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.