What I've Learned

This is my final blog. Class ended today and it is time to reflect on what I have learned from Dr. Feinberg.

Dr. Feinberg has told us many times, that CSR 309 Leadership Strategies will change our lives, if not today maybe in 10 years. I can honestly say this is the best class I have ever taken at Purdue University.

This class has opened my eyes to leadership and the importance of it in our lives. I look at practically everything trying to find the leadership meaning behind it. I have also learned that although we think we have a lot of time to become leaders, we really don't. If we sit around and say "Oh, next time I'll stand up and take the initiative," we will never do it. Our time here is really short and it is true that we never know when our last day it will be. We must always be willing to stand up and take a larger role.

Since this class started, I have wanted to get more involved in the clubs and activities I am in. I am running for a position currently in my Financial Planning club. I want to be able to make a difference in this club so that it will make a difference in its members lives.

I also now look at the different commercials and movies trying to see if there are any hidden meanings and finding the sexism. Many times these things are so oblivious that they will go over looked by most people. It is all about opening your eyes and paying attention to the smaller details. The small details are the things that can change the world. It can be as simple as smiling at an employee, but that smile lets the employee know that you noticed them. A good leader will be able to realize these small details and make any necessary changes to improve an organization.

Although leadership is often times referred to mainly in organizations it is also very prevalent in our lives. Like in the previous paragraph, we must pay attention to the small things. If we make little improvements we will become better people.

Overall from this inspiring class, the 3 main things I have learned are: pay attention to the small things, take the initiative, and keep your eyes open. Leadership is key to living a successful life and happy life. It may take some time to get use to but, after paying attention to it, it will just come naturally. I took the initiative to make sure I learned from this class. I learned more than I could have imagined. This class will stick with me for the rest of my life and I will make sure to recommend this class to everyone. Thank you Dr. Feinberg!

Pain

Monday's class was about pain. The pain we live with, the pain we feel daily. This was a depressing class. Dr. Feinberg read a lot of peoples statements about pain. It was amazing how many had lost siblings, hate themselves because of their looks, and have had drug addictions. This class really made me open my eyes and see that the things I have gone and am going through other people have been through it as well.

I know what my pain is. I am forced to live with it everyday. There are a lot of things that have caused me pain. Whether it being my dad divorcing my mom, not really being close with my dad, losing a grandfather, who was the only grandfather I knew, not being very close to my grandfather, having been stabbed in the back by people I thought were my friends, being cheated on, feeling left out, names I have been called, dealing with an older brother's drug addiction, and poor decisions that I must live with. The list can really go on forever. I have been through a lot in 21 years. However, I do not look for people to feel sorry for me. Instead, as I have gotten older, I have learned that you can take the pain you feel and become a better person. I take each event that has caused me pain and analyze it. I try to find if there were any warning signs that could have braced me for the pain I was about to feel. After analyzing the situations, I look at myself in the mirror and find ways that I can better myself and not feel that pain again. As a result, I have been able to deal with situations when they arise.

I have also hurt myself with this pain. Not physically, but I have come to the point where I have built walls up around myself so that I really don't let anyone in. This has affected my ability to reach out. I have been trying to let some of my guard down, but it difficult. As pretty much everyone can relate, once you've been hurt, you never want to feel that way again.

I have also hurt myself in a way that I cannot really let things go. I have been stabbed in the back by "friends" many times, and it is hard to even look at that person. Whenever I see them, I become filled with anger and rage. I really do hate that feeling. Even thinking about the situation, causes the same reaction. Trying to let go of pain is pain in itself. I feel like it will take many years in order for me to get over the events. With letting go you must feel the pain again and channel it outwards reminding yourself that it was in the past and only the future matters. Although I struggle letting things go, I have learned to recognize the people I do and do not want to surround myself with. Through this pain I can pick out more loyal and better friends. As Dr. Feinberg has said, "You need to get rid of the black holes of negativity in your life." That quote sticks in my mind everyday and is something I always remind myself of.

I try to live by my grandfather's ways. He always forgave those that harmed in, even his own son who spoke badly of him and hated him. This is something the world must attempt to do.

