My Emotional Intelligence competencies show that I am good at recognizing and managing my own emotions. And I also include my understandings and self-evaluations on Emotional Intelligence in the Understanding effective leadership models Blog Post. In this section, I will include my strengths and weakness in working with others, what others say about my ability to work with them, and how effective I am at getting the best out of others in a team situation.

At the beginning of this term, our team developed the Team Agreement. In a team, each member plays different roles. The textbook categories those roles into 4 parts:

1. Challenger, who questions ineffectiveness and takes the lead in pressing for improvements or results.
2. Doer, who urges the team to get on with the task at hand.
3. Thinker, who produces carefully considered ideas and weighs and improves ideas from other people.
4. Supporter, who eases tensions and maintains harmonious working relationships.

I treated my role as a “Thinker”. To be more specific, my team members called me “Project Promoter”. My responsibilities are bringing exotic and creative ideas to the team and examining the details of the project by going through the whole process. Through out the teamwork, I find that even every individuals defined themselves as different roles and responsibilities, each members didn’t just do their own jobs but experienced almost every roles. For example, Chris has the role as “Research Coordinator”, and he is responsible for gathering documents and information outside of class to give the group stronger evidence to support our ideas. Moreover, one of my responsibilities is to go through the whole project and pay attention to the details. When I was going through the project, I would question Chris why we choose this document and how this document worked for us. Then, Chris and I would discuss together and figured out whether we needed to keep it or not. Through the way that I was playing my role, I learnt how to collaborate with Chris and I was also experiencing the role that Chris was playing. Finally, I was very glad that I have collaborated with all the members an experienced every roles in my team at the end of this term.

Throughout the collaborations with my team members, I was able to have a better sense on my strengths and weaknesses on how to understand and work with others.

Strengths:

•   Always bring that respect element to the group and encourage others
•   Models the way by being very punctual and well prepared.
•   Always smile and bring positive energy to the team.
•   Provides good insight to the problems at hand.

Weaknesses:

•   Could have spoken up more
•   Challenge the process more by questioning group decisions

According to these comments, I find out that my members like my positive attitudes while they were working with me. However, it could be better if I was able to speak up and question them more. During this term, I have tried to speak and question more. Even though I am still lack of speaking, I am on the way to be more open and confident. Therefore, I believe this weakness will not be my obstacle if I choose to persist speaking more. And I know the importance of persistence. Next, from my experience, I think a positive attitude could help people a lot when we are collaborating with others. For example, language barriers usually stuck me a lot on communicating with the native speakers; however, I believe a smile is a great tool to solve this barrier. Therefore, I will keep smiling and try my best to bring positive energy to more and more people.