MSLD 641 Module 9- Becoming A Resonant Leader

For this week’s blog, we are asked to write a blog in a form of a letter to ourselves addressing the personal vision*. Additionally, I must list a few learning goals, milestones and action steps, and the list of key people who will support you to achieve the learning goals.

Hi Kelli,

Hope this letter finds you well. Despite recently finishing your Bachelor’s degree, I find it surprising that you have decided to push yourself even further and is now just two classes away from getting your Master’s degree in Leadership. Time sure does fly. As a passionate and very hard working individual, I believe that you will inspire many people and will go to all kinds of places.

Aside from wanting a Master’s degree, I am very well aware of your daily struggles on finding what it is you want to do as a person. I recall you mentioning how nervous you are: especially since many of your friends and family already knows their hopes and dreams. Honestly, you’re not alone. You’re still 25 after all- just entered the workforce and getting the hang of things.

It may not be much of an advice, but since you got a great starting position as an Assistant Campus Director, I suggest you to keep doing what you’ve been doing. Ever since you graduated with your Bachelor’s you became more independent in terms of making decisions. You even overcame your fears of talking to people. It’s a big change! I recall you avoiding to talk to people: especially to customer service representatives when you go shopping. Today, you talk to an array of people: taking the time to know and help them. Your hard efforts are also leaving great impressions on your students. They are very well aware of your authenticity and continue to look up to you until they graduate. I also applaud you to have some of these students recommend your campus to their friends. It helped boost enrollment numbers and allowed nearby communities to invite you to local events.

You mentioned in your blurry vision statement that you are not aware of your dream careers, but want to ensure you are someone who always put people first- no matter what situation you’re in. 

Personally, I’d say you’re on the right track for the second half. You mentioned before that you didn’t want students to go through the same struggles you’ve been through as a student. Rather than simply getting the job done, you took the time to work and understand the students. To help you find the right career paths, I have three suggestions in mind. The first thing is obvious… get that Master’s degree! The program has and continues to teach you so many things. This will help open more doors of opportunity. Second, continue to meet people. With Boeing and many other large companies nearby, you have a great selection of people coming into your office. While we don’t want to force them, occasionally ask questions or talk about their job. Just maybe, you can find something interesting. Lastly, continue to take any opportunities that come by. While you can discover what you like and dislike, you can also further sharpen your skills and knowledge.

MSLD 641 Module 8- Personal Balance Sheet

For this week’s blog, we were asked to complete an exercise that focused on our assets and liabilities. All leaders, even the most iconic ones all have their strengths and weaknesses. To ensure that we lead as effective and efficiently as possible, it is important for leaders to know their strengths and weaknesses. By knowing what we do well and focusing on areas that need improvement, we can promote further growth. Since I have a habit of focusing too much on my assets, this exercise was a great opportunity to breakdown what I do and analyze what areas I could use improvement on.

Assets:

            Personally, I believe my most distinctive assets is empathy. As an employee and longtime student for the same university, I am very familiar with the processes and situations that occur both from the staff and students’ perspective. Specifically, when a student is going through a tough situation I’ve previously been through, I can immediately relate and understand how they feel. Often times, I share personal examples to help explain things from a student’s perspective (speaking in a similar “language” so it’s easier for them to understand) and also acknowledge that I understand their situation: which also include emotions. By establishing a connection, this can promote positive relationships.

            A potential strength that I believe I have is independence and confidence in decision making. As someone who is worried on stressing people out and making mistakes, I occasionally ask people for their opinion to check whether my thoughts are on the right track. This used to be much more frequent during the first year into my current job: as I had hardly any workplace experience. Now working nearly three years into my job, I am very familiar with the campus operation and has sharpened my general skills and knowledge essential in the workplace.

            The last portion of the assets section focused on enduring dispositions that support me. These include traits, habits, and behaviors that I do not want to change and will help me be successful (Boyatzis et al., 2008). Personally, I find my ability to control emotions during stressful situation to be a huge plus to both my personal and professional life. My whole life lives by the Golden Rule, or the way where we treat others in the way you want to be treated in the same situation (Putnam, 2006). One of the main reasons why I joined the leadership program is because I’ve came across many poor examples of leadership. Every time I experience poor leadership, I often ask myself, “what good can you get for rolling your eyes and sounding irritated to your customers? Does that make me, your customers, or your company feel good?”. When people act in such way, I knew that this would only make things difficult, so while advisement can be very stressful at times, I try not to add further stress for both myself, the student, and my university.

