31 August 2016
During this class session we discussed what it takes to be great and how many of the aspects that make you great are directly practicable, such as presenting, negotiating, speed-reading, and many others. Studies show that to become an expert in any of these areas one must put in at least 10,000 hours of practice. This got me thinking about how much of a commitment you really need to put in to become a master of something, and how in order to succeed in the field of business you might need to be a master in more than one of these categories. We also discussed Google's rules to being a great boss which ranked aspects of leadership in order of importance. I was very surprised to learn that technical skill was ranked extremely low on the list and that the rankings seem to favor a more authoritative boss than a lenient one.
7 September 2016
This class session focused mainly on the idea of a "better tomorrow message" which means wording your main idea in such a way that it makes it clear to the listener how your idea will help them and why it is important to them. We also learned about how in order to increase the effectiveness of the better tomorrow message, it should be placed in the very beginning of a presentation and then re-stated again at the end. We also discussed how presentations are most effective when they are written at a reading level between 6th and 8th grade, while at the same time not dumbing down the message. It is also extremely important to note that the best presentations use powerpoint slides that can be processed within three seconds or less. All of these points that we covered helped me to make my presentations for the rest of the semester better.
14 September 2016
In today's class we began by discussing Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People. The three biggest takeaways I got from the discussion were not to criticize others, give people honest and sincere evaluation, and to arouse in other people an eager want. One of the most interesting things I got from our discussion in class today was the fact that in Spanish there isn't even a word for success because in other cultures success is defined differently from how it is defined in the United States. We then went on to discuss personal brand and its importance, as well as predictors of success and the difficulty of objectively measuring what success is. Finally, we learned about the importance of asking other people for honest feedback by searching out the answers to questions like "am I effective?" and "how am I doing?" in an effort to monitor your performance and gauge personal growth.
19 September 2016
This class began with a discussion about how the third degree connections on LinkedIn can be extremely useful in getting a job. After that we focused a great deal on TED Talks and what makes them effective. Some of the points I found interesting and thought would be very useful to know were that the speakers in the best TED Talks speak at an average rate of 167 words per minute, use 15 words per sentence, and make the audience laugh 14 times. We also talked about the importance of creating an experience for the audience by stimulating their brains, stirring their emotions, and creating something very memorable. Finally, Ira shared his steps to giving a great presentation, which I put into practice when writing and presenting my TED Talk in class. In my opinion, taking these steps made my TED Talk infinitely better than it would have been had I practiced it how I would have without this guideline.
21 September 2016
The main takeaway from this class was the fact that people tend to put too much emphasis on the importance of intelligence, which is evidenced by the fact that even though employers consider GPA very important when it comes to hiring, in reality undergraduate GPA is one of the worst predictors of success. Part of the reasoning behind this is the difference between fixed and fluid intelligence, or being able to realize that failure isn't due to a lack of intelligence, but instead a lack of effort. This was very striking to me, as at times I have definitely told myself that the reason I failed didn't have anything to do with my lack of practice. We also reiterated the idea that people only succeed as a result of deliberate practice. Finally, we discussed the differences between motivators that operate using fear and motivators that operate using incentives, and how in different circumstances each one is more effective.
26 September 2016
During this class we watched several TED Talks that rank very highly in terms of popularity and discussed why so many people are drawn to them. Among the ones we watched were Sir Ken Robinson's about education and Cameron Russell's about how looks aren't everything. One of the biggest takeaways was that quantitative data makes speech sound more real. I plan on implementing this by making sure that in future presentations I have numbers or graphs to put up on the screen behind me to reinforce what I am saying. Another takeaway was that family humor is the best type of humor to use because people find it so relatable and it is very universal. Additionally, we discussed how the occasional use of filler words like "umm" can actually make a speech sound more natural, as opposed to giving a presentation that is so over rehearsed that it is memorized and can end up sounding emotionless.
29 September 2016
This was a special session taught by Jeff Kudisch of the Robert H. Smith School Office of Career Services. Mr. Kudisch discussed with us a number of strategies that each of us could use to improve our chances of getting a job we wanted, specifically by improving our communications skills. He provided valuable insight as to what companies today are looking for in potential hires and instructed us as to how we could use this information to make ourselves more competitive candidates. I took a great deal of Jeff Kudisch's advice, both in terms of what should go on a resume and in terms of how to conduct myself in an interview. During a recent job interview I took care to follow his outline of how to answer a question and it came across really well to the person interviewing me.
