A520.2.3.RB Conflict Resolution

Conflict Resolution

I was leaving for the day and was talking to my mom on my cell phone while getting on the elevator and my coworker overheard part of a conversation and sent an email to my director and manager that she overheard me talking on the phone and that the other campus was questioning my overtime.  The conversation was between my mother and I and the question was how long we were going to be allowed overtime (she works at Daytona Beach so we were comparing how long we would be able to use overtime to catch up on our work).  My statement to her was that I wasn’t sure how long we would be able to use overtime but that hopefully it wasn’t cut short.

The next day when I got to work I see this email that my director forwarded to me from my coworker because he wanted to let me know what she had sent to him.  The email stated that she had overheard me saying that someone was questioning my overtime and that she was concerned because a coworker had been fired when I first started working at worldwide because this coworker had lied about overtime that she claimed she worked.  My coworker said she didn’t want to see this happen again.  I was very angry and upset when I read this email because of the way it was written it sounded as though I was not really working the overtime and included days I had taken off of work and how I needed to be turning in my PL, etc. I actually went to her office to confront her and thankfully she was not there because I feel that I may not have been able to be calm in that situation.

My director and manager were sent the email and she ended up calling HR because she found out that the director had forwarded me the email she had sent out to them.  We each had to meet with HR and tell our side of the story.  HR asked me directly if I knew why I was there.  I said frankly I had no idea and wasn’t sure how it got to this point and they said they didn’t know why either.  My director never attended any of the meetings at all.  I found it odd that he was the reason this escalated and he didn’t even bother to be there.  My manager was there for each meeting and acted as the mediator. 

After the meetings were over HR asked me if I felt that I could continue to work without any further issues with my coworker.  I said that I would be fine and HR left it at that.  My manager waited a week and then took us both to lunch and had us talk it out.  I was still upset with the way she had handled the situation and asked that if she ever overheard something that she should come directly to me to get it cleared up.  She apologized for what had happened and said that she would come to me first next time.  She said she called HR more because of how our director had handled the situation and not because of me.

There were many ways to handle this issue that would not have involved it being escalated to the point it was.  First of all my director (he is no longer working at ERAU) should have never sent me that email.  He should have spoken to her first and then called me in after to get to the bottom of the issue and what she thought she overheard.  I understand that he felt that I should see it but at the same time it was breaking the trust she had in him by forwarding that message to me.  I was told later that neither my director nor my manager even took her email with a grain of salt because it had happened before so they were just ignoring it.  I tried finding the director but he wasn’t around so I went to my manager who told me to just disregard it as no one was questioning overtime and there was no issue. 

I should have taken this advice and left it alone and it may have blown over in time.  Going to her office at the end of day was not a smart move because I realized I still had some anger toward the whole thing so I didn’t handle it as well as I could have.  I f I had to do this all over again I would have gone directly to my director and asked him about the issue and told him what my conversation was about.  I may have even asked to work from home for the day until the situation blew over.  I definitely would have asked that she was spoken to about how she handled the whole thing.  I learned a valuable lesson from this and that is that you can’t let your emotions overtake you and that you need to hear both sides of the story and try to come to an understanding in this case sitting us down together to discuss the problem and working on a solution together.

A520.1.6.RB Garcia, Anna

Self-Awareness

This is my third course in the MSLD program and I have found that I am learning much more about myself than I thought I would.  This is a good thing!  I understand that how I react to certain situations and people will effect how I am as a person and as a leader.  My emotional intelligence is something that I worked very hard at in my younger days and continue to strengthen each day.  In MSLD 511 I talked about how conducting a survey to see how my cheerleaders felt toward me really opened my eyes as to how I was perceived and approached.

From that time to now and forever forward I make a conscience effort to be open to others and their feelings and how to interact with each person as an individual and not as a whole group.  This has come in very handy in regards to my daughter.  I am a single parent and I have to be both parents when she is with me.  I am very independent and strong willed and she has observed this and her personality has developed in much the same way.  She is already critically thinking at 6 years old!  I can see when she needs to be approached in a calm way and spoken to with understanding instead of anger and frustration.  I apply this to my coworkers as well.  It could be very easy to get mad or angry but to what point?  Nothing will get solved this way.  When someone is frustrated or upset it is better to understand where they are coming from and work through the problem together.