Liabilities:

            As previously mentioned, I tend to focus strongly towards my strengths than my weaknesses. However, one weakness that I have is the ability to resolve conflict. As a naturally friendly and caring individual, it is very rare to come across situations where ones don’t agree or are highly dissatisfied. I recall a situation one time where a student made a mistake and blamed me for not telling her about a university policy. While I can simply explain what the policy was, hearing the student yell and talking back shuts me off. I tend to take things too personally, wondering if there was anything I did wrong and feeling emotionally hurt in general. As conflict can occur anywhere and anytime, this is also a weakness that I want to change and improve on. While I don’t want to purposely get into any sticky situations, I personally believe that having experience and taking the time to respond would help me overcome this weakness.

            The last portion of the liability section focused on enduring dispositions that sometimes cause me to be less effective. My response may be a bit odd, but a personal habit I have is that I sometimes side with my own convenience rather than the person I am interacting with. While taking phone calls is a primary task as an academic advisor, I usually try to have students either visit the office in-person or email me due to a hearing disability. As previously mentioned, I tend to worry about making mistakes and stressing people because of my mistakes. In fact, the most common reasons for disputes in my organization is because of my misunderstandings. While I am fully aware that phone calls are convenient for certain students (such as they want that “human” interaction or they have restricted schedules), I usually end up encouraging them to email or visit me in-person. In hope that they don’t view my request as a way to avoid working with them, I usually explain that I want to ensure accuracy for the sakes of the student.

References:

McKee, A., Boyatzis, R. E., & Johnston, F. (2008). Becoming a resonant leader: Develop your emotional intelligence, renew your relationships, sustain your effectiveness. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School.

Putnam, M. (2006). Reflections on the Golden Rule. Global Ethics University. Retrieved from http://www.globalethicsuniversity.com/articles/thegoldenrule.htm

MSLD 641 Module 7- Appreciating Your “Real Self”

For this week’s reflection blog, I have completed a series of exercises from the Becoming a Resonant Leader textbook. The exercise explored different things about myself: including different events that have occurred in my lifetime, relationships, as well as changes in the way I think and do things. Overall, I found the exercise to be not only interesting, but useful. It helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses better, and the series of exercises were also helpful in providing ideas for a suitable career path.

Of all the exercises, I found the lifeline exercise to be the most interesting. My 25 years of life so far has been overall positive. I have done and accomplished many things- travelling to various famous cities around the world, winning first place in an island-wide essay contest, graduating with a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration, and soon to graduate with a Master’s of Science in Leadership. Aside from the events that have occurred in my life, seeing how I changed as a person was also very interesting.

One of my big turning points occurred near the end of high school when my best friend unexpectedly passed away. He was the first non-family loss I’ve experienced. I recall not doing well in class and isolating myself from everyone. As friends and family members eventually learned what I was going through, I remember receiving a lot of emotional support- some from people that I hardly even knew or spoke with. As a very introverted and somewhat mean person at the time, I was at first a bit irritated and nervous on having many people approach me. Eventually, it made me realize how people really cared about me and was sacrificing their own time to make sure I was doing okay. Around the same time, my friend’s parents, who are community spokespersons began sharing his story: spreading awareness to share kindness with others. After hearing the many good things my friend has done before he died, I began to think that I should do the same. Since then, I have started to talk to an array of people and focused more on establishing positive relationships.

Another activity that was included in the textbook were focused on social identities. This exercise, in my opinion was the most challenging: as there were some areas (such as interests) that I am unsure about. The most difficult part of the exercise was when I listed my social roles. It took me a very long time to think over what roles I have, and I could only come up with very little: daughter, sister, student, full-time employee, and academic advisor. After listing the different roles I have, the exercise asked the three big questions that I struggle with almost daily:

1. Which roles and social identities are most important to you and why?
2. How were you taught about your identities?
3. Are there any aspects of your identity or roles that you are interested in exploring more deeply? Which ones and why?

