Reflection and self-assessment
After twenty years of my life living in a conservative, politically orientated country, I had almost lost the ability to think on my own. Before I came to the United States, the definition of leadership to me, is just a set of dictated characteristics that one dominates the world. All others shall follow without a reason…
As I’m taking classes at LCB, especially after reading the concept of “The five practices of exemplary leadership” and the “Emotional Intelligence,” it literally changed my whole perception for the word “Leadership”: It is a clear set of positive behaviors that can happen in anywhere at any time to anyone. It is a quality relationship between certain among of people who are agreed to achieve extraordinary outcomes.
By looking at the scores on my Student Leadership Practices Inventory, I noticed my strong and weak areas within the five practices, which corresponds to my actual experiences with leadership.
Model the way, as Alan Keith describes, “To effectively model the behavior they expect of others, leaders must first be clear about guiding principles.” When I was in high school in China, I was forced to follow the strict rules and principles every time I took part in group activities. Self-discipline is an important characteristic, because it reduces unnecessary explanations and accelerates the team work efficiently. However, as emotional intelligence specifies that leaders should let followers feel their heart and motivation. Therefore in the future, I need to be not only self-disciplined but also emotionally express my positive feelings to the group followers to achieve a more efficient communication.
According to the sore sheet, my weak part within the five practices is challenge the process. Just like many people, I was one of them who were not willing to step out of my comfort zone, and challenge myself to achieve a greater goal. I often satisfied with the completion of the task, and not think too much about the excellence of the task, because I once believed that the quantity of the work is the standard that determines a person’s ability, not quality. After I realized a deeper understanding of why we need to challenge ourselves and combined with the idea of emotional intelligence, I was able to relate the idea to the current business believe, “There is no best, only better.” Challenge the process will yield an improvement and create a better solution within the team.
After I complete my student leadership practices inventory, I was able to see the trend on my graph. Based on my understanding, my graph was high at the beginning and then start to decline, and that really reflect my memory on how I have been doing every time when involved group work at the business school. From the last two years of pre-business courses, I almost completed every single group project on my own. And the reason I could have done that was because I had a good self-discipline and follow the principle strictly. I once thought I didn’t have to rely on anyone. However, as I am getting into pro-business program, where group projects are become much more complex, I suddenly realize that it is almost impossible to complete a group project by one’s individual effort. By looking at the graph, it makes me feel that if I don’t start to realize the importance of these five practices alone with the emotional intelligence, I will not be able to achieve an efficient group project not only at school, but in the real world.
Action Planning: The five practices of exemplary leadership
As an effective team member throughout the rest of the term, I am planning to intensively improve one of my weakest leadership practices, “Challenge the Process.” In brief, I want to: 1) encourage myself to get out of my comfort zone, 2) strive to seek more opportunities to improve my working capability, and 3) Implement my professionalism to maintain the optimism in team’s progress.
Below is a more specific plan with each practice in order to achieve my objectives
Model the way
Where I am now
- As I mentioned earlier that I was a relatively self-disciplined person and I treated individual work more valuable than group work.
Where I want to go
- I want to keep and maintain one of my best strengths, and I want to build an shared and agreed understanding as a team, and be responsible for my promises to the team
Implementing a plan
- In order for me to maintain and improve my self discipline, I will listen carefully about other’s opinions every time we meet, and be able to share my insights with other team members
Measuring my progress and make a reasonable adjustment
- I will try to get feedback as much as I can. Also, I do a self-assessment every week to make sure that I am aware of my behaviors and how my emotions could impact on the team.
Inspire a shared vision
Where I am now
- I only rely on my own confidence and beliefs and not willing to share with other people, because I tend to think it does not matter how others think my ideas, as long as I think it is important.
Where I want to go
- Now I have understood that I need to let other people to understand my idea so we can together achieve a better outcome.
Implementing a plan
- I will communicate to my group members to the best of my ability to let them understand my insights during each meeting.
Measuring my progress and make a reasonable adjustment
- I will try to get feedback as much as I can. Also, I will count how many time per week I have effectively communicated with teammates.
Challenge the process
Where I am now
- I often want to stay in my comfort zone, and not challenge myself for improvement. My ideology was more like getting things done is more important than getting things done better.
Where I want to go
- Now I believe that quality of the work is more important than quantity, and in order to achieve a better quality work, I need to challenge myself as well as my team members to step out of our comfortable zone and improve our working quality.
Implementing a plan
- I will try to challenge every idea presented in our group meeting and trying to find a way to improve the idea
Measuring my progress and make a reasonable adjustment
- I will try to speak more during the class, possibly once per class period. And I will try to jump into some urgent situation to see if I have the courage to lead and solve the problem under certain amount of pressure
Enable others to act
Where I am now
- My behavior was relatively more aggressive when asking to get tasks done. I was in a competitive manner and believed that’s the only way to encourage myself to win.