3 October 2016
The main focus of today's class session was motivation and particularly how each individual is motivated by different things. We used a number of real life examples to highlight how different motivational strategies have a different effect on people. Pete Carroll utilizes a "win forever" philosophy to imprint a positive mindset on his players and help them realize that one mistake on the football field isn't the end of the world. Mary Kay, on the other hand, uses the material incentive of a pink Cadillac to encourage its employees to strive to reach the highest level they can. After discussing motivation we moved on to the topic of resilience and its importance in terms of achieving success. A great example of resilience was the story of James Blake, a tennis star who used his positive attitude and willingness to laugh at himself and his situation to recover from a terrible accident. James' willingness to accept reality, realization of the meaning in life, and exceptional ability to improvise were inspiring to me and clear displays of his amazing resilience.
5 October 2016
During this class session Ira talked to us about how to most effectively craft and tell a story in order to get the message across to the listener. The one thing he said that stuck with me the most was that your external experience makes your story unique, while your internal experience makes your message universal. Another takeaway from this class that I found very helpful was the idea that in order to accomplish its goal, your story must be both profound and shareable, meaning that it is both striking to the audience in some way, and also something that you are willing to share publicly. It is also vital to both start the story with a strong, attention-grabbing introduction and end it with a closing that will stick with the audience and make the story memorable. I found this class particularly helpful because I tend to ramble when telling a story and go out of order at times, and I felt that this class really helped me to understand how I can provide structure to my stories and make sure that they are interesting.
6 October 2016
This was another special class session in which a representative from Dale Carnegie came in and talked about some of the Dale Carnegie principles. What struck me the most about this class session was how effective the representative was as a speaker, in that he commanded absolute attention of the room, even when he wasn't saying anything at all. He talked a great deal about how the actual words you say when giving a presentation are far less important than the nonverbal communication that you give off while you say those words, and how to use that to your advantage. He also talked with us further about how to effectively tell a story in order to get the message across and we ended the session by getting into groups and taking turns telling our story, getting critiqued by our group members after the fact.
12 October 2016
In preparation for this class we were tasked with reading an article called Change or Die which outlined how over 90% of bypass patients do not go on to maintain a healthy lifestyle after their surgery. This shows that given the choice of changing or dying, 90% of people failed to make, and sustain a change. This helps to teach us how small, incremental changes tend not to be effective, and instead, radical, sweeping changes are the ones most likely to impact a positive change. We then discussed the Who Moved My Cheese method of introducing change in a corporate environment. I found this class shocking in that so many people fail to make a life-saving change, and that the best way to change something is by doing so completely, versus a little bit at a time.
19 October 2016
The biggest focus in today's class was the idea of charisma, particularly what it is and what steps you can take to improve your level of charisma. We defined charisma as the ability to persuade others, and identified presence as the most important characteristic behind charisma. A great example of someone with a high level of charisma using his charisma to succeed is Bill Bratton, a police chief in Boston, New York, and eventually LA. We concluded our talk about charisma by learning about some steps we could take to improve our own level of charisma, like asking rhetorical questions, setting high goals, and conveying confidence that there goals can be achieved. During this class we also discussed Tipping Point Leadership and different hurdles to achievement of goals as a leader. Some of the most common hurdles were cognitive hurdles, political hurdles, motivational hurdles, and resource hurdles, and in order to succeed as a manager one must be able to successfully navigate around each and every on of these potential problems.
26 October 2016
During this class session we talked again about what types of leadership and leadership strategies are the most effective. One thing that I found interesting to note was that rotational leadership, or changing who is in charge periodically, can be highly effective, which to me at least seemed counterintuitive, as I would have thought that continuity would be better than varying the person in charge. We also discussed the misconception of how the most technically skilled people will make the best leaders, particularly in the context of high altitude mountaineering. Finally, we discussed some myths about teamwork. I was surprised to learn that teams are not always the answer, teammates do not need to like each other, and that the key to team performance isn't necessarily cohesion. I plan on considering all of these things the next time I am forced to work in a group.
2 November 2016
In class today we talked in great depth about the values, mission statement, vision, and learning outcomes of the Business, Society, and the Economy Scholars Program. Some of the key words that ended up being thrown around a lot were curiosity, community, leadership, entrepreneurship, innovation, and global mindset. We then discussed the Abilene Paradox and how things like groupthink and fear of speaking up can be very detrimental to the success of a company. Finally, we learned a bit about the difference between shared and unique information in groups, and how in most cases a group shares at least one broad common goal, but many of the members will then have unique, sometimes conflicting, individual goals.