Even though I am currently an academic advisor, I have chosen this path because of opportunities. Desperate for a job after getting my bachelors, I applied to various places in hope to develop a starting point and discover what my interests are and skills are. Now nearly in my third year as an advisor, I have developed and enhanced an array of skills, but is still unsure if student advisement is a long term path I’d like to stick to. This exercise however had helped me identify what skills, strengths, and weaknesses I have- which could be used to narrow down and provide ideas for a new career path.

Reference:

McKee, A., Boyatzis, R. E., & Johnston, F. (2008). Becoming a resonant leader: Develop your emotional intelligence, renew your relationships, sustain your effectiveness. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School. 

MSLD 641 Module 5- ICT at the Team Level

From an honest standpoint, I am very unfamiliar with professional sports and any news regarding to them. For this week’s blog, we examine and compare the leadership styles of the Olympic US Women’s Soccer team and the US Dream Team basketball team between the years 2000 and 2004. Despite the lack of interest and understanding of professional sports and athletes, I was a former volleyball and tennis athlete, and can understand the importance of teamwork and the leadership needed to help the team succeed.

The first team to analyze was the US Dream Team basketball. For several consecutive years, the US basketball team always brought home the Olympic gold medal. In 2004 however, it took a different turn and the team took home the bronze medal. The result of the loss was due to poor organization and team leadership. In an interview, Olympian Emeka Okafor stated that, “the team came together at the very last minute”. Others on the 2004 team also mentioned that Larry Brown, the coach at the time focused mostly towards veteran players rather than the team all together (Leopold & Teitelbaum, 2016).

                US Dream Team’s loss of 2004 reminded me a bit of my past experience as a volleyball player for the high school tennis team. Inspired by an old Japanese anime, I decided to join the team with very little experience. While my coaches initially did an excellent job and helped me become a skilled player, my experience with the team slowly turned into a negative one. Halfway into the season, my coaches began to focus mostly on the top three players of the team: one being an expert player towards the net, middle, and back of the court. Due to the lack of training, everyone else was slowly becoming disorganized: resulting many losses. Rather than providing further training to strengthen our weaknesses, the coaches instead openly admitted that they were disappointed and eventually forced the team (excluding the three players) to run several miles and wrapping it up with a few sit-ups and push-ups as punishment.

                Connecting this to our readings, the result of the losses were likely due to poor relationships. From my personal experience and US Dream Team, it is clear that everyone was not receiving the same treatment. As Dr. Boyatzis (n.d.) stated, leadership is successful when they establish relationships and recognize people as an individual rather than an object. This reminded me of a past TED talk I’ve watched titled What Makes Us Feel Good About Our Work. In summary, Dan Ariely had a series of experiments that focused on the sense of recognition and purpose of work. The results of these experiments showed that motivation: which boost work outcomes, increased when work was being recognized. In addition, it was found that being recognized not only motivated employees to work, but it also promoted happiness (Ariely, 2012).

                By providing recognition, establishing, and maintaining relationships, ones could yield results similar to the Olympic US Women’s Soccer team. Just like the US Dream Team, the Olympic Women’s soccer team consisted of players of different ages, talent, and personality. Despite the differences however, head coach April Heinrich treated everyone as one team and established the mentality of winning (U.S. Soccer Federation, 2004). With a common ground, recognition, and some encouragement, it can establish a successful and powerful team. After a disappointing experience with the high school volleyball team, I joined the tennis team. Just like the women’s soccer and Dream Team, my team consisted of an array of players of all ages and talents. What motivated me to continue for the remainder of my high school days was that my coaches recognized each and everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, and provided personalized training to enhance our skills. Starting as the lowest rank on my first year, my coaches’ efforts greatly motivated me to become better: eventually leading me to become a mid-ranked varsity player by my senior year.

