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.
For me, the most interesting group activity that we did was the one on managing your emotions/emotional intelligence. I have always felt I am very keen at reading and being in tune to the emotional state of others through their facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. And likewise, I have always felt that I am fairly good at identifying and communicating my own emotions accurately through my tones, expressions, etc. However, when tasked with the challenge of reading random phrases verbatim from one slip of paper while expressing a selected emotion as listed on another slip of paper, I found this was quite a challenge for me. I think this speaks to how much of a tie there is between the words we choose to say and the genuine emotions we are feeling at the time we are saying them, as it was extremely difficult for me to try to express "sadness", for example, while reading a phrase that didn't actually evoke that emotional response from me.
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!
As for the books that we read/discussed throughout this course- if I had to pick the 1 with the most interest to me it was definitely the one that my group read and presented on, Social Influence. I guess we picked that book for a reason though, as I knew that it sounded interesting from the first week when we were presented with the options. If I was to choose another book aside from our's that really had an impact on my as far as what I can apply to my leadership behavior, I think it would be the book about motivation- . I think understanding what can motivate others and also what motivates one's self are vital skills in being an effective leader. I have personally learned through the years how to re-motivate myself on several occasions when my job work or school work has become stagnant or boring and I feel myself losing focus... I have struggled with the challenge of becoming bored easily my whole life, which has forced me to figure out tricks for how to re-stimulate myself and get excited and back on track rather than just giving in to my lethargy and changing jobs or doing the minimum to get by in a class.
As far as suggestions for books to read going forward... there was a book that my last company actually required the entire staff to purchase and read- it was called Raving Fans. The company was a media publisher, and we were all working in various capacities, from sales, sales support, customer retention, client services, etc. The book was sales/customer service inspired, but it could be a good one to put on the list for the class to choose from next semester- I though it was a really interesting read and appreciated being "forced" to read it as part of a company directive, as I have never been asked to do something like that before by an employer.
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