Values should be taught at a young age and reinforced throughout our lives. I believe with age comes understanding and wisdom (hopefully) and our values should evolve in the same way.  Sometimes things we were taught as being right or just in reality really aren’t.  This is when you have to step back and think critically about it and decide how you as a person will approach these situations.  My values have grown stronger with each course and I know that I should speak up when I feel that something isn’t right.  Sometimes I make people mad because I speak my mind and have lost a few friends because of this.  I know that not everyone will agree all the time but there are some things I will stand my ground on and refuse to be swayed.  For example, I believe everyone has to right to marry the person they love no matter their sexual orientation. This is a topic that a friend of mine and I can’t discuss because she gets very angry about it.  If I feel someone is being treated badly because of who they are I will stick up for them.  Who is anyone to judge someone else for who they love, the color of their skin, how they live or what they do for a living?

This leads me to Cognitive style as it does go hand and hand with values.  How I perceive things, situations, problems, etc. and then process that information is important.  I do my best to not make hasty moral judgments or make interpretations that may be inaccurate.  I know how it feels to be judged based on my appearance (I have tattoos) without someone knowing who I am inside.  Or because I am a single parent that I had an unstable home life (I was married for 5 years before divorcing).  When people make these judgments without understanding who that person is inside they may be missing out on a fabulous friend, lover, manager, etc. based on this judgment.

Orientation toward change was interesting to me.  When I took the tolerance of ambiguity assessment the first time I scored in the second quartile which is low I guess.  After reading the chapter and taking the assessment again I scored lower and ended up in the bottom quartile.  Not sure how that happened!  I think that maybe I am trying to read too much into the questions or answer them in a way I think it should be in general and not how I would look at it.  I am very open to change but maybe I need more work when it comes to uncertain conditions and being tolerant of ambiguous situations.  I may be my own worst enemy here because when things are vague or confusing I may try to analyze it so much that I make it worse instead of better.

Core self-evaluation was another interesting one for me.  I scored in the third quartile both times so I did well on this.  I am a very positive person 99% of the time and sometimes it annoys people because I try to take even the most negative thing and see the good in it.  In fact in all areas of core self-evaluation I feel I am where I need to be except for the self-esteem part.  I am definitely working on that and it is a hard line to follow at times. I am always very encouraging to others but when it comes to me I am not so good in that regard.  I was not in a loving marriage and when I was younger was told many times that I was stupid or that I would never be a success at anything because I couldn’t be taught.

Well I am here now and I can say that I have proved many people wrong!  It is now a matter of taking all that negativity from my marriage and sweeping it away from me.  First though I feel I need to understand why I let it get to me and believe it for so long.  I have to train myself to understand that when someone puts another person down it is that persons own issues that they are covering up for. I have much to learn and understand on this road and feel this class will help me continue to grow and learn as a person and future leader.

A520.1.2RB_GarciaAnna

Self-Awareness

What do you notice in your results? 

The self-awareness surveys were interesting to say the least.  I tried to do my best to answer each question honestly and the results were actually spot on in some areas and surprising in other areas.  I didn’t score in the bottom in any areas which I knew I wouldn’t and in one area I scored in the top which I knew I would.  When trying to answer the questions honestly, I wanted to think of how I felt at this moment and not how I think I may feel later in the course or how I think I should feel.

How much of this rang true for you? What did you see that you were expecting in the results?

Some assessments really hit home for me.  For example, the emotional intelligence assessment is the one area that I scored in the top quartile.  I feel that from my last course on critical thinking my emotional intelligence has grown in many ways.  Self-awareness is something I will continue to work on each and every day long term.  I don’t believe that we suddenly wake up one day and are completely self-aware of who we are and how we interact with those around us.  I didn’t score in the bottom or in the top in this area and I believe that I can work toward better self-awareness if I focus on this and make an effort to improve.

I also felt that the core self-evaluation assessment was right where I thought it would be.  If you can’t be honest with yourself and how you are feeling or thinking you will have a tendency to not be honest with others whether they are your family, friends or coworkers.  This can affect how you are as a leader as well.  How effective can I be if I am not honest?  Will my followers trust me if they know I am not honest with myself?

What were the surprises?

I was a bit surprised by the results on the self-awareness section of the assessment.  I thought I would have scored higher in this area but again by answering honestly I know that I need to work in certain areas.  For example, I know that I need to work on not taking it personally or getting defensive when I receive negative feedback.  I need to take in what is being said and analyze it and figure out a better approach to changing my outcome.

How will you make use of this information?

The best approach would be to see where I am weak and make a plan to improve in those areas by analyzing how I can make a difference in my work and life.  I feel that understanding how I think now and how I can make it better will be a good first step to becoming a better leader and person.

Activity 9.4 Course Reflections

This has been a tough love course for me.  It forced me to look inside myself and find strength in my own learning abilities.  I have been one to take (some of the time) what I hear or say or even read as face value, however, this course has taught me that I shouldn’t be okay with things just because that is the way it has always been or that’s just the way things are done.  That questioning things to get a better answer or even understanding of my work and my life will help me to become a better thinker.

