You are browsing the archive for 2014 February.

by linkun

Leadership development plan is working!

February 27, 2014 in BA352WIN14

First of all, time has past too fast. I cannot believe it is almost week 9! I remember at the beginning of the first week when I was sitting in the classroom, I felt the class was so long and did not know what the purpose of this course is; however, as I was learning more and more materials on how to become a leader, I started to become more interested in this class. The teacher actually had prepared and organized well enough for the class for us to follow, learn, and develop our leadership. Overall, after almost 9 weeks of learning and practicing, I think this class indeed is one of the most beneficial classes at LCB for us. It covered all aspects of how to develop our leadership and how to be professional. At the first two weeks, I learned that the importance of building leadership and professionalism is through emotional intelligence, which can be learned, practiced, and developed, not only just some talents that someone born with it. Then once I got clear on that, I was assigned to form a team to actually practice my EI. as an international student, I often feel not good enough to talk during the class. I thought I will drag down the speed of the class if I stuck on some words or questions that I don’t understand. However, throughout the term, to be honest, I am not afraid to talk in this class anymore… I think one of the primary reasons is that I gained confidence while I am working on the projects with my group. I was being supported and and they often appreciate my ideas and concepts that I brought into the group discussion.

One of the take away lesson I learned from the class or I should say I testified is that if I’m just trying to focus only on the subject I’m doing, I will tend to forget about worrying how others’ or even myself’s judgement, and therefore ended up achieving a better performance.

Also, as I noticed, the materials I learned from this class are working not only to develop my leadership behaviors in a business manner, but it also helps me to shape myself in a positive way to live on a daily basis. I become comfortable when communicating to people around me, like my parents, my wife, my neighbors, and my other classmates at school.

In my leadership development plan, I wrote down so many positives, negatives, strengths, and weaknesses about behaviors. To be honest, now I think that, one of my biggest problem is the lack of confidence when speaking, doing homework, making daily decisions, pretty much everything… Through challenging the process, I was able to jump out of my comfort zone and take one little step at a time. This greatly helped me gain more confidence. One of the outcomes is that now, I can come up with slow but complete sentences when I’m talking to others in English.

Overall, I really like this class.

Now that we have been preparing for almost 9 weeks, it is time for our group to show our work to the teacher and the class. Odd enough, all of us don’t feel nervous at all, because we made the efforts with some sort of passion involved, and we cannot wait to share to someone. Hopefully this class will set up as a cornerstone for us to develop and progress our on going learning life.

by linkun

Self-regulation Development

February 20, 2014 in BA352WIN14

As we are entered into week 7, one week before the final proposal is due, time has become a crucial factor for us, especially after we received a score of 12/20 on the first proposal. Everybody in the team is freaked out and started to panic. I know this is the time that I need to control my emotions during our next meeting and trying to use positive attitudes to support and encourage the team to focus on how solve issues instead of finding who is being obligated. I went to Ron’s office hour and discussed with him in more details on why we had such a bad score and what are the potential opportunities there for us to improve this project. During our weekly meeting as I expected, people were unable to hold their panic feeling and started to blame each other about their inefficient work. Then, I came in and tried the best I can to explain the conversation I had with Ron about how he thinks having a class as a solution is not executable within limited amount of time. And I told them that we still have time to achieve what we originally planed, we just need to be focus on solving the problems.

Throughout the class lecture and weekly meeting for week 7, I feel like I learned quite a bit on how to work on to become an effective leader. Self-regulation is a very important element when come to such situation, especially where all of our members are equally powered and nobody wants to jump in and take the initiative to lead the team.

In two weeks, we are going to present and share our effort to the class about our 7 weeks of researching and analysis. I definitely feel both the pressure and the excitement. I am excited because I know how much effort we have been putting into, and I have faith in our team believe our project will ended up successful; however, my pressure comes into play when I am thinking how I should balance all of my work load from other classes as the materials are becoming more and more intensive within very limited amount of time. Next week, it is the time to testify my capabilities on how to handle them with appropriate behaviors that I learned in this class. Cheers!

by linkun

Review of my presentation

February 11, 2014 in BA352WIN14

I cannot believe how bad I did on the presentation. Before I watched the video, I was very confident and felt that I completely nailed the speech. However, after I watched my speech, I noticed that there were many unnecessary movements. My eyes was moving too fast and not be able to concentrate on one person for at least two seconds. I guess I was still too nervous.

In addition, the volume of my speech need to be improved as well. By comparing with Dustin and Eric, my voice was very thin and blur. As I watched myself in the video, I was able to discover that I was still pretty nervous while I was up there giving the speech.

I think it is a good opportunity for me to be able to watch my own video after my presentation, because it will give me some real feedback by me judging myself. I would never notice all these defects if I don’t watch my own speech.

In my opinion, the skill of communication and presentation is a lifetime long practice that can always be improved. I hope I will get better the next time when I am giving our final proposal.

by linkun

BA-352 First Presentation

February 11, 2014 in BA352WIN14

This week I got  the chance to practice what I have learned from the class. It is quit helpful after realizing how much I can contribute to the team. I was so nervous right before my speech and I did not even remember any of my presentation content. However, Luckily enough, once I got up on the stage, everybody’s face in front of me was so nice and kind. I felt a lot more relaxed and was be able to present and complete my speech appropriately.

I definitely challenged myself and put my self out of my comfort zone. While I was reluctantly accepting my speech, I’ve got very happy and confident after I actually gave the speech, because I think it give me the necessary skills and knowledge that I have been looking for but afraid of.

by linkun

First Proposal is coming! Nervous? or Exciting?

February 2, 2014 in BA352WIN14

This week we definitely feel the pressure because of the upcoming presentation. We have struggled on how to come up with our core message about the first proposal.

We have spent at least 5 hours outside of class, trying to integrate our researches and findings. We met in the morning at the library, and I bought Star Bucks cookies and bagels  for everyone to cheer them up. As matter of fact, we were able to distribute our tasks equally and clearly. As we have decided in the class, I will be one of the representatives for our team. I think this is a good opportunity for me to challenge myself. As an international student, I always feel nervous when talking in front of people, especially to Americans. I also noticed that I am the only international student in the class…

However, as I learned in the class this week, with appropriate practice and knowledge, my nervousness can be overcome. I think this week’s material is very helpful and useful to me. I was able to learn how to constructively communicate to the audiences. For example, the opening act for the presentation is very important, and I should make it interesting and grabbing audiences’ attention so they will remember my point.

Therefore, after I learned how to present in a professional way, I gained more confident and I think it is very helpful to develop my leadership skills.

Skip to toolbar