FINAL BLOG TOPIC-Josh malament

The class topic i found most useful and interesting was on motivation. I've been having some motivational issues in my life and it was good to finally learn how to address them. i find myself being motivated in completely different ways in different situations in my life. The concepts and strategies covered in class to deal with these different types have been beneficial. The reading " Four Intrinsic Rewards: Meaningfulness, Choice, Competence, and Progress" also shed some light on my motivational issues. I feel im intrinsically motivated in about every aspect of life besides my current profession, and that's where my issues are present. So that being said, i don't believe im capable of being motivated extrinsically, unless the rewards are very enticing.

The book that i found to me most interesting was "Emotional Intelligence". I have struggled with being able to hide my emotions when i feel that i have been treated unjustly. It takes over, i can rarely shake the feelings and it affects the way i work and respond to certain situations. Everyone knows when I'm upset or frustrated. Sometimes this isn't a bad thing to let people know how your feeling, but there are other situations when i can be detrimental to you're career or life. This is very dangerous when dealing with authority, such as a boss or police officer. If you can't hide your feelings of discontent and anger when dealing with these authority figures, you can find yourself unemployed or in jail. I have to work on my emotional intelligence, so i may purchase this book to learn a little more about how i can do this, as well as review the notes from class on the issue.

In conclusion.. I felt that i learned quite a bit in this course and feel that i will be using many of the strategies and concepts we have discussed as i move forward in my professional and personal life.

Final Blog Topic (Eric Dodge)

A lot of the topics that we have learned in this class have been very interesting and are directly relevant to our personal and professional lives. The topics that have been most interesting and helpful for me are culture, being perceived, social perceptions and mind bugs. These are all topics that I thought about before, and I knew were very important. This class has helped me to improve my knowledge and skills in these areas.

I have always thought that perception was very important, but after reading more about it I have learned that it is even more important than I thought. In the readings for class we learned how important first impressions are. People base future actions off of their initial impression of you. This means that if they had a good first impression you can make mistakes and they will chalk it up to a bad day. But if they had a bad first impression of you they will assume that you just aren't very good at what you do. It is difficult to change people's first impressions, so it is important to make a good first impression whenever possible. I feel like I am usually pretty good at this in more casual settings, but I need to get better at this in professional settings. I still feel like a "kid" a lot of the time at work, but this is not the impression that I want others to get of me.

We also learned about perceptions that people in a society have and some of the mind bugs that go along with them. These are perceptions that we have of others, as well as ones that others have of us. I think that this idea is very similar to the concept of different leadership styles in different cultures. It is important to understand the different mind bugs, perceptions, and customs in each culture. This is because our economies are becoming so global, so we will always be working with people from different cultures, with different social norms. At my company I work with a lot of people that are originally from other countries, as well as working with colleagues and customers that currently live in other countries. It is important to be able to communicate effectively with these people and that means understanding at least a little bit about their culture. I also really like to travel and check out new places with different ideas and customs, so this is especially interesting for me.

I really liked the book, Drive, that our group did because I think that motivation is an interesting topic and I liked the way that it was discussed in the book. Another book that was presented in class that I liked was Emotional Intelligence. I think that this is a very important topic that a lot of people don't really think about. I try to keep my emotions in check and always think rationally, but sometimes this is very difficult. I am going to read this book in the future because I would like to learn a little more about this interesting topic.

FINAL BLOG TOPIC by Onder

I think this class should be a required class, rather than an elective, for the MBA program.  “Leader” and “Leadership” are misused quite often, and most people (I was one of them) do not have a good idea about what leadership really means.  The media routinely refers to “political leaders” and “business leaders,” without regard to whether they really deserve the title.  The fact that leadership is not the territory of a few at high places and it is an essential part of everyone’s personal development is a well-kept secret.

The textbook for the class “Leadership Challenge” is a good one.  However, I think it is unnecessarily long as if the author was paid by the number of words in the book.   By the time one comes to the end of a chapter, he or she (at least me) forgets how the chapter started.  I found the reader very useful.  I particularly liked the articles about interpersonal relationships and emotional intelligence.  I think usefulness of the reader would be enhanced if each article was briefly discussed in the class before it was to be read as to what it was about and how it related to the overall scheme of things.

I liked the class discussion on ethics and noticed that a lot more people than before wanted to participate in the discussion.  Perhaps other students liked this topic as well.  But I also think that students wanted to participate more in the discussion because they knew each other better by the end of the semester; at least they knew more about each student.  If that was true, then it would make sense to encourage students to learn more about each other at the beginning of the semester.  I personally liked the approach taken by Dr. Wilson in the communications class, which was the first class in the program for most students.  At the beginning of that class, each student had to give a presentation about him or herself.  The students who said “hi” and actually talked to me in this class were the ones who took the communications class with me.  There are students who set within few feet of me throughout the semester and still look through me.  May be it is because I look a bit older than I am!!!