Pain is a learning experience. It is something that sticks with you but how you deal and overcome it is what really matters. You may never get over some of your pain but you can learn to deal with it and make it small enough, you can live life without letting it take over your life.

Movies and Men vs. Women

In Wednesday's class Dr. Feinberg started class talking about how much he loved movies. He stated that movies show incredible examples of leadership and that he also loves all kinds of movies, good or bad. He also went on to talk about how our Individual Memo 2, movie analysis of leadership, was his favorite assignment. Through out this class Dr. Feinberg has drilled into our minds that we must keep our eyes open and see the leadership in everything around us. This is very true in movies. Even in movies that I have seen in the past, before taking this class, I now look back and tell my friends when talking about movies, "Yeah, that is a great leadership film...I really recommend it." Granted they all look at me like I'm crazy, but when they do watch the film, they see where I am coming from. From this class, I look at things a lot differently than I use to. I look for the leadership in the movies, TV shows, books, and everyday lives. It is quite amazing how leadership affects everything. Dr. Feinberg, you stayed true to your objective and made me see the leadership in everyday life!

The second part of class was men vs. women. Dr. Feinberg started off with a commercial that aired in England about abuse. He went on saying that no woman should be so desperate to stay in a relationship that is abusive. He also went on about how Rihanna was stupid for not pressing charges on Chris Brown. This made me think of a song that recently came that clearly states, "Chris Brown should get is @$$ beat." Here's the link to the song, for your enjoyment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW_MoEe5ryQ

It is quite sad how many women put up with abusive relationships. I am the type of person who puts up with very little disrespect. In fact, usually at the first sign of disrespect...I'm out of there. My philosophy is that the amount of disrespect you put up with shows the amount of respect you have for yourself. In leadership, a good leader will respect their followers no matter their gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. A leader should have no tolerance for disrespect or sexual harassment within their group.

The clips that were shown in class on Wednesday also showed how gender differences are subtly shown in TV commercials. For example, the clip for FedEx, a group of all men meeting in the men's bathroom to make a decision. There were no women involved. What is with that!? The world is still showing young women that they are not capable of being in upper management, high position jobs. Women are constantly needing to prove themselves that they are just as good as men. This all can be changed with women being more outspoken about getting into leadership positions. We need to stand up and take on the position and run it better than any man could. The glass ceiling is starting to get small cracks, but that is not good enough. Women will one day break through that glass ceiling much like Barack Obama did for African Americans. The thing standing in our way is not just men and their beliefs we cannot do the same things but ourselves and lacking the leadership to go ahead and take control.

Decision Making (continued)

Monday's class picked up where last Wednesday's left off. Dr. Feinberg continued to talk to us about the importance of decision making and the affects it has on others. Dr. Feinberg also told us how to conduct a great meeting. He gave us the essentials to what it takes to have a great meeting. Go figure, that it only takes simple things like starting right on time, providing an agenda, and letting the meeting out about 3 minutes early. As this course progresses on in the semester, I have come to realize that in leadership it only takes doing the little things and doing them correctly that make you a great leader. It is definitely a theme in this class. Although, it is the little things that can make the largest impact, like in the Trim Tab example, these are sometimes the most difficult things to change.

Changing the little things can be difficult because the little things can sometimes go unnoticed. There are times that the changes can be so oblivious and minute that we don't even recognize that they are causing problems. Or we can think that it is such a little problem that fixing it will make no difference. This can be a common problem in organizations, groups, and life. However, it only takes a few times fixing that "minor" problem and seeing the impact that we will learn to look at the little things first.

In decision making and leadership, it takes experience and the ability to pay attention to the little details in order to notice the small changes that need to be done. With being able to recognize leadership in everyday life, like Dr. Feinberg has been teaching us, one will be able to gain the experience to notice effective and noneffective leadership. After further analysis, one should then be able to see the little changes that need to be made.

Decision making is an important aspect of leadership, that takes seeing the entire picture, big or small, to make a well-thought out decision. It is hard to know if you are making a good/right decision until you see the outcome. Therefore, it is important to make a well-thought out decision. By making this type of decision, you will know that you looked at all the different aspects and thought through the situation thoroughly.

