MSLD 511 Module 1- Two-Way Street

As Northouse stated, leadership wouldn’t be possible without influence (2015). Influence is defined as the power to change or affect someone (Influence, n.d.). Northouse’s statement is true since the goal of leaders are to motivate and point groups to specific directions. While influence mainly acts as a force generated by the leader, influence also takes place with everyone involved in a group.

Due to the fact that I just got my first bachelor’s degree, I never really got many experience in the workforce. However I see influence involved almost daily as an assistant campus director at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide (ERAU). Though influence might be something that often occurs from the leader or a group, it actually revolves with everyone involved in a group. For our campus, students are what triggers me to influence my boss.

One of the biggest things I’ve done to influence my boss was to let him know the importance of keeping in touch with neighboring community colleges and potential students. When I first started working for the university, I often heard my boss mentioning about the declining numbers of new admissions. After a while, I realize that one of the things that lacked for our campus was the number of times we attended events outside of our school. I asked my boss about this but he admitted that he doesn’t attend every college fairs anymore due to the lack of table visits and low numbers of the students actually applying for the university. I found his statements to be false and while looking at other ERAU campuses in Washington states, they are attending various fairs: which indicates that there good reasons to attend them. As a result, I decided to attend as many of the fairs we were authorized to attend.

Though I was somewhat expecting similar descriptions as my boss stated, I was surprised by the number of interested students that came up to my table. The interesting trend I found was that these students came up letting me know that their friend previously saw my table (word of mouth). Another group of potential students that came up were ones either already aware or are students for ERAU. However most were surprised to see me since they didn’t know that there was a physical location and that most thought that ERAU Worldwide only served online classes. Most of the ERAU students were ERAU Worldwide Online students: another branch of ERAU Worldwide. Most of these students became Worldwide Online students due to the word “online”, however they prefer face-to-face contact and didn’t know that physical locations also serve online classes.

While I attended as many events, my boss came up to me and let me know about the steadily increasing number of admissions. He was surprised how attending outside events really do impact enrollments. Though he still doesn’t attend events, he is making more effort into finding events that I can attend.

References:

Influence. (n.d.). Retrieved June 8, 2016, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/influence