I really enjoyed reading “Drive,” as it addressed self-motivation as well as motivating others.  Of course, I had a personal interest in the part about the baby boomers.  After all, I recently started a new business called “BOOMERESE REALTY.”  For those who are curious about what it means, Boomerese is the language of the baby boomers, and it is not a word in any dictionary.  Between the books other groups presented I like the “Predictably Irrational,” as it relates to our everyday behavior.  I will read it in the near future.

“Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun” by Wess Roberts has been one of my favorite books for many years.  Although the first reaction to the title is “you must be kidding,” it is actually a very good book about leadership.  It acknowledges why a western person would be skeptical that a barbarian would have any leadership skills and proceeds to trace Attila’s life step-by-step, describing how he acquired and used the various leadership skills in each step.  It is one of the few books and articles that bring up the point that leadership is in the eye of the beholder; that is, one people’s leader is another’s barbarian (I have a cousin named Attila and another named Cengiz).  In any case, it is a small, humorous book that is easy to read; I highly recommend it.

I am terribly biased about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, but he is my example of a true leader.  His last name means “Father of the Turks.”  It was given to him by the Turkish Congress, and nobody else is allowed to have that last name.  His biography “Ataturk:  A Biography of Mustafa Kemal, Father of Modern Turkey” by Lord Kinross is an unbiased story of this great man.  It is a long book and requires at least some familiarity with the History of Ottoman Empire and Europe during late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

It has been a pleasure to participate in this class and interact with our small group.  My best wishes to you all for the Holidays.  My special thanks go to Dr. Johnson for her Leadership.  A couple of quotes from Ataturk seem appropriate to end this blog:  “Teachers are the most respectable people in our society,” and “I will be eternally indebted to anyone who teaches me just one word.”

Final Blog Topic - Christine

This semester, my favorite topics in this class were Social Perceptions and Mind Bugs, Culture, and Being Perceived.  Having just traveled to a different country, it is interesting how social perceptions and mind bugs come into play.  Apparently, a young Asian American female traveling into the Netherlands is suspicious to security at the airport. I was stopped by airport security as well as customs and asked several questions that led me to believe that they thought I was bringing drugs back into the United States.  Mindbugs under these circumstances meant a young Asian female cannot be doing something legitimate in a foreign country. 

The passport control person in the Netherlands kept saying something bizarre to me.  He was actually saying "ni hao" or how are you in Chinese, but I had no clue what he was trying to say to me.  When I asked him what he was trying to say, he said, "Aren't you from China?"  I answered, "I'm American" and he seemed so perplexed.  The passport control person insisted I was from China and I replied back that I have never been there and my passport was issued in the United States.  I guess I didn't win any friends that day and probably perpetuated the belief that Americans are rude.

Being in a foreign country is always an interesting experience.  As a visitor to the Netherlands, I really tried my best to be aware of the perceptions people had about Americans and tried to respect their local culture.  When I was working at my company site in Breda, I made a point to be careful of criticizing their processes or appear that I was passing judgments.  I made a point to ensure that I didn't offend anyone there.

Being perceived was a topic I really relate to because I am aware of how others perceive me.  On Saturday, my flight home from Amsterdam was canceled and I had the pleasure of hanging out with an Executive Director from my company.  The two of us had been in the same room all week and barely talked, but when my flight was canceled I decided to email him and the two of us met up for dinner in Amsterdam.  The whole week I wondered why he even came to the Netherlands because he barely contributed during the meetings and always seemed bored while we were there.  After getting to know him over dinner, he admitted to me that he knew people thought he wasn't fully engaged during the meeting.  He wanted people to be able to express their ideas and didn't want to be another person projecting their opinion about how things should be done at our Netherlands facility.  We were the two youngest people attending the meeting last week and he told me that he understood how I felt at my age in the company.  Our 360 reviews are due at the end of this week and we both joked about what they were going to say.  I know mine will say that I'm bubbly and I need to be aware of how I am perceived by managers.  My dining partner admitted that he thought I was bubbly but was surprised on how much I knew at my young age and how much influence I've had on the company.  He told me to continue to be myself, and that if being bubbly is the only negative thing they have to say about my performance, than that isn't so bad at all.  He also said that he noticed when I had to be serious, people respected me and the balance of bubbly and authority was a good combination.

Of all the books we've discussed this semester, I would read Blink and The Geography of Thought.  Both of these books relate to topics that interest me most in this class.

