Synthesize and communicate, in written, oral and electronic formats, the most significant ideas and results of your work with clarity and precision.
Throughout the Organizational and Community Leadership major I have synthesized and communicated through various forms of mediums. From oral presentations, to papers and reflections, to constructing a magazine, the major covered a vast range of ways to establish clear and precise communication. Lead209 was a class dedicated to perfecting our presentation skills and public speaking. We did individual presentations and group presentations. I prefer group presentations but I understand the importance of individual public speaking skills as a leader. This was a class where my presentation skills blossomed, and I began to feel more comfortable speaking in front of a crowd. Since that class I have learned that presenting is a norm in leadership. I no longer associate the word 'presentation' with a nauseating assignment that I have to get dressed up for. During our capstone class I presented information almost every class period, whether that was to Dr. Stein or my classmates. I learned toward the tail end of my OCL major that leaders present everyday and that standing up in front of a group is our lifestyle and necessary for effective communication and leadership.
The electric form of communication is vastly growing. Millennials barely know what it's like to handwrite and mail a letter. We communicate through technology on a constant basis and this is reflected in our leadership major. Leaders need to keep up with the times and adapt to the technical culture. In Lead110 we made an online resume website. I barely had a resume in a word document let alone the credentials to build an entire website. The challenge was to make a cool website that still communicates who I am clearly to prospective employers. This was a simple site that was dedicated to communicating who I was to employers. As you can imagine my online resume was anything but amazing and I never utilized it after the assignment. It wasn't until I began working on this e-portfolio that I went back to check out the work I had done in Lead110. When applying for summer jobs I never forwarded the website to potential employers or kept up with maintaining the website. Communication is a tough objective to tackle because communication is not a one-way street. I could be the most effective communicator in the entire world and if my audience isn't listening effectively then I am not communicating effectively. In my case, I never allowed my websites to be communicated to potential employees. This was a way to communicate that I am in a deeper, more creative medium and I didn't utilize the opportunity.
Here's a link to see my Lead110 online resume!
As I said technology is improving and leaders need to keep up with those improvements. Leaders must be up with the trends to effectively communicate to their audience. One of the best lessons I have learned about communication knows your audience. This means appealing to your audience in a way that they can understand and effectively accept what you have to say. Throughout the OCL major I have discovered that one of the best ways to communicate effectively is to listen effectively. We must listen to what our audience wants to hear and needs. The first step to effective communication evaluating and analyzing the audience, do they use social media? Will they respond better to an email, text message or phone call. In Lead209 we discussed the importance of pertaining to your audience and how to get people on board with your ideas. Communication is a two way street and if my receivers can't receive the message, then I am not communicating effectively. I am a youth intern at a church who works with the 9th grade confirmation class. I lead them through activities and games and I don't communicate with them the same way I would communicate with a professor. I talk about high school sports with them and Instagram because I know they can relate to these topics. Building this relationship with follows will make me an effective communicator as a leader.
The electric form of communication is vastly growing. Millennials barely know what it's like to handwrite and mail a letter. We communicate through technology on a constant basis and this is reflected in our leadership major. Leaders need to keep up with the times and adapt to the technical culture. In Lead110 we made an online resume website. I barely had a resume in a word document let alone the credentials to build an entire website. The challenge was to make a cool website that still communicates who I am clearly to prospective employers. This was a simple site that was dedicated to communicating who I was to employers. As you can imagine my online resume was anything but amazing and I never utilized it after the assignment. It wasn't until I began working on this e-portfolio that I went back to check out the work I had done in Lead110. When applying for summer jobs I never forwarded the website to potential employers or kept up with maintaining the website. Communication is a tough objective to tackle because communication is not a one-way street. I could be the most effective communicator in the entire world and if my audience isn't listening effectively then I am not communicating effectively. In my case, I never allowed my websites to be communicated to potential employees. This was a way to communicate that I am in a deeper, more creative medium and I didn't utilize the opportunity.
Here's a link to see my Lead110 online resume!
As I said technology is improving and leaders need to keep up with those improvements. Leaders must be up with the trends to effectively communicate to their audience. One of the best lessons I have learned about communication knows your audience. This means appealing to your audience in a way that they can understand and effectively accept what you have to say. Throughout the OCL major I have discovered that one of the best ways to communicate effectively is to listen effectively. We must listen to what our audience wants to hear and needs. The first step to effective communication evaluating and analyzing the audience, do they use social media? Will they respond better to an email, text message or phone call. In Lead209 we discussed the importance of pertaining to your audience and how to get people on board with your ideas. Communication is a two way street and if my receivers can't receive the message, then I am not communicating effectively. I am a youth intern at a church who works with the 9th grade confirmation class. I lead them through activities and games and I don't communicate with them the same way I would communicate with a professor. I talk about high school sports with them and Instagram because I know they can relate to these topics. Building this relationship with follows will make me an effective communicator as a leader.
Communicate thoughtful, constructive feedback to peers regarding the quality of their individual and group contributions, performance, and work products.
As an OCL major I have learned to communicate thoughtful, constructive feedback to peers regarding the quality of their individual and group contributions, performance, and work product. It took me a while to reach this objective though because I am not strong with confrontation even if it is for the benefit of a class assignment.
In numerous leadership courses we were given peer evaluation forms. I loved peer evaluation forms because I was never good at critiquing individuals face-to-face. I have never been great with confrontation and I don't think that will ever be a strong trait of mine but as I grow as a leader, I have learned the importance of constructive feedback. In many UD leadership classes when a peer evaluation is filled out, 9 out of 10 times the individual never received the feedback provided. Instead we are given a final participation grade made up of various items that included the peer evaluation your teammates filled out. Because of this arrangement, as leaders the class had to take it upon ourselves to critic our teammates on our own. Our professor must have done this on purpose though because it allowed us to confront each other face-to-face and work on our communication skills.