References:

Boyatzis, R. (n.d.). What is Great Leadership? Case Western Reserve University. Retrieved from https://820961.kaf.kaltura.com/browseandembed/index/media-redirect/entryid/1_irqylr7d/showDescription/false/showTitle/false/showTags/false/showDuration/false/showOwner/false/showUploadDate/false/playerSize/400x285/playerSkin/30818691#

Leopold, B. & Teitelbaum, B. (2016).  Red, White and Bronze: The death and rebirth of USA Basketball. NBC Olympics. Retrieved from http://www.nbcolympics.com/news/red-white-and-bronze-2004-death-and-rebirth-usa-basketball

U.S. Soccer Federation. (2004). Heinrichs Names 2004 U.S. Olympic Women's Soccer Team. Retrieved from https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2014/03/17/13/06/heinrichs-names-2004-u-s-olympic-womens-soccer-team

MSLD 641 Module 4- Tipping Points of Emotional Intelligence

For this week’s blog, we focus on tipping points, or points where events and changes becomes significant enough to cause a larger, more important change. For changes to occur however, two attractors are required: positive emotional attractors (PEA) and negative emotional attractors (NEA). PEA includes dreams, possibilities, and strengths whereas NEA includes fears and weaknesses (Howard, 2006). While Boyatzis and Taylor (2015) states that NEA are required to have people move from vision to action, a person must spend more time with PEA in order to achieve a sustained desired change. Despite this however, he adds that it is important for leaders to maintain balance between PEA and NEA to make effective decisions (Boyatzis & Taylor, 2015).  

A tipping point I recall is when I was working on my past job as a summer camp employee. After a successful first year, I was promoted as a coordinator and had more responsibilities: which included the management of an entire camp and lower-leveled employees. Unlike the previous year, the number of camp participants nearly doubled. In addition to having around the same number of employees as the previous year, everyone was struggling and exceptionally busy.

Likely due to the high levels of stress and lack of employees, my coworkers and occasionally myself made a lot of mistakes and in general was not performing to the expected standards. With the constant mistakes, I was also progressively getting upset at myself and my coworkers. At one point during the summer camp program, I was entering my exam week for classes. Since my workplace had academics as their top priority, I had two assistants take over my camp for the day while I was given a couple hours to focus on my studies. At one point, one of the camp instructors interrupted and notified me that a few students were missing and was needed to complete an activity. Already stressed from studying, I ended up getting into an argument with my assistants: blaming them for their mistakes.

With the constant arguments and negative emotions, I started to notice that workplace performance and relationships were getting worse. I eventually reached the tipping point when my boss called me into his office for a talk. I was worried, thinking I’d lose my job, but instead he thanked me for my so-far work efforts and pointed out some areas that needed some fixing on. While the talk made me feel better, it also made me think about the way I treated my coworkers. At this stage, I was able to identify NEA and PEA: I became more aware that everyone was stressed and that treating them negatively is only making things worse. Inspired by how my boss treated me, I then decided to get in a better habit to stay positive, even during the most difficult times. This is critical for leaders, as study finds that positivity help improve relationships and overall work outcomes (Fredrickson, 2011). In the end, I was able to apologize for my behavior on the two assistants and we improved on communication.

References:

Boyatzis, R. E., Rochford, K., & Taylor, S. N. (2015). The role of the positive emotional attractor in vision and shared vision: Toward effective leadership, relationships, and engagement. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 670. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00670

Fredrickson, B. (2011). Barbara Fredrickson: Positive Emotions Open our Mind [Video File]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dFDHzV36g&feature=youtu.be

Howard, A. (2006). Positive and negative emotional attractors and intentional change. Journal of Management Development, Vol. 25 Issue: 7, pp.657-670

MSLD 641 Module 3- Working with EI: Getting Results!

While having the ability to complete tasks is critical, it’s the social aspects that help drive organizations to success (Boyatzis, 2012).. Emotional intelligence (EI), or the way we handle ourselves and our relationships is often seen as the foundation to building and understanding relationships (Goleman, 2012). In this week’s video, Goleman (2012) describes the four dimensions of EI: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skills (Goleman, 2012).

Although I mostly provide general information and resources to students, EI plays an important role in student advisement and help make decision-making more effective. Occasionally, we have students that come to my office for assistance after struggling with academic, work, or personal reasons. Simply telling them to, “retake the class” or “fill these papers out” could result in miscommunication or feelings of discomfort: which could potentially worsen the situation the student is already going through as well as the overall relationship. To avoid these issues, it is important for leaders to thinking critically: which includes thinking about our choices as well as how these choices align how other people think.

