks for Ron, those words I took from this course will be useful for the rest of my life.