In Lead300 we had a group project presented to us halfway through to semester. We were put into groups based on our interests in social topics. The next class a girl joined our group because we were the smallest group not because she was interested in our topic. This was the beginning of a rocky project. The new girl who had joined didn't join our group for the right reasons and because of this our group never fully accepted her in. She was an individual who missed class on a regular basis and didn't respond to group messages in a timely matter. My group should have confronted her early in the project with feedback to allow her time for improvement before our final presentation. We kept pushing this confrontation off though until two weeks before the presentation. Ironically at this time she had a family emergency and was absent with no explanation from the group. We went to our professor concerned, and he allowed the group to fire her but it was our decision. One of our teammates was against firing her but we proceeded to fire her regardless. We learned of her family emergency afterward but it was too late to take back our action. Upon further growth as a leader I may have realized how wrong this was. If every boss fired his employees without first confronting them and allowing them an opportunity to improve and work harder, there would be no personal growth in the business.
I now understand the importance of constructive criticism. In our capstone class, we did one on one-peer evaluations during a class period. We were each given a single person to evaluate and were evaluated by another individual. I went into the class more nervous about evaluating a peer of mine then being evaluated. During my evaluation, I was actually caught off guard a bit. My evaluator did not do a good job of making me feel comfortable during the evaluation and brought up a couple points that suggested I wasn't being a team player in the group. I was shocked a first and became a bit defensive. To be fair, I had never been evaluated in this way before and it was a new experience. After the evaluator talked out their observation a bit more, I began to understand where he was coming from and the evaluation turned into a conversation. It was a conversation where we both brought ideas to the table to discuss steps we could both take to move forward with improvement. This evaluation was an eye opening experience for me and it taught me, the importance of providing constructive criticism.
This evaluation ended up being a positive experience, but at the beginning there was a moment where I felt hurt and attacked. There is a wrong and a right way to give constructive criticism. The evaluator needs to sympathetic to the person they are giving feedback to. Individuals don't like to hear they are wrong but the conversation must be had to benefit the group. After the class capstone evaluation, I noticed improvements within our team as a whole. We were working and communicating more effectively. Later, I realized there was one group member who was not listening to the rest of the content group's ideas. He was dominating his opinion and not being an effective listener. After class, I pulled him aside to have a conversation about how he needs to give the rest of the team a chance to voice their opinion. The conversation went well, and I successfully provided feedback to a peer to benefit the group and work product. The individual later thanked me for being a leader and stepping up to have that difficult conversation.
In numerous leadership courses we were given peer evaluation forms. I loved peer evaluation forms because I was never good at critiquing individuals face-to-face. I have never been great with confrontation and I don't think that will ever be a strong trait of mine but as I grow as a leader, I have learned the importance of constructive feedback. In many UD leadership classes when a peer evaluation is filled out, 9 out of 10 times the individual never received the feedback provided. Instead we are given a final participation grade made up of various items that included the peer evaluation your teammates filled out. Because of this arrangement, as leaders the class had to take it upon ourselves to critic our teammates on our own. Our professor must have done this on purpose though because it allowed us to confront each other face-to-face and work on our communication skills.
In Lead300 we had a group project presented to us halfway through to semester. We were put into groups based on our interests in social topics. The next class a girl joined our group because we were the smallest group not because she was interested in our topic. This was the beginning of a rocky project. The new girl who had joined didn't join our group for the right reasons and because of this our group never fully accepted her in. She was an individual who missed class on a regular basis and didn't respond to group messages in a timely matter. My group should have confronted her early in the project with feedback to allow her time for improvement before our final presentation. We kept pushing this confrontation off though until two weeks before the presentation. Ironically at this time she had a family emergency and was absent with no explanation from the group. We went to our professor concerned, and he allowed the group to fire her but it was our decision. One of our teammates was against firing her but we proceeded to fire her regardless. We learned of her family emergency afterward but it was too late to take back our action. Upon further growth as a leader I may have realized how wrong this was. If every boss fired his employees without first confronting them and allowing them an opportunity to improve and work harder, there would be no personal growth in the business.
I now understand the importance of constructive criticism. In our capstone class, we did one on one-peer evaluations during a class period. We were each given a single person to evaluate and were evaluated by another individual. I went into the class more nervous about evaluating a peer of mine then being evaluated. During my evaluation, I was actually caught off guard a bit. My evaluator did not do a good job of making me feel comfortable during the evaluation and brought up a couple points that suggested I wasn't being a team player in the group. I was shocked a first and became a bit defensive. To be fair, I had never been evaluated in this way before and it was a new experience. After the evaluator talked out their observation a bit more, I began to understand where he was coming from and the evaluation turned into a conversation. It was a conversation where we both brought ideas to the table to discuss steps we could both take to move forward with improvement. This evaluation was an eye opening experience for me and it taught me, the importance of providing constructive criticism.
This evaluation ended up being a positive experience, but at the beginning there was a moment where I felt hurt and attacked. There is a wrong and a right way to give constructive criticism. The evaluator needs to sympathetic to the person they are giving feedback to. Individuals don't like to hear they are wrong but the conversation must be had to benefit the group. After the class capstone evaluation, I noticed improvements within our team as a whole. We were working and communicating more effectively. Later, I realized there was one group member who was not listening to the rest of the content group's ideas. He was dominating his opinion and not being an effective listener. After class, I pulled him aside to have a conversation about how he needs to give the rest of the team a chance to voice their opinion. The conversation went well, and I successfully provided feedback to a peer to benefit the group and work product. The individual later thanked me for being a leader and stepping up to have that difficult conversation.