Of all the four dimensions Goleman mentioned, my strongest is without a doubt social awareness. Social awareness, as he explains is the ability to understand and respond to the need of others (Goleman, 2012). The key here is empathy: where we sync and relate with one another. While it might mostly be because I previously and currently attend the same university I work for, I can easily sync with the student and respond accordingly. When it comes to a student failing and needing to retake a class for example, I can easily relate to my own personal experience. This is where self-awareness and self-management comes to play: as I start to pick up and understand the emotions that occurred in the past. As I gather all the information, I can then approach the situation.

With EI, I personally believe that there’s more value added to our actions because we are recognizing our people as individuals rather than objects. In my previous example, we’re not only helping the student retake the class, but we also provide emotional support: we understand how they feel and bring out positivity. When I usually approach this situation, I usually ensure that the situation is nothing ones should be deeply ashamed or embarrassed about. We basically let our students know that it can happen to anyone as an array of things can interfere in our lives. We try to empower and motivate our students by providing them the information and other counseling needs. In the end, we hope for the students to have a sense that we care about them: which can help build stronger relationships. With stronger relationships, advising becomes easier and could also boost the campus’s overall reputation.

References:

Boyatzis, R. (2012). Dr. Richard Boyatzis- Resonant Leadership- UNC Kenan-Flager [Video file]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxjNu6kSpKc&feature=youtu.be&list=PLC5BF495EE698766F

Goleman, D. (2012). Daniel Goleman Introduces Emotional Intelligence [Video file]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7m9eNoB3NU

MSLD 641 Module 2- Am I a Resonant Leader

For this week’s module, we had the opportunity to complete a brief self-reflection exercise to see whether we have demonstrated or lacked any resonant leadership skills and mindset. As Boyatzis (2012) mentioned in the video, although coming up with strategies, visions, or goals are essential, it’s the relationship between the leader and people that help drives organizations to success. Ever since I started working in my current job as an academic advisor, I’ve followed mostly with resonant leadership. While I have picked up many things from long-time employees at my organization, most of what I do is inspired based on my own personal experience as a student. Just like my students currently do, I also got help from my advisors. With a large campus and a long line of other students outside my advisor’s office, advisement was often rushed to ensure everyone got the help they needed. My overall feedback on my past experiences were satisfactory, but I was wishing some more time and more personalized responses and resources. Now an advisor myself, I can my goal for students is to give them what I was unable to get several years back.

After completing the short exercise, seeing my results were not that surprising. The first question of the exercise asked whether I am inspirational and how I inspire people. While I don’t find myself to be highly inspirational, I do have goals to inspire students to help them feel hopeful: specifically during challenging situations. As a student advisor, my goal is to help student succeed. As we all have personal situations pop up here and then, this could lead to some difficulties academically. A few years back for example, I had a student fresh out of high school fail his first class. He was clearly upset and was likely worried about how the remaining classes would be like. My approach to this situation adds up to the remaining questions of the exercise. Upon hearing the student’s situation, I clearly saw myself: as I also failed the same class he took. While I knew the course very difficult, I also considered the stressful shift from high school to college and feelings of embarrassment and disappointment that I felt in the past.

With my past experiences in mind, I first approached the student to let him know that he’s not alone and that it happens to anyone. To express my understanding of his situation, I shared my personal experience with the class and occasionally made a few funny remarks for good laughs. To inspire and make him feel more hopeful about the future, I let him know that taking the same course the second time was a lot easier: allowing me to successfully pass the class and eventually get the degree. In the end, I gave him recommendations and some resources to help him overcome the problem. In the end, the student was able to pass the class and is now close to completing his degree. When advisement is successful, I personally believe that this enhances the relationship I already have with students. As a result, communication becomes more frequent and students have better trust in me to provide advisement in the future.

Reference:

Boyatzis, R. (2012). Dr. Richard Boyatzis- Resonant Leadership- UNC Kenan-Flager [Video file]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxjNu6kSpKc&feature=youtu.be&list=PLC5BF495EE698766F