Reading too much into the instructions was something that took some time to get over.  It doesn’t help when your coworkers are also your classmates and they have their own ideas on what the assignment means and then you put in your ideas and thoughts and that causes more confusion.  That may explain a few of the phone calls this term from a few of us!  I know that when I am confused I should try to work it out for myself or just ask the professor.

With a class like this when the professor wants us to try to think it through it is hard to break that habit of wanting the professor to “lead” in a way.  I understand that the way I read the instructions may not be the way the professor wanted me to understand it so in that area, the modules that the professor wants specifics on, those instructions need to be clear and precise to avoid confusion.  I know this is not completely possible because someone may still be lost on what is being asked but if there is doubt we can ask.

I have to say that some of my favorite topics covered in this course were the “going around the circle”, the SEE-I approach, fallacies, the TED video by Sheena Iyengar and even though it put about 50 extra gray hairs on my head, the action research paper and the presentation.  These to me are the basic building blocks for learning to develop critical thinking.  I really wish this was a class I had taken as an undergrad for communications. I do think that maybe starting the outline of the paper earlier in the term would help.  It was mentioned in many of the modules as a reminder but if the outline were due in week 4 it may force us to work within our deadlines (yes we are adults but in the “real” world we are faced with deadlines every day).  I liked that I could pick the topic I wanted to do my research on and it also helped me grow as a person.

My only negative aspect with this class is that because there are many of us who work and take classes together, the competition of grades is hard to avoid.  When you have one person who brags about how they just “copied and pasted” most of their paper and others busted their tail to write a clear, precise, and knowledgeable paper it can be frustrating.  Grammar and spelling were and are a big issue for me when students are posting in discussions.  I know we all get in a hurry from time to time but we are Graduate level students here and there should be no excuse for misspelled or improper use of words.  For example, using since instead if sense, there instead of their, etc.  I let other people’s slacker attitude and lack of commitment frustrate me when I should have just concentrated on my abilities as a student.  I will be the one coming out of this with a grade I know I earned because of hard work and perseverance.  And moving forward I know that I will concentrate on making myself better in all areas.

With that said I have really enjoyed this class and I come out with many a-ha moments and of course more questions.  I plan to apply many of the critical thinking aspects to my life and my work.  Thank you!

Activity 8.3 Good Presentation Design

Activity 8.3 Good Presentation Design

How many times have we all sat through “death by PowerPoint” and wished that someone would make it interesting and not kill our attention span with an overload of information?  I have to admit that I am guilty of that as well with the presentations I have to give at our call center trainings.  I am very good at keeping people interested as I talk telling jokes or short stories and even asking questions but that still doesn’t stop the presentation itself from being boring.  My last visit I changed up the slides a bit and was told it was the best training that they have been given. Was it because there were different slides?  No, I think it had more to do with my presentation style than anything else.  I made something very boring interesting and fun.

            Now the question is how do I make a good presentation that will incorporate my personality without compromising the integrity of the information I need to get out there.   First, my presentation should be visually appealing…NO BULLETS!  What I put in there matters and shouldn’t just be for decoration.  Creating a good presentation takes practice and hard work…..learn how to use what you are working with!  Get a small audience together who may not know what the content is and do a run through to see if they get what you are trying to convey.  Did it make sense to them?  Did I overwhelm them with information?  Were there too may visuals and not enough information?

            A big point that I learned this week is that I need to sketch out my ideas ahead of time.  This gives me a chance to see it on paper and what the direction and flow will be.  Then when I am putting together my presentation I can change it up if it isn’t working the way I thought it would.  By getting your ideas down on paper it keeps you from forgetting the important details.  I also now understand that I should only be putting one idea on a slide…cramming it with too many ideas overwhelms the audience and creates a crowded slide with a bunch of words.  Sometimes a picture is worth far more than a thousand words.

            At the start of this week I thought for sure that I would use prezi.com to make this amazing presentation.  I even practiced putting something together and up until last night my plan was prezi.com.  Then out of curiosity and a bit of frustration, I opened up PowerPoint and started working within it and discovered so many dynamics to it!  Oh the things I can do with it.  So once I started working with it and making it my own I realized it delivered a more powerful message than my prezi could.  Yes it is cool to be able to zoom in and out but I felt my point was getting lost in the “coolness” of those features.

            Where does this leave me now?  Will I only ever use PowerPoint? No, I think that with time and practice there are other multimedia tools that I can use to give a great presentation.  I am still getting used to using the brain so one thing at a time! Another thing to think about is will my audience be able to benefit from using other media tools?  Or will they still get the point as long as I know how to put all the information together in a way that makes sense to them?