14 November 2016
This class was mostly about familiarizing us with the Everest Simulation that we would go on to complete in the next class. I found it really interesting to learn that many of the people who end up climbing Mount Everest do it because they have been extremely successful in all other facets of life and feel that climbing the world's highest mountain is just another challenge for them to overcome. We then discussed what we would need to consider while partaking in the simulation, like weather, health conditions, and our shared and unique goals as a group.
16 November 2016
During class today we actually got to run the Everest Simulation as a group. The simulation wasn't exactly how I expected it would be but I still found it very interesting and relevant. The biggest problem my group had our first time running through the simulation was determining whether or not we should try to achieve our unique goals or instead go mostly for the team goals. For example, two of my unique goals were to stay an extra day at both camp one and camp two, but in doing so I would be sacrificing the team goals of everyone staying together and everyone reaching the summit. In order to overcome this I decided to compromise and not stay at camp one, but then convinced everyone to stay an extra day at camp two. In hindsight this definitely hurt us because we could've used that day of rest higher up the mountain when conditions were bad and peoples' health was declining. Unfortunately, the end result of our first run through the simulation was pretty poor, as two of my group members had to be rescued and we achieved zero of the three bonus goals. While we were pretty far from successful this time through, we definitely learned a lot from our shortcomings and discussed afterwards the importance of ranking individual and team goals and being sure to slow down and consider all of our unique information together.
18 November 2016
Today my Everest Simulation group met once again in order to re-do the simulation, hoping for better results. After doing so poorly the first time through we decided to talk more as a group before each decision. Another change we made was using a whiteboard available in the classroom to write down everyone's unique and team goals, as well as any other relevant information so that we could have it all in one place. In my opinion this was the most helpful change that we made, as I am a visual learner and having everything in front of me made it much easier to make any and all decisions. This time through I used what I learned from the first time to help make decisions that would most benefit everyone. One of the key changes I made was forgoing both of my personal goals of staying at camps one and two so that we would have an extra day to rest when conditions got bad higher up. While this lowered my personal score to a 75%, it played a huge part in more than doubling our team score from a 44% to a 94%. Another key factor in this massive improvement was our greater level of attention to detail, which allowed us to successfully complete all three of the bonus challenges.
During this class session we discussed what it takes to be great and how many of the aspects that make you great are directly practicable, such as presenting, negotiating, speed-reading, and many others. Studies show that to become an expert in any of these areas one must put in at least 10,000 hours of practice. This got me thinking about how much of a commitment you really need to put in to become a master of something, and how in order to succeed in the field of business you might need to be a master in more than one of these categories. We also discussed Google's rules to being a great boss which ranked aspects of leadership in order of importance. I was very surprised to learn that technical skill was ranked extremely low on the list and that the rankings seem to favor a more authoritative boss than a lenient one.
7 September 2016
This class session focused mainly on the idea of a "better tomorrow message" which means wording your main idea in such a way that it makes it clear to the listener how your idea will help them and why it is important to them. We also learned about how in order to increase the effectiveness of the better tomorrow message, it should be placed in the very beginning of a presentation and then re-stated again at the end. We also discussed how presentations are most effective when they are written at a reading level between 6th and 8th grade, while at the same time not dumbing down the message. It is also extremely important to note that the best presentations use powerpoint slides that can be processed within three seconds or less. All of these points that we covered helped me to make my presentations for the rest of the semester better.
14 September 2016
In today's class we began by discussing Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People. The three biggest takeaways I got from the discussion were not to criticize others, give people honest and sincere evaluation, and to arouse in other people an eager want. One of the most interesting things I got from our discussion in class today was the fact that in Spanish there isn't even a word for success because in other cultures success is defined differently from how it is defined in the United States. We then went on to discuss personal brand and its importance, as well as predictors of success and the difficulty of objectively measuring what success is. Finally, we learned about the importance of asking other people for honest feedback by searching out the answers to questions like "am I effective?" and "how am I doing?" in an effort to monitor your performance and gauge personal growth.
19 September 2016
This class began with a discussion about how the third degree connections on LinkedIn can be extremely useful in getting a job. After that we focused a great deal on TED Talks and what makes them effective. Some of the points I found interesting and thought would be very useful to know were that the speakers in the best TED Talks speak at an average rate of 167 words per minute, use 15 words per sentence, and make the audience laugh 14 times. We also talked about the importance of creating an experience for the audience by stimulating their brains, stirring their emotions, and creating something very memorable. Finally, Ira shared his steps to giving a great presentation, which I put into practice when writing and presenting my TED Talk in class. In my opinion, taking these steps made my TED Talk infinitely better than it would have been had I practiced it how I would have without this guideline.
