2/18/2009 -- Tower Building

When a person/ leader holds more power in terms of information of a task an interesting thing occurs. The team naturally strive to understand and quickly, since it was time constrained, all shoot out ideas and follow through after some approval either from other team members or the leader himself. Yes, I am describing how most groups work for classes but also in the work place. There will always be someone that knows more than you and by getting that straight in your head will be able to help lower anyone on their high horse. Yes the leader in our situation knew more than our team, but still other team leaders seem to get a slightly different message. This is important because When information is given multiple times it is similar to the game telephone, either something is added because it was forgotten previously or something was omitted, which all ends with a different interpretation of the message. The ideal situation is to be able to understand and receive the message as well as relay it to your team as it was specifically as possible and then we move on from there. Since there was so much leeway with our tower building, our leader brought the main tools for building the foundation of our tower and asked each of us to print out a picture of ourselves having fun. By adding personal touches to the tower it made us feel as a team with all our inputs heard and more blatantly apparent on the actual tower. I believe ours represented our team very well because we worked together and pulled each other's strengths to offset any weaknesses. Ideas were thought through and given multiple suggestions for improvement. Since we could not have everyone working on the actual tower, we split into two groups: creative and foundation. The foundation being the tower structure and the creative being the design team. We did not just split the groups randomly but said if you are better at decorating then please help the creative team and vice versa for the tower structure. Having only a short amount of time, I believe we handled our timing very well with time to spare for clean up and for moving the structure inside the room. It was interesting to see the other towers and how they were presented. Although, I believe there were towers that would have received higher marks if the presenter was personally more excited or elaborate on their descriptions. This was their chance to tell the class about the team and the last group, who won, did it very well in making sure everyone participated in the tower by showing their support system and being able to describe their actions.

Kirk Weisler

I heard only good things about the workshop from previous students so the 5 hours didn't seem like it would be torture. Turns out the night was not only interesting but inspiring and fun! The emphasis on how things and people in your life can and are a huge part of a person's motivation and their choices was a breath of fresh air compared to the other professors I have that emphasize how their class will be used in all walks of life after we graduate. Although I do not doubt I will use many things I learn in college for the rest of my life it is definitely not to the extent of csr 309, which not only tells you what we should and should not pay attention to during class but for the rest of our lives. I really enjoyed the activity and I showed my roommates and friends after we got back that night and it was quite amusing trying to tell them how this exercise was to show how flexible we are when we get stuck in a problem. They all understood the message but could not seem to implement it which was intriguing. (With a little help they all got it). I emailed a thank you letter to Kirk because I was/am in the same situation about reading except I've taken the first step of purchasing the books but never seem to find the time or make excuses to avoid reading them. Kirk emailed back with a couple more selections on top of the 20 he gave that night that were more short reads and would be a good start. I was lucky enough to have had a ride after the workshop was over since it was pouring out and the funny thing was my friend was debating to start reading their book for class now or wait yet another day. Of course, my gung ho reaction was to "DO IT TONIGHT! If you keep putting it off you never know when you're going to get it done. We just had a night on taking the initiative and how that will set us apart from others and help get an upper hand on things....etc......" As this went on their face turned to the "where is all this personal power coming from" face and decided I was right. It felt good to spread a part of what I had just gotten out of the workshop in a few minutes.

2/4/09

Today's leadership selection process was quite interesting. The first two groups, despite receiving specific instructions on what NOT to do, continued to converse without including the rest of the class. This showed a kind of norm of how leaders are today, filled with secrecy and sense of superiority. At times, this may be the case, but in order to receive full credit from your followers, we need to see what the leaders were doing. The third group was extremely successful in not only keeping us entertained, but also by showing us leadership rather than telling us what leadership meant. It was great to see everyone working so closely and efficiently with each other and a couple leaders stood out during this round, but since the leaders were so effective in creating a positive energy for all the leaders of that round, I gave them all the equal amount of points because as a whole they worked as a unit rather than individuals. The ability to make others as well as yourself look good is ten times harder for those that are selfish, even slightly. A leader needs to be selfish, but for their group, not for him/herself. Another aspect of what I learned of class today was to think outside the box because it already catches the attention of the audience; by adding humor into the mix created an even more successful outcome. There may be rumors on how the last group was "notified" of what was going on previously, but they still came up with their own way of showing/teaching leadership.

2/2/2009

It was great to start today's class off with the Superbowl commercials since it is not only fun to watch again but it was also fresh in our memories from the night before. Personally, the CareerBuilder one was my favorite because it was not only funny but inspirational to show those who settle that there is better, that we can always do better, but it is ultimately up to us to use those resources. I have never considered to leave my resume out in the open after finding a job, but now I think it's a great way to stay competitive and alert of what else there could be.

The leader spotlight speeches went very fast but it was also very beneficial to find out what aspects of personality, gestures, speech, and overall appearance of a person could sway my decision as to whether or not they were worth following or to even be a leader. I found many attributes that were consistent with how well I was ranking them: posture, amount of filler words, if they spoke about teamwork rather than what they did, experience different from the norm, eye contact, confidence: in their voice, their stance, their gestures, etc., and how persuasive they were. It was a good sign of a leader to me when the fact of standing in front of the blinding bright light did not even phase them one bit. This was a small but easy way to see how certain people would react to their environment and be shocked or those who simply foresaw and anticipated it prior to getting in there (that was only a few seconds). This little detail helped decipher those who come prepared more than others, who adapt to their surroundings, and those who hold strong even when they are put in a situation in which makes them uncomfortable. Today was quite interesting because of that.