Decision Making

Two very important aspects of communication are decision making and changing. Decision making was shown in Wednesday's class through the Wilderness survival game. In this game we were to rank in order the items we felt were the most important to being able to survive if stuck in a desert. I have done a game similar to this before so I was somewhat familiar with the experiment. I felt that the decisions my group made were pretty cohesive. In leadership, you want to make sure the group comes to a general consensus as to the final decision. However, an area where my group lacked was finding the people who ended up scoring lower than the group as a whole. We did not ask if anyone had did something similar before or if anyone had any experience in the military or was an outdoor type of person. This would have been a good way to start the process. Our failure to do this is something that a lot of groups may fall victim to. In decision making, it is important to find out the people who have experience in a certain area. This will ultimately give your group a "specialist" in that area. Decision making in general ties into communication. The better the communication, the better the decision, which directly contributes to better leadership.

The second important of aspect of leadership is changing. Changing was shown in Wednesday's class through watching a video that talked about trim tabs and leadership. A trim tab is a small piece on a boat that changes the boat's direction. The main relation to a trim tab and leaders is that a small change can make a large impact. The movie went on to talk about how in life if you focus on what you can do and then make small changes along the way. This is a great point because it goes a long with what Kirk Weisler talked about and focusing on your strengths and making small improvements along the way. Being able to make small changes is crucial in leadership. One does not have to make a huge change in the way things are done to create a large impact. I believe that this is the best way to be an effective leader. Why waste money and time trying to make that one huge change in a company, government, or life when if you just make a small adjustment in multiple areas you can end up with a large impact. This was talked about in the video with the New York Police Department. They were concerned with the rising crime in NYC and instead of focusing on the whole city, they put more focus on the subways and it ultimately decreased the general crime rate by substantial amounts.

In leadership, it is best to make cohesive, educated decisions and to make small changes than large ones. Great leaders will be able to do both of these things and lead their group in a positive way.

Communication

Monday's class was about the importance of communication and active listening. These two things are extremely important in leadership. Without communication, it is hard to be able to direct your followers to success and to provide them feedback on their progress. Being able to communicate with your followers also know what is suppose to be done and how to do it. Communication is something that I believe goes overlooked. I believe that a lot of people do not realize the importance of it. A lot of conflicts whether they are personal, in the community, or internationally could be solved if there was better communication. A lot of the mishaps that go on in the world are started by lack of communication between countries. I know that there are a lot of leaders in the world that are difficult to communicate with because of their beliefs, however, it takes effort on both sides to prevent conflict.
The other point in communication that is essential is active listening. Feinberg was telling us the importance of clarifying the facts of questions and making sure you understand what is being told to you. I have heard this time and time again. The thing I hate about active listening was the experience I had over the summer. I was working as a summer intern in the Wealth Management Department of a local bank and they would give me a long list of verbal directions and when I would reiterate and clarify what they said, they looked at me as if I was retarded for repeating what they basically just said. It really made me feel small. I was just trying to clarify the directions and I guess they just don't understand active listening.
I do know that active listening is important and I really think lectures and classes in general would be much better if it was easier to communicate with the professor during the actual lecture rather than waiting until the end or through e-mail.
Communication and active listening should be part of our everyday lives and the more we practice it now in college and our early years in the workforce, the better leaders we will be.

Let's Fix This

Today in class, Feinberg did not show up. Instead, it was just our President and Group Leaders. We all got into our groups and worked together to see how we can improve our individual groups. I really think we needed to do this oh...about like 4 weeks ago. Actually, we needed to do this right away. Finally, my group will start sitting together and getting to know each other.
I was beginning to feel like these groups were pointless. I didn't know anybody in my group and felt that I barely knew who my group leader was. I was beginning to wonder what the point of even having the group was.
I do know that if I was a group leader, I would have had my group sitting together since our first class in groups and had people getting to know each other right away. It is the little things that make groups work and create cohesiveness.
I know now that we had today's class that things will be different and we will begin to mesh together as a group. I want to get as much out of this class as possible and am hoping that happens.