Overall, I enjoyed this class.  Many of the topics we covered are things that I can relate to in my current position and hopefully will help make me a better leader in the future.  Most of all, it was interesting to hear about people's experiences in their workplaces and being able to engage in dialogue with my classmates.

Leadership- Close to home

In our little group we have been sharing our thoughts and experiences throughout the semester.  Even though we hardly said "Hi" in the class, I feel that by sharing our inner thoughts, feeling and experiences we have formed a special friendship in this cyberspace.  Today, I will share some more personal thoughts with you.

Yesterday four of our immediate family members and I spent a very long day in a hospital waiting room.  We had both my brother-in-law Don and his son Alex in the same surgery room for about fifteen hours.  It was a day of extreme stress and extreme emotions.  At the end, both surgeries went well and, hopefully, both of them will recover.

About a year ago Don was diagnosed with liver cancer.  Many months of ups and downs with getting on the waiting list for a liver, getting off the list, being x-rayed and scanned over and over, it started looking like he was running out of time to wait for somebody elses liver.  Then, Alex volunteered to give his father part of his liver, as they were a good match.

Alex is twenty six years old.  After he graduated from U.C. Berkeley he started Law school, and at the end of his first year he dropped out.  He was the only one ever to drop out of any school in the whole family.  We thought he partied too much, did not have the right attitude, etc.  Some of us were embarrassed to tell our friends about his "failure."  To our surprise, Alex got himself a job at Google within a short time.  To our surprise, he loved his job and he was very excited to do what he was doing.  He was working on the bus to work and staying late at work, and he worked on weekends.  He could not stop talking about his team and teammates.  We began calling him the "Google Man."  The Google Man was recently sent to South America to train Google employees there.  From all we can see and tell, he is an exemplary Google employee and with all the enthusiasm he has for his job we think he has a good future there.

Nobody asked Alex to volunteer his liver for his father and his father was surprised by the offer.  It was a very tough call for Alex to make the offer, and a tougher call for his father to accept it.  First thing Alex did when he woke up was to ask "How is Dad?"  He wanted to be put on a wheelchair and go see his father as soon as his father came out of the surgery.

I said something in the last class about how we get tested occasionally about our values.  I have always taken pride for being a very honest person, but it did take me a hole day of internal deliberation whether I should return the check that the cashier put into the bag.  At the end, I returned the check and felt good about it.  I had just walked the walk.  It is a simple but good reference point for me to think about if and when a similar situation arises, as I have already taken the test and I know the right answer.

I told Alex that he is a brave man and we all appreciated what he was doing for his father.  I thanked him from the bottom of my heart.  He loved his Father, and he walked the walk.  He took the test and passed it.  He now knows the answer.  He is my "leader of the year."

Final Blog Topic

We've reached the end of this part of your leadership journey - and hopefully you are ready to continue on your own! In this posting, please write about what activity, topic, or reading you found the most interesting and useful. It may be interesting to see how others saw the class and what they found of value.

Also, please briefly describe which book - other than your own - you think was most useful to learn about and if you know of other books that you think would be useful for a future class, please provide the title!

Groups and Leadership-Josh Malament

I find myself using different leadership styles for different kinds of groups. When it comes to friendship groups and social groups i take the leadership role early and often. I find my friends to be very indecisive, so to eliminate wasting time, i take the lead and get the show on the road with planning and decision making. But when leading my friends, i have to be more accommodating to their needs, preferences, and wants. And it's only natural that in these social situation to have the most awesome person lead a group to the ultimate goal of having an awesome time.

In groups at work i tend to take the leadership role when im managing a crew, obviously, but i allow the crew to work autonomously. I let them know what the goal is, tell them how i would like to reach that goal as efficiently as possible, and then let them work. If i notice someone struggling I will jump in and help and lead them back on track.

When working with the partners in the company i work for, i take the back seat and watch and listen as they drive towards the goal. They have many more years of experience than i do so i like to learn and follow when working with them. Although, i do contribute whenever possible, because i have experience and knowledge of my own that may help in certain situations.

When im with my family, since im the youngest, i tend to just chill and let things happen, lending a helping hand whenever i can. I very rarely jump into the leadership role because i have a brother that will try to battle for dominance regardless of rationality or logic. But, i guess that what big bros do.

When im with a group for class, i like to survey the people in the group and see if anyone is itching to jump into the lead. This usually takes a few seconds....if no one does, then i take the lead, and get it started. I don't like to waste time establishing roles, everyone is going to contribute, but a leader gets the ball moving.

I enjoy learning from other leaders. Successful leaders have a lot to offer. Their style has proven to work, so taking notes (mentally) for usage or imitation can be useful. But, different leadership styles and techniques are not universally compatible, and that's what this course is about, learning the techniques and styles, and when to apply them.