BA-352-LINKUN

Throughout ten weeks of extensive learning process about my leadership development, I have effectively demonstrated four most important characteristics in regard to professionalism, positive attitude, respect for others, taking the initiative, and team responsibility. Therefore, I propose that I should receive 48 out of 50 on my professionalism grade.

First of all, I have realized that class attendance and participation is one of basic and fundamental characteristics when measuring one’s professionalism. It requires a tremendous amount of self-regulation to come to the class, and it also demonstrates one’s respectfulness to the teacher’s time and effort he put into for the preparation for the class. Therefore, I have never absent and late for a single class throughout the term.

Secondly, class interaction is also a good way to test my professionalism. As an international student, I have a stronger sensitivity when talking in front of the class. I feel that the class will be disrupted if my English understanding become a problem during the class discussion. However, in order for me to learn and develop my leadership characteristics, I tried to force myself to talk during the class. For example, I have asked a couple of subjective questions regarding to group proposal topics at the Q &A session. I also gave some opinions when Ron asked us about how to form an effective and constructive memo. Even though my ideas were wrong, I felt I was brave enough to talk in front of the class, and that’s was rarely happened in any of my other classes. I appreciate the opportunities that this class had provided to me.

In addition, teamwork is also a good experience that can demonstrate my professionalism. As our team project started at week two, I took the initiative to set up our group meeting time and place, and organized our team profile. In order to practice and overcome my greatest weakness, “Challenge the process” in terms of leadership development, I intentionally acted as the devil’s advocate, and criticized most of the opinions when at least three people all agreed on to avoid group think, However, I was able to focus on cognitive conflicts and avoided affective conflicts when team had disagreement. Furthermore, throughout the term, I have constantly communicated with my teammates either via text-message, or meeting them in person to discuss any important and urgent issues we’ve had.

Also, in preparation for two of our group presentations, I have researched online to learn how to dress professionally. I even went to the Business Etiquette Dinner event co-hosted by LCB, UO Career Center, and UOAA, to learn about how to eat and dress professionally and watched the formal business dress fashion show. In addition, I have prepared most of our PPT slides since all of us agreed that I was the most effective person to conduct the PPT slides. And I took the responsibility and spent at least 6 hours for the design and content of our PPT slides.

There are many small elements that I have intended to pay close attention in regard to professionalism in this class, such as using proper expressions when communicating with teacher, formal academic writing when sending email to teachers, even just for asking questions about homework.

Of course, there are definitely some weaknesses that I need to improve beyond this class. My English communication skill is the one that I will be focusing on the most, because I need to speak more during the class and let everybody hear my opinions. In addition, towards to the end of the class, due to many other class materials, I did not do a good job to balance well for all of my classes, and ended up focusing on the completion not the excellence of our proposal. I felt like I could have done a much better job if I managed well for my time and if I had more courage to lead the team.

In terms of professionalism for the class, I felt like I have demonstrated most of what it was required throughout the term. Therefore, I sincerely hope that I could obtain 48 out 50 points as my professionalism performance.