Week 9: Final thoughts on RW

 Hi all,

The final week has come and all ICU students’ faces (of course mine is also) have been getting dark, exhausted, stressed, and even desperate…  I hope all of us will overcome the exams, presentations, and essays…

Anyways, I would like to reflect on this Research Writing course in this post, looking back on each activities which we did.

Usual classes

I really enjoyed every class. This was because Ken provides many various activities for us, such as lectures from Ken, discussions, watching videos, role-play games, and so forth. We learned about interpersonal communication, negotiation skills, conflict resolution, and of course, about leadership as well. Though this class, my image of a leader was dramatically changed. I thought the leader had strong authority, tough, and has charisma, of course this was one type of a leader but leaders can be more like a person who cares about others or encourages them as well. To put in another way, I came to understand that there were many leadership styles though this class.

Guest speaker lectures

We, fortunately, had two guest lectures in this course. One was the lecture by Rab, and the other was by Brent A. Conkle. Each lectures was really terrific and I leaned a lot from their lectures. For example, I learned that leaders needed to deal with a problem from various perspectives or approaches from Rab’s lecture. I also noticed that I tended to spend more time to “discuss” than “take action”. Moreover, from Brent’s lecture I understood that I was more like an “integrator” or a “developer” leader. This assessment helped me to find my advantages and disadvantages as well. Overall, these two lectures provided me much knowledge of leadership and I will utilize it to my everyday life.

Essay

Yes. We did it. We finally finished writing a 2000 word essay! At first I thought 2000 words were really long but now I feel that it is “not so long” (but not “short” at all lol). My topic was “empathy and cultural empathy” and since the topic was related to my interest, that is, intercultural communication, I truly enjoyed searching for the sources and writing an essay. I, initially and personally, regarded “empathy” as a soft and not-required skill for the leaders (that was why I decided to write an essay about this topic) but though my research, I learned what an important role the empathy plays in leadership skill. Furthermore, I got more and more interested in intercultural communication as well.

Blog

At first, keeping a blog was the most troublesome task for me. This was because I had not write a blog before and just personally I was reluctant to write (especially make a summary to tell the truth..). However, once I began blogging, I found that it was somewhat interesting to do. Moreover, what I felt important and beneficial was that we could see others’ thoughts, reactions and feeling by checking others’ blogs. I guess this encouraged and motivated me to study.

Presentation

On Friday, our group made a presentation. Our topic was like “leadership not from charisma”, and since each members’ topics had little similarities, it was a kind of difficult to conduct one presentation but anyways I was glad to finish it. Overall, group presentations were really great opportunity for us to know about others’ topics and moreover, I could learn some presentation skills from others’ presentation as well.

Classmates and Ken

Finally, I would like to look back my classmates and also our teacher, Ken. Everyone was (and is) really warm, friendly, and nice so that I really liked to come the class room and see all of my classmates and my teacher as well. I cannot thank you guys enough truly. Especially Ken, you were the most kindest teacher I met ever! I truly appreciate all of your kindness. So what I would like to say is……

 Hope to see you again guys~ muchisimas gracias!!

Week7: Summary & Impression of Chapter 9 L@E

 Strategy 9: Be willing to take the Big Risk

Hi there~. In this post I am giving the summary of the chapter 9, Risk, of L@E, and then I am providing my thought on the chapter, as usual. Chapter 9 discusses risk, and it suggests that leaders need not to take unnecessary risk but need to take it if you find it is worth doing. I am first summarizing this chapter and then show my brief impression of it.

Never Take an Unnecessary Chance

Leaders should evaluate a risk carefully, and if it is unnecessary one, they have responsibility to say “No”. Shackleton has a great ability to avoid these unnecessary risks. For example, when the expedition party found the land and the pressure to launch boats increased, Shackleton decided not to do so. This was because there was a risk that the boats could get crushed by the ice. His decision saved the lives of his men. Thus, we should remember that there are times not to take a risk.

When a Risk Is Justified, Do Not Hesitate

There are however, times to take a risk as well. Of course leaders need to evaluate a risk carefully, but if the return outweighs the risk, they should take it. And in so doing, they need not to be hesitate to take the risk. The important thing is to assess the risk and balance it with the return as well, according to this section.

Impression

I felt it is really tough and difficult for me to take a risk. I am always wondering what risks I should take and what risks I should not. In other words, I am wondering how we can evaluate risks. This could be one of the challenges which I need to resolve I assume. Does anyone have any idea how we are able to divide a risk into the unnecessary one and the one which we should face?

Week7: My Impression of “Marshmallow Challenge”

Hi all,

Marshmallow challenge is a game that the teams made up of four people create a free-standing structure with some sticks of spaghetti, a tape, a string, and one marshmallow within 18 minutes, and teams compete with each other in terms of the height of the structure. Although the rule is quite simple and it sounds easy, to make the structure is actually so difficult. This game was held on this Monday and it seems that most of us enjoyed it. In this post, I am going to write how things went in my group, about the role which I played in the game, and about my thought and impression on the game as well.

On the first attempt, unfortunately my group failed to make a free-standing structure. This is because, I assume, we spent too much time to discuss which shape or structure could be worked or things like that. In other words, we did not have enough time to build a structure.

After Rab’s advice and lecture, we tried again and this time, we could make 30-cm structure, though this was not so high compared to other groups. On the second attempt, it seemed that we spared more time to construct. We planned to make like a firm foundation first (look at the picture below and see how stable our foundation was! lol), and then we wanted to add some other parts on the foundation in order to make higher structure. But, on our way to do that, the time was over.

I was like an idea generator I think. Since I was not sure what structure could be better, I just told many of my ideas off the top of my head. And also I tried to encourage other members to do something, but I am not sure whether my behavior made a difference or not.

Overall, the marshmallow challenge was really fun and what is more, I learned a lot from this game. It is really true that people tend to spend more time to discuss something rather than taking an action (and I suppose especially ICU students are highly likely to do so because we are (have been) encouraged to conduct discussions). In addition as Rab suggested, when we address a task, we often concentrate on the task at hand too much or in other words, we tend to miss other ways to approach the task. For example, we can find some information or tips by the internet. Or we can see how others are dealing with the task, get some ideas from them, and use the ideas. I felt that at least leaders should keep those things in their minds, and they need to seek many ways to approach the task. This will eventually bring them good outcome I believe.

Finally I want to express my appreciation to Rab for offering this very interesting game and also to my team members. Thank you :)