21 September 2016
The main takeaway from this class was the fact that people tend to put too much emphasis on the importance of intelligence, which is evidenced by the fact that even though employers consider GPA very important when it comes to hiring, in reality undergraduate GPA is one of the worst predictors of success. Part of the reasoning behind this is the difference between fixed and fluid intelligence, or being able to realize that failure isn't due to a lack of intelligence, but instead a lack of effort. This was very striking to me, as at times I have definitely told myself that the reason I failed didn't have anything to do with my lack of practice. We also reiterated the idea that people only succeed as a result of deliberate practice. Finally, we discussed the differences between motivators that operate using fear and motivators that operate using incentives, and how in different circumstances each one is more effective.
26 September 2016
During this class we watched several TED Talks that rank very highly in terms of popularity and discussed why so many people are drawn to them. Among the ones we watched were Sir Ken Robinson's about education and Cameron Russell's about how looks aren't everything. One of the biggest takeaways was that quantitative data makes speech sound more real. I plan on implementing this by making sure that in future presentations I have numbers or graphs to put up on the screen behind me to reinforce what I am saying. Another takeaway was that family humor is the best type of humor to use because people find it so relatable and it is very universal. Additionally, we discussed how the occasional use of filler words like "umm" can actually make a speech sound more natural, as opposed to giving a presentation that is so over rehearsed that it is memorized and can end up sounding emotionless.
29 September 2016
This was a special session taught by Jeff Kudisch of the Robert H. Smith School Office of Career Services. Mr. Kudisch discussed with us a number of strategies that each of us could use to improve our chances of getting a job we wanted, specifically by improving our communications skills. He provided valuable insight as to what companies today are looking for in potential hires and instructed us as to how we could use this information to make ourselves more competitive candidates. I took a great deal of Jeff Kudisch's advice, both in terms of what should go on a resume and in terms of how to conduct myself in an interview. During a recent job interview I took care to follow his outline of how to answer a question and it came across really well to the person interviewing me.
3 October 2016
The main focus of today's class session was motivation and particularly how each individual is motivated by different things. We used a number of real life examples to highlight how different motivational strategies have a different effect on people. Pete Carroll utilizes a "win forever" philosophy to imprint a positive mindset on his players and help them realize that one mistake on the football field isn't the end of the world. Mary Kay, on the other hand, uses the material incentive of a pink Cadillac to encourage its employees to strive to reach the highest level they can. After discussing motivation we moved on to the topic of resilience and its importance in terms of achieving success. A great example of resilience was the story of James Blake, a tennis star who used his positive attitude and willingness to laugh at himself and his situation to recover from a terrible accident. James' willingness to accept reality, realization of the meaning in life, and exceptional ability to improvise were inspiring to me and clear displays of his amazing resilience.
5 October 2016
During this class session Ira talked to us about how to most effectively craft and tell a story in order to get the message across to the listener. The one thing he said that stuck with me the most was that your external experience makes your story unique, while your internal experience makes your message universal. Another takeaway from this class that I found very helpful was the idea that in order to accomplish its goal, your story must be both profound and shareable, meaning that it is both striking to the audience in some way, and also something that you are willing to share publicly. It is also vital to both start the story with a strong, attention-grabbing introduction and end it with a closing that will stick with the audience and make the story memorable. I found this class particularly helpful because I tend to ramble when telling a story and go out of order at times, and I felt that this class really helped me to understand how I can provide structure to my stories and make sure that they are interesting.
6 October 2016
This was another special class session in which a representative from Dale Carnegie came in and talked about some of the Dale Carnegie principles. What struck me the most about this class session was how effective the representative was as a speaker, in that he commanded absolute attention of the room, even when he wasn't saying anything at all. He talked a great deal about how the actual words you say when giving a presentation are far less important than the nonverbal communication that you give off while you say those words, and how to use that to your advantage. He also talked with us further about how to effectively tell a story in order to get the message across and we ended the session by getting into groups and taking turns telling our story, getting critiqued by our group members after the fact.
