Here it is. The end of the term. BA 352 has come and gone, so now it’s time to look back on what exactly I did, what I learned, and how it affected me.

My leadership development goals this term were to be more empathetic (emotional intelligence) and to shut down ideas much less often (Five Practices of Leadership). With these goals I was aiming to accomplish being a more compassionate group member, in other words someone who supports their team mates instead of being mean and firm in order to get things done. These goals are rather abstract and don’t have much of a concrete way to measure them, but at the beginning of the term I decided I would try to anyway. Needless to say, I quickly realized trying to measure these goals was an exercise in futility. I decided instead to make a serious mental effort to focus on these goals. It was tough for me not to really shut people down if I didn’t like their idea, and I noticed myself still doing it near the beginning. By midterm peer reviews, I still hadn’t done enough to reach my goal, seeing as my team mates all said I shut down ideas too often and the negativity was hurting the team. At that point I really decided to buckle down. It started as noticing the behavior when it happened, then it slowly became stifling the urge for the behavior, and gradually it became being able to discuss ideas openly. By the end of this term I feel I successfully went from shutting people down to openly discussing their ideas with the group and then, as a group, deciding if the idea was worth looking into or not. This open discussion also helped me to really get a feel for how my group members were thinking, which really helped me become more empathetic towards them as well. Doing this led to some really great idea generation and a lot more positive feelings among the group than had previously taken place.

I made myself a very strange action plan to accomplish my leadership goals this term. I said I would write down the amount of times I successfully compromised with my team mates on idea, ask them if I was shutting them down periodically, and then learn and write down at least one new thing about each of my team mates I didn’t know before to help me become more empathetic towards them. What a load of crap. None of these things worked. None. I really thought they would at first, but after a week I realized that they were useless plans. I didn’t ever compromise on decisions because we came to decisions that incorporated bits of everyone’s ideas. I never asked team mates if I shut them down because I realized that asking them that out of no where may come off as intimidating or defensive and I wouldn’t have gotten helpful answers. So I decided to just put forth a huge mental effort and rely on peer feedback sessions where they would tell me what they thought in a less awkward situation. Again, halfway through the term they told me I shut down ideas too much, so I decided to ramp it up and I feel like I’ve really come a far way. Then there’s writing down something new about each team mate each week to attempt to become more empathetic towards them. I don’t how I thought that would work. You could ask a random guy on the street for a new tidbit about him every week and after a year you’d just have a random collection of information about him that tells you nothing about him as a person or how he think or feels. That’s why I scrapped that plan too. After writing down that “I learned that Anika works at Great Harvest on Tuesdays and Thursdays and has a boyfriend”, I realized that making a laundry list of characteristics didn’t help me in being empathetic towards anyone. I realized that being empathetic towards people comes naturally. As you form relationships with them, you begin to notice behaviors and opinions they have that allows you to understand them on a deeper level.

Even though I’ve come a long way and learned a lot from this course, there I still a bit I need to improve on for the future. Even though I’m much better at avoiding it, I feel I can still be much less dismissive of others’ ideas and could in turn enable others to act more. I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing this term to improve this: keep an eye out for when I’m about to do it, stop myself, and instead lead the group in a discussion about the idea. It’s been going well, and I feel that if I keep with it I can eventually do it without even having to make a conscious effort to do it. Another thing I could work on would be staying more focused. I get off track every once in a while and my group called me out for it in our final peer review session. I don’t know how I’ll actively work on fixing this to be completely honest. It basically comes down to a choice of either staying focused or not staying focused, so I’ll try to make the better choice more often.

I learned a lot on this course, both from the class materials, and also from my experience with my team. One thing working with my team taught me about leadership that wasn’t really stressed or emphasized by the course material is that there are different ways to lead. What I mean by this is that from all the course material it seemed like I was being told that to be a good leader you need to encompass 50 different leadership traits (obviously this was never stated, but there was so much focus on traits that I inferred it). In my group, however, I noticed that there are multiple ways to be a leader. I felt motivated to do more work when Anika would show up with materials to help build our proposal no one else had even thought to look for. Brandon got me in a creative mood by throwing a ton of ideas out into the open without even pausing to talk about them. Many other instances like this occurred throughout the course. It seemed like it wasn’t just traits that make a good leader, but actions as well. I learned that all you have to do to be a leader is do something that others have yet to even think about doing. Taking initiative is surprisingly powerful in motivating others to lead, and I’m glad I picked up on that this term.

This is going to sound corny and might make me seem like a bit of a suck up, but this is totally sincere. I truly feel this course has been one of the most valuable courses I’ve taken in all of my years in education. I feel like almost all that I’ve learned has real world applications, and it’s the first college class I’ve taken that has actually helped me feel prepared for a career (at least a little bit). Hopefully business classes I take in the future will have the same impact on me. Now to just finish up finals and have a relaxing winter break.