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.