12 October 2016
In preparation for this class we were tasked with reading an article called Change or Die which outlined how over 90% of bypass patients do not go on to maintain a healthy lifestyle after their surgery. This shows that given the choice of changing or dying, 90% of people failed to make, and sustain a change. This helps to teach us how small, incremental changes tend not to be effective, and instead, radical, sweeping changes are the ones most likely to impact a positive change. We then discussed the Who Moved My Cheese method of introducing change in a corporate environment. I found this class shocking in that so many people fail to make a life-saving change, and that the best way to change something is by doing so completely, versus a little bit at a time.
19 October 2016
The biggest focus in today's class was the idea of charisma, particularly what it is and what steps you can take to improve your level of charisma. We defined charisma as the ability to persuade others, and identified presence as the most important characteristic behind charisma. A great example of someone with a high level of charisma using his charisma to succeed is Bill Bratton, a police chief in Boston, New York, and eventually LA. We concluded our talk about charisma by learning about some steps we could take to improve our own level of charisma, like asking rhetorical questions, setting high goals, and conveying confidence that there goals can be achieved. During this class we also discussed Tipping Point Leadership and different hurdles to achievement of goals as a leader. Some of the most common hurdles were cognitive hurdles, political hurdles, motivational hurdles, and resource hurdles, and in order to succeed as a manager one must be able to successfully navigate around each and every on of these potential problems.
26 October 2016
During this class session we talked again about what types of leadership and leadership strategies are the most effective. One thing that I found interesting to note was that rotational leadership, or changing who is in charge periodically, can be highly effective, which to me at least seemed counterintuitive, as I would have thought that continuity would be better than varying the person in charge. We also discussed the misconception of how the most technically skilled people will make the best leaders, particularly in the context of high altitude mountaineering. Finally, we discussed some myths about teamwork. I was surprised to learn that teams are not always the answer, teammates do not need to like each other, and that the key to team performance isn't necessarily cohesion. I plan on considering all of these things the next time I am forced to work in a group.
2 November 2016
In class today we talked in great depth about the values, mission statement, vision, and learning outcomes of the Business, Society, and the Economy Scholars Program. Some of the key words that ended up being thrown around a lot were curiosity, community, leadership, entrepreneurship, innovation, and global mindset. We then discussed the Abilene Paradox and how things like groupthink and fear of speaking up can be very detrimental to the success of a company. Finally, we learned a bit about the difference between shared and unique information in groups, and how in most cases a group shares at least one broad common goal, but many of the members will then have unique, sometimes conflicting, individual goals.
14 November 2016
This class was mostly about familiarizing us with the Everest Simulation that we would go on to complete in the next class. I found it really interesting to learn that many of the people who end up climbing Mount Everest do it because they have been extremely successful in all other facets of life and feel that climbing the world's highest mountain is just another challenge for them to overcome. We then discussed what we would need to consider while partaking in the simulation, like weather, health conditions, and our shared and unique goals as a group.
16 November 2016
During class today we actually got to run the Everest Simulation as a group. The simulation wasn't exactly how I expected it would be but I still found it very interesting and relevant. The biggest problem my group had our first time running through the simulation was determining whether or not we should try to achieve our unique goals or instead go mostly for the team goals. For example, two of my unique goals were to stay an extra day at both camp one and camp two, but in doing so I would be sacrificing the team goals of everyone staying together and everyone reaching the summit. In order to overcome this I decided to compromise and not stay at camp one, but then convinced everyone to stay an extra day at camp two. In hindsight this definitely hurt us because we could've used that day of rest higher up the mountain when conditions were bad and peoples' health was declining. Unfortunately, the end result of our first run through the simulation was pretty poor, as two of my group members had to be rescued and we achieved zero of the three bonus goals. While we were pretty far from successful this time through, we definitely learned a lot from our shortcomings and discussed afterwards the importance of ranking individual and team goals and being sure to slow down and consider all of our unique information together.
18 November 2016
Today my Everest Simulation group met once again in order to re-do the simulation, hoping for better results. After doing so poorly the first time through we decided to talk more as a group before each decision. Another change we made was using a whiteboard available in the classroom to write down everyone's unique and team goals, as well as any other relevant information so that we could have it all in one place. In my opinion this was the most helpful change that we made, as I am a visual learner and having everything in front of me made it much easier to make any and all decisions. This time through I used what I learned from the first time to help make decisions that would most benefit everyone. One of the key changes I made was forgoing both of my personal goals of staying at camps one and two so that we would have an extra day to rest when conditions got bad higher up. While this lowered my personal score to a 75%, it played a huge part in more than doubling our team score from a 44% to a 94%. Another key factor in this massive improvement was our greater level of attention to detail, which allowed us to successfully complete all three of the bonus challenges.