Listening with intent:

• Since I have spent a majority of my research networking and talking with people, I have been able to work on a skill that I am always trying to improve. That is listening with intent and staying completely focused when hearing someone's story, rather than thinking about what I am going to say next. I have learned that when you lean out and give others a chance to speak their mind, you will find that the people around you have amazing ideas.

Power and diversity:

• Performance never comes from me trying to take the lead with every conversation, it appears when there is a diverse set of perspectives coming together. Facilitating activities during the event was the emphasizing moment of this learning. Instead of me explaining to the room about the knowledge I thought I had, I opened up the room for other thoughts and ideas. Switching the power to the people I am leading gave them a sense of autonomy and built more trust in our relationships, and the result was amazing innovation that I would not have been able to achieve on my own. This project also taught me how to delegate, specifically knowing what tasks to delegate, when to do it, and who is going to take that workload. This realization came when my supervisor for the project informed me that I was taking on a bit more than needed, and that I should take some time for myself. I now know that this is important, and spending that time to take a breath will clear my head. Performance goes down when a person is stressed and overwhelmed, and it is alright to take breaks once in a while.

Context matters:

• There are three key contributors to how a leader approaches a project. There’s the leader, the followers, and the situation. The leader must be aware of all three of these in order to be successful. For themselves, they need to have self awareness. You also have to know what motivates your followers, and what their level of ability is. As for the situation, you need to know what tasks need to done, the type of structure for the work, and the organizational environment. I experienced all of this in this project. I had encounters with different situations throughout the project, ranging from formal meetings, interviews, and event coordination. I had to use different leadership behaviors and styles in each. For example, when motivating people to attend the event, I needed to inspire a shared vision by being excited and convincing about the future of the project. When I am with the project team, I needed to switch into more of a “modeling the way” leadership style, meaning I stay true to my values and I do what I said I was going to achieve.

Motivation:

• If you cannot provide the appropriate motivation for your followers, chances are you are not going to have a high performing team. They need to be intrinsically motivated, having the work be meaningful to them with a sense of accomplishment. How I handled motivation in this project was clearly establishing goals in the beginning, but also taking the time to understand my team members. This required asking them what their goals are, seeing where their strengths are, what type of work they enjoy doing, etc. Then, I structured the work to accommodate for what they informed me of. What I found was that we had one member that was more introverted, but very analytical. This resulted in that person doing more secondary research. Then, for me, it was the opposite. I complimented their skill set by doing more primary research and talking with people and attending events.

Self-awareness

• Before influencing and inspiring a group to do their best work, you need to know who you are (your internal self-awareness). There needs to be an understanding of your personality, strengths, weaknesses, biases, motivators, emotions, and more. It is equally important to be aware of how others are viewing you as a leader (external self-awareness). Through this project, I learned the importance of this during feedback sessions with my supervisor. I would explain what I believed to be some of my strengths, however I realized that I was not totally accurate with my assessment. She was able to enlighten me on areas for improvement, and this helped me gain a better grasp of who I was. Another takeaway here is feedback is extremely effective when it is done in a face-to-face setting. When it is constructive and personal, there will be continuous improvements made. This will also build more trust within the team.