Where I want to go
- Now I have understood that group work in a cooperative way can achieve a better contribution, and now I consider to make a significant difference rather than competing over one another
Implementing a plan
- I will try to encourage people to do more than they thought they could by offering some sort of incentives, such as giving them a gift or publicly compliment my teammates. Also, I will listen carefully about my team members’ ideas and try to be supportive on the decisions that made by the team.
Measuring my progress and make a reasonable adjustment
- I will monitor and supervise my teammates to observe their weekly progression so I can come up with a proper amount incentives for them.
Encourage the heart
Where I am now
- I once believed that only criticize can make people grow and that’s what my country’s conservative education taught me for 20 years.
Where I want to go
- Now I have realized that praise people’s work actually helps them getting more confidence, and I want to supportive about my team members’ work and publicly recognize their contribution to our team.
Implementing a plan
- I will try to use my positive behaviors such as smile and praising them by saying “Well done” to encourage my team members to getting more confidence.
Measuring my progress and make a reasonable adjustment
- I will try to count how many good and positive actions and behaviors I have demonstrated to my teammates and teacher every week.
Action Planning: Emotional Intelligence
After reading the article “Emotional Intelligence” carefully, I discovered that there are many components within the four categories that I need to improve.
I tend to have empathy for other people. In my daily life, I care about how other people react to my actions. Therefore, I tend to consider other’s feelings, and I believe that’s one of my strongest area within this four category of emotional intelligence, “Social Awareness”
Below is a more detailed plan on how I will act to improve my emotional intelligence
Self – Awareness
Where I am now
- I would have to say that with my current situation, I have less confidence in my heart. I sometimes tend to reject my ideas before even sharing with others.
Where I want to go
- Now as I understood the importance of trust my own feelings, I want to step up and reevaluate my characteristics
Implementing a plan
- I will try to share my insights with my team members every time we meet.
Measuring my progress and make a reasonable adjustment
- I will try to get feedback as much as I can, and use my feedback to conduct a list for me to improve every week. I will ask them to anonymously give me suggestions so they don’t have to worry that I will find out later who reported me badly.
Social Awareness
Where I am now
- As I mentioned earlier, I care other’s feelings even more than myself. I often try to put on other’s shoe and consider their feelings.
Where I want to go
- I want to keep having my good emotional characteristics on my social awareness but as a group project team, I also want to be more subjective and professional when I consider my team members’ feelings
Implementing a plan
- I will try to consider their feelings every time when we have disagreement, but meanwhile to be aware of the fundamental principle of the topics that related to the discussion.
Measuring my progress and make a reasonable adjustment
- I will do more volunteer work to improve my social awareness. My Accounting club offers a great deal of opportunities for us to serve and help the people live within the community.
Self – Management
Where I am now
- I try to distinguish my behaviors between work and personal life, but sometimes I have hard time control myself not to express my feelings between work and personal life.
Where I want to go
- Now I think I need more practice and try to avoid my unrelated feelings between work and personal life
Implementing a plan
- I will not bring my personal related expressions to the team every time we meet and try to avoid getting into the emotions
Measuring my progress and make a reasonable adjustment
- This could be one of my most important elements to work on since I got frustrated when things get intensive. Or I get very angry if I know things could have done better if people listened to my suggestion. So, one thing I definitely need to do is to get feedback as much as I can every week to record my negative emotions that my teammates have noticed.
Relationship Management
Where I am now
- I often time feel I have a hard time communicating and networking with others, especially after came to the United States with less confidence of my English proficiency, so I tend not to talk to other people unless it’s necessary
Where I want to go
- Now I realized the importance of social communication and networking with others. As matter of fact, the interpersonal skills is one of the most important skills that all leaders should have. I want to be effective on my relationship management. It is so important to build up relationship with working professionals because I will have some competitive advantage when searching for a job after graduation.
Implementing a plan
- I will try to talk to every one of my group member besides the meeting and I will try to improve my communication skills by surveying students on campus about our project, and getting a research statistics from organizations. In addition, I will talk more often to working professionals and take the initiative to communicate with people whom I don’t know much about it. If possible I want to try to speak during my Accounting club meeting with over 100 accounting students!
Measuring my progress and make a reasonable adjustment
- This also could be one of my most important problems since I often get nervous and not be able to have enough confidence when communicating with others. If I had the courage to talk to others and had a positive effect on me, I will try to reward myself to encourage to interact the next time.
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